Both Steve Spurrier and Jadeveon Clowney got a good laugh over media suggestions that the All-World defensive end should consider sitting out his junior season at South Carolina to avoid an injury and secure his spot as the top pick in the 2014 NFL Draft.

On Monday night, after watching the topic debated by ESPN’s talking heads, Clowney tweeted, “I’m playing lol.”

Spurrier laughed when asked about it on Tuesday by the AJC:

“Well, I hope he plays this year, and I certainly believe he should play. Now if money was his only goal in life, then he couldn’t play. And he might not get into a car before next year’s draft, so he wouldn’t be in a car wreck and get injured. He would be just very, very careful for a year not to have any kind of injury.

“But Jadeveon likes football. Football players play football. They don’t wait around on this, that or the other. He’s really good about avoiding injuries and so forth. He knows how to get out of harm’s way if there’s a big pileup around a tackle. I think the odds of him getting hurt as not nearly as much as a running back or somebody like that.

“I think he wants to play. I certainly hope and believe he does. I think he should play for South Carolina this season.”

The Charlotte Observer’s Tom Sorensen wrote a column you can read HERE about how Clowney “should think about skipping 2013.” He pointed out how Marcus Lattimore’s injuries dropped him from being a surefire first-rounder, how Clowney is not eligible for this year’s draft (because he's not three years removed from high school), and how he could sit out this season and train for next April.

February is a slow time of year in sports, and it got everybody talking.

“I wasn’t surprised by the media reaction to the idea because those guys have got to talk about something for three hours every day, and that’s something to talk about,” Spurrier said. “Should he stay? Should he sit out and wait for the money?

“Most of the guys that say he should sit out, they don’t realize the benefits of being on a college football team, and continuing with your teammates to have as big of a year as you possibly can. The money is going to be there down the road, so why would a person give up the thrill of playing college football?

“Those people have never played football, so they say he should sit out and get the money. That’s the only side of sports they see -- the money. There’s a lot more to it than just the money.”

Last week, South Carolina had another Top 20 recruiting class with a strong Georgia influence. The Gamecocks signed 21 recruits, including seven from the state.

The most highly-regarded export was Mill Creek High School defensive tackle Kelsey Griffin, the Under Armour All-American who picked the Gamecocks after a bizarre recruiting experience with UGA. The 4-star publicly committed to UGA in front of TV cameras in late September but later backed off the pledge after it was apparently not accepted by the Bulldogs. Griffin was welcomed by South Carolina with open arms.

“I think having back to back 11-win seasons helps, among other reasons,” Spurrier said. “First of all, I think the state of Georgia has more kids signing D1 scholarships now than Florida. Obviously, there are a lot of good football players in the state of Georgia. We’re 2.5 or three hours away from the greater Atlanta area. We try to recruit that area, as well as other parts of Georgia, very similarly as we do our state of South Carolina. Our state has 4.5 million people approximately, and greater Atlanta has 5.5 million. Just in pure numbers, it’s smart for us to try to recruit Georgia the best we can.”

(Ed note: Florida usually has nearly twice as many kids than Georgia sign with FBS schools, but Georgia did have more kids than Florida sign SEC scholarships last year)

South Carolina has assigned four assistants to recruit Georgia, led by defensive coordinator Lorenzo Ward. The others are G.A. Mangus, Joe Robinson and Everette Sands. “There are so many high schools in Georgia that we have to split it up,” Spurrier said.