Once a Lou Holtz QB recruit, what it means for Rod Wilson to return to Gamecocks
It was more than 20 years ago when Rod Wilson first stepped on campus at the University of South Carolina.
He was a burly high school quarterback from the small town of Cross, South Carolina. He was in town for a camp, looking for his first big offer. The coaching staff, then led by Lou Holtz, wanted to take a look at him throwing.
“I think after a day of practice on the field, they offered me a scholarship,” Wilson said. “And then things kind of trickled from there.”
They trickled through a career where Wilson played five different positions, settling at linebacker. They trickled through six years in the NFL, and then a coaching career that netted him a Super Bowl ring this past February.
And now he’s back at his alma mater, back in his home state, even if his return got interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
“I got here and I had about three weeks in office,” Wilson said. “And then we had spring break, and over spring break, I went back to Kansas City to pack up and move back. And as soon we got back to the office, the whole pandemic happening and we got locked out.”
He got five whole spring practices, learning a new set of terminology with boss Will Muschamp working closely alongside him. Now he’s managing things on Zoom or by the phone, recruiting, learning the new gameplan and communicating with his new players.
As part of the Kansas City Chiefs, he worked both with longtime coach Andy Reid and special teams guru Dave Toub. He thinks some of that experience can bring a level of value to his work in Columbia.
“I may be biased and I might not be, but I think and I know in my heart that I probably worked for a Hall of Fame coach in Andy Reid, and the amount of experience of those three years I had with him, the things I took from him are huge — how to work, how to communicate with players, how to continue to grind.”
With that in his tool belt, he’s now back home. He’ll recruit the lower state and see old faces in the coaching world. (He spent a few years at Charleston Southern.) He’ll add what he can to Kyle Krantz’ special teams unit, using what he learned from one of the NFL’s best.
And he’ll be back close to where he’s from, as short drive from where he started throwing passes, setting up that trip to camp in Columbia all those years ago.
“Cross is an hour and a half away,” Wilson said. “My parents being from Cross, my wife’s parents being from Alvin, South Carolina. So we’re pretty much an hour and a half, an hour and 45 minutes away, and I have some family also here in Columbia.”
This story was originally published June 1, 2020 at 12:37 PM with the headline "Once a Lou Holtz QB recruit, what it means for Rod Wilson to return to Gamecocks."
