Spurrier settles in at South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Right now, life is a blur for new South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier.

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His office is mostly bare except for a couple of dozen golf clubs, two family pictures, an award or two on the wall and a crisp, black visor - complete with Gamecock logo - ready to go.

He spends his days calling prospective assistants or trying to contact recruits who were not interested in the Gamecocks with Lou Holtz in charge but might be now with the high-flying Spurrier at the helm.

"They seem real excited," Spurrier said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "But we'll see."

Yet despite his new surroundings, Spurrier seems very much at ease. He thinks South Carolina has the building blocks to win in the Southeastern Conference.

Already, he has hired at least four assistants, including son Steve Spurrier Jr. He also has decided to help plan his team's meals to improve its nutrition.

"A lot of people think it's a wonderful opportunity, like I do," Spurrier said. "And then there's a few out there with the mind-set... like Lee Corso said you can't win at South Carolina. Just because we haven't in the past doesn't mean we can't."

Corso, a college football analyst for ESPN, said on air that Spurrier made a bad move to go to South Carolina. History is on Corso's side - no South Carolina coach has taken another head coaching job after leaving the Gamecocks.

It is unlikely that the 67-year-old Holtz will walk on the sideline again. The two most recent coaches before Holtz, Brad Scott (1994-98) and Sparky Woods (1989-93), have mostly been college assistants since South Carolina fired them.

The (Columbia) State ran an editorial cartoon Sunday where the school mascot led Spurrier past a graveyard with tombstones of past Gamecocks coaches, telling him, "Oh... pay no attention to that."

Spurrier won't.

When he got to Florida in 1990, the Gators featured star Emmitt Smith but were coming off underachieving seasons of 7-5, 7-5 and 6-6. Spurrier won nine games his first year and took off from there.

"We don't know what the future is (at South Carolina), but we've got hope," he said. "We've got hope that something good was going to happen."

Spurrier took the South Carolina job because the timing was perfect. He wanted to return to the Southeast. If Holtz, his good friend, hadn't retired, Spurrier might have sat out this year as well.

After his two failed seasons with the Washington Redskins, Spurrier didn't burn to get back on the sideline. He played golf, talked to coaching buddies and mostly followed the game from his home in northern Virginia, where his son, Scottie, is a high school senior.

Sometime in October, full-time golf got boring and Spurrier felt the old twangs of the college game calling. When South Carolina athletic director Mike McGee called to discuss Holtz's retirement about a month ago, the move made sense to Spurrier.

"I like having a golf season of spring and summer," said Spurrier, who's played at Augusta National with Holtz, a club member. "I'm golfed out. I have no interest in going and playing for a while."