Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Head Cock still crowing

Ol' Ball Coach gets an extension. Chris Low puts in a historical perspective.
Spurrier is 54-35 in seven seasons at South Carolina, which places him second all-time in wins at South Carolina. 

Rex Enright is the Gamecocks’ all-time winningest coach with 64 victories. It’s certainly possible that Spurrier could catch Enright next season, although it may take two seasons to pass him. 

It took Enright 15 seasons to rack up 64 wins. He was the Gamecocks’ head coach from 1938-42 and again from 1946-55, and he actually finished with a losing record (64-67-9). 

Spurrier’s going to ascend to the top of the South Carolina coaching mountain in a little more than half the time that it took Enright. 
And that ain't all folks...
Not only that, but he’ll walk away as the all-time winningest coach at two different SEC schools. He was 122-27-1 in 12 seasons at Florida. 
It’s difficult to imagine when we’ll ever see that happen again in this league. 
Here’s the other thing to remember when assessing where Spurrier ranks among the best coaches in college football history: He did it at two schools in the SEC that had little or no tradition before he arrived. 
Florida had never won an SEC championship before Spurrier returned to his alma mater as head coach in 1990. Before he was done, the Gators had added six SEC championship trophies to their mantle. 
What’s more, Florida had won just eight bowl games in its history before Spurrier arrived. During his 12 years there, the Gators won six. 
Spurrier’s success at South Carolina didn’t come quite as quickly, but the Gamecocks burst through last season and made their first-ever trip to the SEC championship game.  
Now that it's a gaping wound, Low adds some salt.
And in the last two seasons, South Carolina has swept Eastern Division rivals Florida, Georgia and Tennessee with a perfect 6-0 record. 
For perspective, prior to Spurrier’s arrival, South Carolina was 0-13 against Florida in SEC play, 4-9 against Georgia and 1-12 against Tennessee.  
In a word, Ouch

Connor Shaw put together a respectable pretty darn good season once Garcia's bong water dried up. If he is indeed the answer, he might be the last piece of the puzzle the Gamecocks need once Lattimore returns.


So once that 2012 schedule finally gets finalized (hopefully this week), I'll be officially circling the game in Chickumbia on the calendar as an away trip. Who's joining me?

12 comments:

Bernie said...

"Connor Shaw put together a respectable pretty darn good season once Garcia's bong water dried up."+1 Now that it funny.

Bernie said...

I know Chris so I'm going to send him this message as well.  This is NOT intended to short side anything Spurrier has accomplished at either program to include Duke.  

However, I think I can honestly say he gets a little more credit than he deserves when you consider a couple things.  Spurrier did change the way the SEC played football, no question.  But would he have done so against the likes of Vince Dooley, Pat Dye, Nick Saban, Jonny Majors, Bear Bryant, Mark Richt and several others who had just retired or were yet to come?  In a word: NO.  Would he have been good? Yes. But not a world changer.  He did what he did against very inferior competition across the landscape of the SEC and was notorious for scheduling cream puff OOC games and running those scores up.

There are 2 coincidences that can not be ignored.  The two "big name" coaches he sparred with in the SEC at the time (Fulmer and Stallings) beat him.  Bowden beat him.  It's also no coincidence that in his first 5 years in Columbia he'd won just 35 games. He's "turned the program around" according to the media... is it a coincidence that at the exact same time Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee were struggling to find their way? Put another way: If UF, UGA & UT were all 10-2 as usual, what would USC's record be? They went 9-5 when the three of those programs were all bad, they get strong again and USC's right back to 7 win seasons.  

The Spurrier myth is no miracle, it's actually solved fairly easily. 

Bernie said...

I thought your last word was "growing" and I thought, "Damn, brother I don't think I would have told that."

Bernie said...

you lost me?

Bernie said...

I think Corbindawg is referring to the title of the post. His eyes deceived him momentarily. : )

Bernie said...

No worries, our boys GOT this! :) 

Bernie said...

Spurrier has gotten better QB play in the UGA-SC games last 2 years than UGA has.
Then again, Murray plays bad against all highly ranked teams.

Bernie said...

All this talk about SC next year is wishful thinking by the 'Cocks unless Lattimore has a quick and miraculous recovery.  ACL recovery is not easy and quick, and even when they do return, they can and do look like a shadow of their former selves (see Kregg Lumpkin). 

Bernie said...

Thomas Brown tore his ACL against, Tennessee or Vandy in 2006 and came back and was strong in 2007 in the opener against Ok State.  It can happen. 

Bernie said...

So to match Richt's 11 year record, The Old Ball Sack would have to go 52-2...

Bernie said...

Jim that is quite the mis-informed comment my friend.  If you'll look here :http://www.cfbstats.com/2011/leader/national/player/split09/category02/sort02.html you'll see that Murray actually ranks quite high against FBS teams with winning records. In fact if you click the side bar to Non-winning records his numbers are slightly lower, assumably due to not playing the entire game.  You are just like the others who want to blame Murray when things went wrong throughout the year completely discounting the fact the at times the offensive line disappeared, the running game disappeared and the entire game was put on Murray to win... he was 10-2 in that scenario and set UGA records as a SO and broke several of Stafford and David Greenes records along the way.  His efficiency numbers are better than Greenes at this point, his TDs are higher and int are lower... yet Greene is the standard and Aaron is the whipping post...  it's beyond ridiculous and short sided. 

Bernie said...

oh hell lol...