Spurrier gives Carolina credibility

Contrary to widely circulated reports, Steve Spurrier is neither a god nor the devil. He is simply the best dadgum ball coach the South Carolina Gamecocks have ever had.

Bar none.

Is 10 games too soon to be making such a strong assessment? Not at all. Let's take it even one step further: If Spurrier nets one more victory Saturday against Clemson, he deserves to be recognized as the best coach in the nation.

No, I am not a kool-aid drinking member of Gamecock Nation. I am a card-carrying member of the large club of sports journalists who have poked fun at South Carolina football for so long it's become habit.

In one relatively modest incomplete season, Spurrier is demolishing that cornerstone of our livelihood. In 10 games, he has already exceeded the wildest expectations for this team. Considering that Columbia, is the capital of wild expectations and Williams-Brice the statehouse, that's really saying something.

Spurrier has done more to enhance the reputation of South Carolina football in 12 months than any of the program's previous 31 head coaches in 104 years - and that includes Lou Holtz, Paul Dietzel and Joe Morrison.

The reasoning is simple. Spurrier is systematically erasing all of the negatives that have come to define South Carolina football for more than a century. These negatives have been the well-spring from which generations of sports writers, Clemson fans and anyone outside the Palmetto State have dipped into in order to make fun of the "Chickens."

He's already wiped clean classic negatives such as never defeating Florida since Gone With the Wind was released (1939). Or winning at Tennessee since first trying in the year the radio tuner dial was invented and Coca-Cola was first marketed (1916).

These and other fun facts of futility have made mocking South Carolina football the easiest thing this side of the Los Angeles Clippers.

Spurrier is changing all of that. The ball coach might not be able to rewrite the history of the past 104 years, but he is drafting brand new chapters of respectability.

Let the record show that we are fully aware that the Gamecocks went 5-3 in the Southeastern Conference East Division in both 2000 and 2001, and that the latter campaign finished with nine wins, including an actual honest-to-goodness victory over Clemson.

But Spurrier has taken the Gamecocks another step. He has made them relevant - a word that has never been uttered in such close proximity to South Carolina football. For heaven's sake, there is still a slightly better than infinitessimal chance that the Gamecocks might even win the SEC East this year!

Just imagine what the future holds when Spurrier installs his own talent into his system.

Spurrier is already so deep inside the heads of Georgia fans and Tennessee coach Phil Fulmer that his mere presence tilts the playing field closer to level. And his name is practically tattooed on the shoulder and psyche of every Gator that came to worship him, right up until Saturday afternoon.

And Spurrier did this with a group of players (minus some talented numbskulls) that Holtz never would have been able to mold into bowl eligibility, much less Volunteer- and Gator-beaters. They can't run (last in the SEC) and can't stop the run (next to last), yet they still keep finding a way to win - something that has never been South Carolina's M.O.

Not even Spurrier can explain how his team is 7-3 with losses coming to BCS-caliber teams Georgia, Alabama and Auburn. He calls the current five-win run a "streak of good fortune."

"I hope I'm smart enough to know that it's not any brilliant coaching that we're doing," Spurrier said. "It's just worked out at the right time."

We'll find out Saturday just how brilliant the Evil Genius is. Clemson is Spurrier's most important and difficult test - and one that, in all honesty, the Gamecocks should fail.

Clemson might not be carrying a useless top 25 ranking with it, and Tommy Bowden can pretend to be Holtz all he wants and claim the Gamecocks will "have every boxed checked" in their favor, but there is no doubt the Tigers are the legitimate favorites.

Clemson has better talent, better depth, better strength in the places South Carolina is weak and better confidence in this in-state rivalry. The Tigers have won eight of the past nine meetings and own an overwhelming 62-36-4 series advantage.

Even the bookies aren't buying the Bowden rhetoric, installing the No. 19 Gamecocks as underdogs in their own house to a team that lost to Wake Forest.

This is the biggest negative Spurrier needs to change by being the better coach. How can you turn South Carolina into a legitimate SEC contender if you remain second class in your own state?

The ball coach knows the power behind streaks. He buried opponents under mountains of negativity while he was building Florida into a national power.

In one season at South Carolina, he's started turning tables and changing the frame of reference.

Beat Clemson, and the 2005 campaign can be labeled a monumentally successful tactical assault on South Carolina's largest historical failures.

Then we the media will have to start picking on somebody else.

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.