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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS

July 24, 2009

Steve Spurrier

HOOVER, ALABAMA

THE MODERATOR: We are ready to continue with South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier. Coach, welcome.
COACH SPURRIER: Okay. Thanks. Nice to be here again. Figured out this is my 17th year at the SEC Media Days. I feel very fortunate to be here. Hope to be here again next year for the 18th. Look forward to this day to kick off SEC football.
As I've been asked several times, I need to address it right now, who did you vote for. In actuality, I didn't do much voting at all. I didn't fill the sheet out. But, anyway, my answer was some coach made a pretty serious mistake, either dumb or careless mistake, by not having Tim Tebow as his first selection.
When all this came up Wednesday, I guess, in the Thursday morning paper, I read, Some guy did not vote for Tim Tebow. Who was that? Our director of operation filled it out, brought it in to me one day. I looked at it quickly. I said, That's fine. I signed off on it.
I called him. I said, Certainly we had Tim Tebow. He said, Well, actually, coach, we had Jevan Snead. He said something about we already had 10 Gators, maybe get another guy. I said, That's bad. But it's my fault. I take full responsibility. I messed that up. I apologize(d) to Tim Tebow. We screwed it up pretty badly. I'm embarrassed about it. I feel bad about it. That's the way it happened.
I've called Charlie Bloom. I said, Can I change our selection from South Carolina and put Tim Tebow in?
He said, Yes.
I was able to put Tim Tebow in today, so it's unanimous.
I know some of you may think that's maybe not right, but we made a mistake there. I made a mistake. Tim Tebow is not only the best quarterback in this league, I think he's the best in the country. I think he's the best football player in the country. What he's done there, I believe he and Danny Wuerffel will go down in history as the two best quarterbacks, maybe the two best to ever play college football. That's how good he is.
I admire and respect him. I apologize to him. He should have been on that ballot. We messed up. I messed up. I'm trying to correct it best I can. But I messed it up. I take full blame for it. That's the way it happened. That's the way it happened. We'll try to move on. I still feel very badly about what happened there.
Okay. South Carolina football. We didn't finish very well last year. We lost our last three games. Actually got clobbered pretty good last three games. We weren't as competitive as we were early in the year. It was time to do some things differently. A few coaches left on their own. A few were asked to leave. We have five new assistant coaches and a new strength conditioning coach.
What was the most encouraging part of all this is that after the Bowl game, we did not lose any committed players. They all came. They all stuck with us. We actually picked up a few more. So it was a sign, the high school players, some of the top athletes, still believe that South Carolina can win, and win big.
We've averaged seven wins a year, 28 in four years. Certainly we hope to get up to the 9, 10 wins a year level. We're not there yet. We actually only have seven seniors on the team this year. We've got two fifth-year players coming back. I don't know that they will be starters. But that's just sort of where we are.
I've not done as good a job as I hoped to have done. I would have hoped we had a whole lot of fourth- and fifth-year guys ready to play. Hasn't worked out that way.
Again, have some new coaches. We believe our leadership, amongst our seniors, Eric Norwood, Moe Brown, who are here today, has been very good through the summer. Our quarterback, Stephen Garcia, has gone through his first spring practice. Now he's going through his first summer of workouts with the team. If we're to have a big year, he's got to really, really play well. He's got to play a lot better than what happened last year. He really was not prepared to play well last year. Hopefully he's much better, ready to play.
But other than that, we're looking forward to another year. We open up with NC State, national TV, Thursday night again. Appreciate ESPN, Dave Brown, his guys putting us on those Thursday nights. Hopefully we will play with more discipline and play with more effort and more passion than we have in the past. Looking forward to seeing what happens this coming season.
THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Do you think the ballot miscommunication might be a symptom of something that is a problem in college football with coaches not filling out top 25s or all-league ballots themselves, having somebody else do it?
COACH SPURRIER: Well, I guess I've been doing the pre-season ballots for 17 years. I've never filled one out. But I usually look at it. I did glance at the one this year, but I didn't glance very thoroughly. So it was my fault. It was my fault all the way on it.
Yeah, personally we vote. I don't know why we vote. I guess we vote 'cause college football is still without a playoff system. I really believe most coaches do not know a whole lot about other teams, but we do vote. That's what they ask us to do.
I think we all try to do the best we can. But, hey, I don't know the answer.

Q. How is the offensive play calling going to work this year? Are you going to take a more active role or is it going to be a group effort?
COACH SPURRIER: We haven't discussed that finally yet. We've got some coaches that have called some plays there, and I've called a few I guess in my career. But I will still have the title of head coach, and I guess offensive coordinator. I'll be in charge of it.
But we'll have a way of getting them in there. Eric Wolford, our line coach, you called a bunch of them during the scrimmage one day. He's got some runs. So he's going to chip in with, Let's run this, let's run that. Our receiver coach will chip in some here and there.
But who's the main guy in charge, we haven't really formalized that yet.

Q. Is it a bit different going to coaches meetings, SEC Media Days, Tuberville is not here, Fulmer is not here, new faces? Is that kind of weird for you?
COACH SPURRIER: Well, I saw Gene Chizik here. I know him a little bit (smiling).
Change is inevitable in coaching. We all know that. Probably didn't think it would happen last year. I remember, I think my first year at the SEC meeting in Destin, I was sitting next to Pat Dye. He says, Boys, look around, 'cause a lot of y'all ain't gonna be here next year, or some y'all ain't gonna be here next year.
But, anyway, it happens. Again, I feel very fortunate to be coming into my 17th one. Just hope to make it next year. But if it doesn't go pretty well, change is part of the coaching profession. We all understand that. We understand it happens.

Q. Obviously you're a University of Florida sports legend. Are you concerned how Gator fans are going to react?
COACH SPURRIER: I'm embarrassed about what happened. I really am. I'm embarrassed. It shouldn't have happened. I apologized to Tim and all Gators that it happened. That's exactly how it happened. I have no reason to not say anything or to slight Tim Tebow or the Gators.
It's given me an opportunity to voice my opinion of Tim and Danny Wuerffel. Those are two of the best character young men, most sincere Christian young men I've ever known. It was something that just happened. I feel badly about it. In fact, I didn't sleep worth a dang last night thinking about it. But it's history. I'm trying to correct it the best I can.
After I knew it happened, I got in touch with Charlie. I said, You make sure that I voted for Tim Tebow. So he changed it. He put South Carolina's new quarterback is Tim Tebow and not Jevan Snead. Snead is a good player, too, but Tim Tebow should have been in there.

Q. Could you assess your first four years there, where do you think your program is going into the fifth-year? Is it where you thought it would be?
COACH SPURRIER: Well, we thought we'd do a little bit better, but it hasn't worked out. We're starting a new four-year stint with a lot of new coaches and hopefully a lot better attitude on our team.
Again, you know, we only have seven seniors on the team this year, so obviously four, five years ago we thought our recruiting was pretty good, maybe just hadn't worked out, what have you. But we've averaged seven wins. Again, 28 wins is the most over a four-year period. There was one other four-year period in South Carolina history they had 28 wins.
Of course, we play more games now. We've been just a little above average. Ask me how you're doing. A little above average, that's all.
But we hope to do better. Again, our facility improvement has been tremendous in the last four years. Eric Hyman, our AD, our boosters, Doe Anderson, contributed, Dr. Charles Cruz, the contributions from the people who can give has been tremendous. We're making progress.
We're getting national recruit-type players that maybe we used to not get. Stephon Gilmore was Player of the Year in the state of Alabama -- in the state of South Carolina. He could have gone to Alabama, he could have gone to a lot of places. He chose to stay in state there at South Carolina. We believe we're heading in the right direction now.

Q. Talk about the improvement that you saw over the spring in the running game?
COACH SPURRIER: It was a little bit better. Certainly it had nowhere to go but up. We finished bottom of the league in rushing this past year. We were bottom of the league in sacks, bottom of the league in turnovers. Somebody said, How did you win seven games? I said, Our defense played very well, and some games our offense played very well. We had two or three very good offensive games at Ole Miss, at Kentucky, and maybe the Arkansas game was a good one for us.
But we need to run the ball much better. We all know that. We did a little bit better this spring running. So we'll see if we can do it during the season.

Q. With what you've said so far about the ballot situation, how will you handle that in the future? Will you continue to do the same thing, maybe proofread it longer?
COACH SPURRIER: Well, I just need to thoroughly look at the ballots before we send 'em in. I did not do that this last time. But when we do the top 25, yeah, I look at 'em. I do 'em. And I change 'em around all the time, this, that, and the other. I do a better job with those than I did with this pre-season thing. Let's just put it that way. I can tell you, two guys that were on there, AJ Green and Carlos Dunlap. Those were the only two names I saw. I said, That's fine. Anyway, I did a poor job of looking at it.

Q. To talk about your own quarterback situation rather than this situation, even coming out of the spring, you said that Stephen Garcia had more to do for you to feel a hundred percent comfortable. Are you at that point yet? You mentioned Stephon Gilmore. Could you see him in that role, at least as a wildcat situation?
COACH SPURRIER: Stephon Gilmore was the Player of the Year in the state of South Carolina. Played quarterback. His team went undefeated, won a state championship. He is a wonderful athlete, player. He feels like his long range college and NFL is as a defensive corner. But certainly he can come in there and run that shotgun spread offense stuff that a lot of the schools are doing now.
We worked him a little bit this spring. We'll continue trying to get the ball in his hands some. He is really something with the ball in his hands. We got to utilize him also on offense a little bit here and there.

Q. As somebody who has coached in the NFL, I want your opinion on what you think Tim Tebow's pro career will be like.
COACH SPURRIER: I think Tim will be an excellent pro quarterback if the pro team says, Here's what we're gonna run, we're gonna run what you've been doing. I'm still sort of waiting to see a team go a lot to that. They haven't done it yet. I thought maybe the Tennessee Titans might do it when they got Vince Young. You know, maybe that's not what's best for NFL. I don't know.
But if they spread out and give him an opportunity to run and throw, hey, nobody does it better than Tim Tebow, running and throwing, at quarterback.

Q. Does he have the kind of talent to merit a top 10 pick?
COACH SPURRIER: Well, you'd have to ask NFL people that. But certainly as coaches, every one of us would want him on our team. You know, talking about Stephen Garcia here a minute ago, I think this spring or later I said, Stephen, one day I hope you can say what Tim Tebow said about no quarterback will prepare better or harder than me to play, and no quarterback will try to get his team prepared to play harder than I will.
Of course, they won every game after he said that statement, after they lost to Ole Miss. That's a commitment level that he has that is unmatched by any other player probably in the nation. We're trying to get our quarterback Stephen Garcia way up there in those two areas right there.

Q. When it comes to recruiting, have you taken at all to the proliferation of the new social media things like Facebook and Twitter?
COACH SPURRIER: Our assistant coaches do a little bit of that. I've not messed with it that match. I tell you what, I got a strong group of assistant coaches. They can recruit without me just about. I got an offensive line coach now that's got about seven commitments already. I was involved a little bit. But, you know, he basically got 'em. He sold himself and South Carolina.
It's good to have coaches like that on your staff.

Q. How concerned are you about the depth in the secondary? Do you think you have enough bodies to get through an entire season?
COACH SPURRIER: Yeah, we're a little light in the secondary. That's probably one reason Stephon Gilmore is over there as a starter. High school kid. He was with the starting group during spring ball. So we did lose some players there. We had a few come out early, a few guys thought they were going to be drafted a lot earlier than they were. But we're trying to sign some defensive back, corner-type players, especially this year.

Q. Not to beat this like a dead horse, but why don't you fill out your ballot? Could you speak again to the importance of the coaches poll, them releasing their final ballots, since they're going to stop doing it in 2010?
COACH SPURRIER: You talking about the top 25 rankings and so forth?

Q. The pre-season.
COACH SPURRIER: Oh, the pre-season. I haven't done that in 17 years. I usually look it over and I sign off on it. I did a poor job of looking it over this year.

Q. Talk about the coaches poll.
COACH SPURRIER: I look that over a lot more thoroughly.

Q. You said a bunch of times that needs to be out there, published.
COACH SPURRIER: Yeah, that's fine. Pretty much whatever you do, whatever it is, you know, put your name on it.

Q. I know you're proud of your football team this year. You're very optimistic about the season. I apologize from deflecting from that. Can you go over one more time in terms of your conversation with, first of all, when you realized it, when you talked to Charles Bloom, how you were able to discern?
COACH SPURRIER: I've already said that. I'll talk to you later about it. They don't need to hear this. I'll talk to you afterwards about that.

Q. When you're looking at the success that quarterbacks have in the SEC, how important is it experience as a part of that success?
COACH SPURRIER: Certainly experience helps. The ability to think clearly and make quick decisions helps. Training, experience, practice, practice, practice. All those things are very helpful. Certainly you have to have ability to start with.
So one good thing about our situation, we don't have four guys fighting it out for quarterback. So Stephen is gonna get about all the snaps. Hopefully he can stay healthy. I don't know who the second guy will be right now. Reid McCollum is probably the guy right now who is a good, tall quarterback, can throw the ball. Just hasn't played much. Doesn't know a lot.
Aramis Hillary is there. He struggled a bit playing the ball this spring. But Stephen will get most of the snaps. We certainly hope he can stay healthy.

Q. Gene Chizik was in here talking about how he hasn't really tried to stir the pot, make outlandish public statements as a newcomer. A bit of a contrast. As somebody who has always spoken their mind, do you think some of guys that come in here should win a few games before they start saying this and that?
COACH SPURRIER: Well, yeah, I'm often asked: Do you wish you hadn't said this years ago, done this? I say, yeah, probably looking back, that was a little arrogant. I probably said too many things.
But in life when you're winning a lot, you're winning sort of big, you naturally do that. I'm not the only coach that has done that. And then when you're 7-6, like I am now, you don't have much to say. That's just the way it is. I'm a 7-and-sort-of-6 coach right now. I don't have all the answers and don't pretend to.
But, yeah, I think we all try to let our teams -- it's best to let your teams do the talking for you as a coach. That's the best way to do it, certainly.

Q. Can you talk about the tight end position, Weslye Saunders.
COACH SPURRIER: Weslye, we hope, is getting ready to play very well at tight end. He'll be our starters. Also Cliff Matthews will play some there. We're going to double train Cliff, start at defensive end, to play some tight end. A lot of people think Cliff Matthews' ultimate position in the NFL may be tight end. He's a tough kid, can run all day. He's about 260. That's probably about as heavy as he can get.
Cliff Matthews and Weslye gives us two pretty good tight ends right there.

Q. Does Florida's success they've had under Urban Meyer bother you at all personally?
COACH SPURRIER: No, it doesn't. I pull for Florida when they're not playing us. If we don't win the SEC, I hope Florida does it. Urban has been the best coach in the country the last three years. Simple as that. We all know that. I admire everything that they do. They do it the right way. Their players play clean. They do it the right way. I give 'em credit for everything that they've accomplished. I admire what they've done.

Q. For all that Lane Kiffin has said since being hired at Tennessee, do you think his actions have suggested that he can get them turned around?
COACH SPURRIER: You know, I'm trying to refrain from talking about other schools that much. Maybe you need to ask somebody else that question.

Q. The way teams are spreading the field these days, has that at all influenced the way you're calling plays, the way your own offensive philosophy is? You've always been a guy that ran two- or three-wides, but you usually just run center.
COACH SPURRIER: Yeah, we've changed quite a bit. We're probably at least 50% in the shotgun now. We still think there's a place for running straight at people and play-action passes. The draw play has been our best running play - still is probably. So we try to do both.
We try to get in the shotgun and run some spread offense, as well as underneath.

Q. How tough is it to move up in the SEC East, given Florida, Georgia, Tennessee? Given South Carolina's history of lack of championships, are you confident you can win a championship, an SEC championship?
COACH SPURRIER: I think Steve Fink, our sports information guy, said we're picked fourth in the Eastern Division for the seventh year in a row. That's where we are, we're fourth until we prove we can do better.
Again, we haven't turned it around big-time yet. We're trying to get there. So we're encouraged by a lot of things that have happened since the Bowl game. Since the Bowl game, a lot of encouraging events have happened. We're looking forward to see how it plays out this season.

Q. You were actually picked third in the East.
COACH SPURRIER: We were? Somebody told me fourth. Where is Steve Fink (smiling)? Oh, prior to this year. My bad.
Seven years prior to this year we were picked fourth. Now we're third. Okay, thanks for correcting me. I didn't know that.

Q. Adding Lorenzo Ward to your staff, how did that come about? How are you going to break up the responsibilities? What is he going to do?
COACH SPURRIER: Ask that first part again.

Q. Can you just talk about adding Lorenzo Ward to your staff, how that came about. How are you going to dole out responsibilities?
COACH SPURRIER: Adding who?

Q. Lorenzo Ward?
COACH SPURRIER: Oh, Coach Ward, yeah. Lorenzo. Yeah, Lorenzo Ward, he's got the title of defensive coordinator. He's going to help Ellis Johnson do that. Ellis is assistant head coach. Coach Whammy, Lorenzo, he's known by Whammy Ward. But he's a solid coach. You know, he played at Alabama, coached at Virginia Tech a lot, several years. Went to the NFL for a little bit. Then he was available. We sort of stole him from Arkansas a year ago, last year.
But he's a good guy. Loves to play golf. We've had a bunch of golf games together. I've actually got about four or five coaches on the staff that love to play golf. I don't know what that means. He's a pretty good stick. But he's a real good coach.
He's got a good Alabama background for coaching defense. And Virginia Tech background coaching defense. Those boys have been very good up there, as we know.

Q. How tough is the SEC West going to be this year?
COACH SPURRIER: I see both sides pretty close really, when you think of LSU, Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi now. Mississippi proved that they're ready to contend over there in the West. So, yeah, a lot of good teams. A lot of good teams.
Yeah, I mean, we'll have to play it all out. But they could be overall stronger than the East. Who knows. We'll play it out. I think both of 'em are pretty close.
And Arkansas will be much better this year, too. Bobby Petrino is a heck of a coach. They'll be much improved.

Q. You just mentioned Urban won two national titles the last three years. You had your run in the '90s. Florida State and Miami had their runs. Is it just the recruiting base by Florida is such a great college football state or is it something else?
COACH SPURRIER: That's part of it. But, obviously, Florida hasn't always won there, won big there. All you got to do is check Urban Meyer's background. He's won everywhere he's been. Now he's probably got a little bit better players than at the other schools. The guy went 12-0 at Utah. They won at Bowling Green. He's proven to be one of the best coaches in the country. He's probably the top guy in the country right now.
And obviously the facilities, players in the state. But they go out of state, also. I think they went to Virginia to get Percy. So they're recruiting more nationally probably than what we used to do down there.
THE MODERATOR: Coach. Thank you.
COACH SPURRIER: All right. Thanks.

End of FastScripts

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