Of Course Steve Spurrier Is Coming Back for 2015
What should have been an inevitability became a reality on Monday.
According to Josh Kendall of The State, South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier will return to the program following a 6-6 season and its first loss to Clemson since 2008.
"Give me two or three more [years]," he told Kendall. "I used to say four or five, now I'm down to two or three. I mean, I could get in a car wreck, but I'm definitely planning on being back."
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Of course he is. The return of the Head Ball Coach should never even have been in doubt, as Scott Hood of GamecockCountry.com notes:
This is South Carolina, not Alabama.
That's not a slight against the program Spurrier has built in Columbia; it's just the reality of the current state of the program.
When the best player in program history, the winningest quarterback in program history and the majority of the front four and secondary moves on, there are speed bumps. That's exactly where South Carolina found itself after star defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, quarterback Connor Shaw, defensive end Chaz Sutton and corner back Vic Hampton, among others, moved on after the 2013 season.
For a program like Alabama, those rebuilding years are still 10-win seasons, as was the case in 2010. For South Carolina, though, they result in seasons like this. Inconsistency, uncertainty and frustration are inevitable, and something from which the Head Ball Coach couldn't escape.
That's OK, though.
The program is still on stable footing. Spurrier told Kendall that the staff will largely remain intact.
"All our coaches are out recruiting. All of coaches are under contract," he said. "Some of them may get a job somewhere else, you never know, and we'll go from there. We are probably pretty flexible right now a little bit on the staff, but I believe that almost all of our guys will be back."
To put it more simply, coaches that are perceived to be part of the problem and not the solution (i.e.: defensive coordinator Lorenzo Ward) are likely being told, "Hey, you might want to look somewhere else."
As Hood mentioned in the tweet above, the future is very bright.
Running back Marcus Lattimore, who just retired from the NFL after attempting a comeback from knee injuries suffered at South Carolina, will be back on campus earning his degree this spring. Spurrier has already stated, according to Yahoo Sports' Nick Bromberg, that he would find Lattimore a job if he wants one.
The Gamecocks currently have the eighth-ranked recruiting class in the country, according to 247Sports.com. Five of those commitments are from defensive backs or defensive linemen—two glaring positions of weakness on this year's squad—who are rated with four or more stars.
Why walk away now?
He's made it known that he wants to build South Carolina into an SEC championship-caliber team, and in the SEC East, the door is about as open as it possibly could be. Florida is undergoing a coaching change, Georgia is breaking in a new quarterback, Tennessee is still building and Missouri has won the division twice with a grand total of one conference win over a team that finished with a .500 record (Georgia in 2013).
Even for a 6-6 program that didn't live up to expectations, an immediate turnaround isn't out of the question.
Spurrier will be back, but he really didn't need to say it publicly.
It was a "gimme."
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a co-host of the CFB Hangover on Bleacher Report Radio (Sundays, 9-11 a.m. ET) on Sirius 93, XM 208.
Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. All stats are courtesy of cfbstats.com, and all recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
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