Is South Carolina football a good job? Examining the pros and cons
With South Carolina football now in the market for a new head coach, the question has to come up.
What makes the Gamecock job appealing, and what are the drawbacks?
As has been pointed out, the program has only finished in the AP Top 25 nine times. Steve Spurrier did it four times, Lou Holtz and Joe Morrison twice each. The job has fallen into different hands, from the hot coordinator (Brad Scott) to the small school star (Sparky Woods, Morrison) to the former national champion (Holtz, Spurrier, Paul Dietzel).
It’s a unique job, one with a lot of backing but also one in a tough spot. There will be a lot of conversation in coming weeks about what coaches can offer South Carolina. Here’s what South Carolina can offer coaches:
———The pros———
Support, in large quantities
In the last full year pre-pandemic, South Carolina’s athletic department brought in more than $140 million. It spent at least $36 million on football alone, plus a good chunk of its expenses not allocated to specific programs no doubt helped football. In the Muschamp era, the team beefed up its creative and recruiting departments and offered a lot in the way of amenities. The assistants were paid well, 14th nationally in staff salary in 2019, and often with multi-year deals. Fans usually fill Williams-Brice Stadium, creating a big-time atmosphere.
The facilities
During the Holtz and Spurrier eras, this was more of a question mark. Not anymore. South Carolina’s gleaming $50 million football building is a crucial asset in the recruiting world and for running a program. The team has a modern indoor practice facility, a nice set of dorms where student-athletes live. In short, a new coach won’t have to ask for much to be built when he arrives.
The location, in some ways
South Carolina isn’t the biggest state overall, but it usually has a solid to strong base of in-state talent. Charlotte isn’t far. Neither is Atlanta. It’s easy to get to Florida, Alabama, even up the Eastern seaboard from Columbia. That covers a lot of good recruiting ground for the staff that can get the most of it.
SEC! SEC!
There’s cache in being in one of the wealthiest conferences in the country and in the most football-crazed region. Being an SEC program can open some doors. It can get certain recruits to take notice. It can allow a coach to promise a player from a talent-rich state like Georgia or Florida an added bonus that he can go away and still play in his home state in college when the Gamecocks travel to face those schools.
———The cons———
The ‘neighborhood’
That measure of South Carolina’s wealth and resources matters, but the schedule is a reminder about how everything is relative. Each year, South Carolina plays three teams that can out-resource it and sit in more fertile recruiting areas (Georgia, Florida, Texas A&M). And then there’s Clemson, which has gone supernova the past half-decade. That’s one-third of the schedule, before factoring in Tennessee’s persistent ability to get top-10 recruiting classes ... and before factoring in how half the schedules will feature Auburn, Alabama or LSU. The top of the schedule is always going to be a bear. Kentucky and Missouri are mostly feisty these days, so you better have a good team because a middling one will get ground up.
The location ... in other ways
It’s fair to say South Carolina is surrounded by a lot of talent, but it’s also surrounded by a ton of competition. The Gamecocks have to share a small state with Clemson, which can get almost anyone it wants. Georgia as a state is recruited by most everyone, same with Florida. It’s hard to pry the best kids from those two or Alabama from in-state programs. North Carolina can be up and down, but when a coach such as Mack Brown arrives, the Gamecocks can feel the squeeze.
The history
Outside of Spurrier, there hasn’t really been a coach who established the Gamecocks as a consistent winning program. Holtz went 33-26 after his first winless season. Morrison followed 10-2 with 3-6-2. The coach with the second-most wins in program history, Rex Enright, never lost fewer than three games in a season. Even Spurrier himself finished better than third in the division only four times, once with a 7-5 squad that went 5-3 in conference.
The expectations
This isn’t to say they’re too high, but they’re not all that clear. As stated above, there have only been the nine top-25 finishes. Muschamp himself said falling short of a bowl isn’t acceptable, and with the right non-conference scheduling that’s true. But if that’s a base, the ceiling isn’t all that clear. Some might ask for eight wins a year, but that means either upsetting one of those more legacy teams or sweeping the likes of Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee, or perhaps both consistently — no easy feat. Spurrier won 33 games in three years, but none of those teams played for an SEC title. USC’s lone SEC East championship team lost its final two games, and lost to Kentucky along the way. The answer might just be fielding a solid-to-good squad every year, but the sport is still measured in wins and losses.
This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Is South Carolina football a good job? Examining the pros and cons."
