HOOVER, Ala. — South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier, as he is pretty much every year, was asked at SEC Media Days on Wednesday how much longer he planned to coach.
“I always say four or five more [years],” said the 66-year-old ball coach. “I don’t know, maybe I should start staying three or four now.”
Reporters at the Wynfrey Hotel had a pretty good laugh from that one. But, truthfully, there’s no reason for Spurrier to step away anytime soon.
Things are going pretty well in the fourth quarter of Spurrier’s coaching career. The Gamecocks find themselves in extremely rare territory for their program. They’re favored to win the SEC East this year, and they have that distinction chiefly because they won the East last season and are bringing back most of the principal players from a 9-4 team.
So the bottom line is Spurrier is not going away anytime soon. And that’s because he feels pretty good about the team the Gamecocks are going to put on the field.
“Our program is heading in the right direction,” he said. “We’ve been getting better every year. Now if it was going in the other direction and things were going bad and we were getting our heads beaten in, I’d probably be out of here already.”
In fact, things are going so well that you can actually here faint murmurs of the words “national championship” in Columbia. That’s something that was almost unthinkable when Spurrier took over at South Carolina six years ago. It is, after all, a program that has won 10 games in a season once in its 119-year history.
Then again, there’s reason for optimism just being an SEC team these days. The league has claimed the past five national championships. So the formula has been clearly established by precedent. If you can get through the land mine that is the SEC regular-season schedule and win the title game, anything is possible.
“[The expectations have] definitely risen a lot,” said Marcus Lattimore, the sensational sophomore tailback who rushed for 1,197 yards and 17 touchdowns a year ago. “Talking about a national championship wasn’t going on a couple of years ago, but now it is. We’ve got a shot to do it. But every SEC team has a shot to do it.
‘We just have to stay together as a family, work hard and we’ll have a chance.”
Said Spurrier: “I’ve said all summer I think Marcus Lattimore is the best running back in the country, and I think Alshon Jeffrey is a best receiver in the country. Both of them have a chance to be All-Americans. And we have a pretty good defense, so we ought to be pretty good.”
The Gamecocks also return one of the best defensive fronts in the SEC, featuring defensive tackle Travian Robertson and defensive end Devin Taylor. And for the third year in a row they added the No. 1-ranked prospect in South Carolina. This time that player, defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, also is the top-ranked recruit in America.
“I read somewhere from one of the recruiting gurus it’s the first time a No. 1 guy came to a place that hasn’t won a national championship yet,” Spurrier said. “He said he came here because he thinks we can win one, so maybe we can.”
Perhaps sensing his session with the media was becoming too much of a lovefest, Spurrier began to backtrack as his 30-minute slot neared the end.
Asked how it felt to be the favorite in the East, Spurrier shot back.
“You do know we lost our last two games last year?” he said. “We got obliterated by Auburn in the SEC championship game, and we dropped the ball when the game was on the line against Florida State in the bowl game. So we’re not up here patting ourselves on the back.”
No, but Spurrier sure sounded like a man very much enjoying what he was doing.
