1. The NCAA chose not to add on to South Carolina’s self-imposed penalties.

2. Once highly-touted quarterback Phillip Sims has decided to transfer from Alabama.

3. Another Alabama defender, this time Courtney Upshaw, went quickly in the NFL draft on Friday.

4. Recruits were paying attention to Alabama’s success in the draft on Thursday night.

5. Here’s a look at the SEC defenders selected in the NFL’s first round.

6. Tony Barnhart of CBSSports.com believes Nick Saban’s team is helping provide hope to Tuscaloosa.

7. One writer believes former Gator Janoris Jenkins – taken by St. Louis - will be the next Pacman Jones.

8. Outside of Jankins, Florida saw its draft drought continue into the second day of the draft.

9. Here’s a preview for Texas A&M’s upcoming spring game at Kyle Field.

10. We’ll get a new look at Texas A&M’s defense on Saturday.

11. Mark Wiedmer of the Chattanooga News-Free Press shows us a nice side of Tennessee coach Derek Dooley.

12. Bill Belichick believes former Arkansas defensive end Jake Bequette will be productive in New England.

13. Arkansas hasn’t had any receivers selected in the draft. That will change today.

14. Matt Hayes of Sporting News believes it’s time for college football to finally land a commissioner.

15. The LSU Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved an expansion of LSU’s Tiger Stadium.

16. SEC coaches can use the NFL draft as a three-day recruiting tool.

17. Former Georgia offensive lineman Cordy Glenn will help where needed in Buffalo.

Extra:

18. Here’s a look at the conference champion only idea for the future BCS.

19. Here’s another preview of Missouri’s offense as it enters the SEC.

20. Vanderbilt coach James Franklin will surely use Casey Heyward’s drafting in recruiting.

Steve Spurrier is a helluva football coach.  He can be funny and entertaining to boot.

But he can also be a whiner.  And that’s exactly what he’s being when — like so many other South Carolina fans these days — he starts talking about changing the way the SEC handles its scheduling.

Yesterday, Andy Staples of SI.com quoted Spurrier regarding an idea the coach says he’ll present at this year’s SEC Meetings in Destin.  That idea is for only divisional games to count toward division championships.  Laughably, he tried to make his pitch without mentioning how his own school would have reached the title game under said plan last year.  Instead he tried to act as a benefactor for poor ol’ Florida and Tennessee:

“Your division champ should be decided on division games.  Last year, it wasn’t fair for Tennessee and Florida.  They both played LSU and Alabama.  Us and Georgia didn’t.  So, us or Georgia almost had to win the division simply because of schedule.”

Uh-huh.

Let’s look around the country and see who else might use Spurrier’s plan?  The NFL?  Nope, games outside the division and even conference still count.  Ditto the NBA.  Baseball?  Yep, they count non-division games, too.  So does the NHL.  Throw in the other college conferences, too.

Schedules are never fair.  That’s the first rule that every sports fan must accept (not to mention coaches).  Over time you hope things all come out in the wash, so to speak.  That they even out.

But in a given year, one team might have an easier home schedule than another.  One might play a tougher road schedule.  One might have tougher teams from the other division on their docket.  One might just enjoy the cupcakes from the league’s other side.  One team might face Squad X with their Heisman candidate in good health.  Another might face the same team after its star player has been injured or dismissed from the team.

Them’s the breaks.

What’s so disappointing is not just the self-serving nature of Spurrier’s take.  Coaches and fans will always find a way to explain away losses.  If it ain’t the schedule, it’s the refs.  Or the sun got in their eyes.  Heck, in January one USC trustee suggested the SEC actually start awarding points for victories — one point for a division-win, half-a-point for a non-division-win.  “Let’s come up with anything that would have gotten Carolina past Georgia into last year’s SEC title game!”

No, what’s so disappointing is the shortsightedness of this proposal.  Let’s say Spurrier’s plan were put into place.  Now let’s say that in the year 2015, for example, Carolina went 4-2 inside its division but 2-0 outside it (against the best two teams in the West, no less).  Now let’s say that Georgia went 5-1 in division play — including a loss to Carolina — but finished 0-2 against the West.

Carolina would be 6-2 overall and would have beaten Georgia head-to-head.  Georgia would be 5-3 overall and would have lost to Carolina.

Ah, but Georgia would be East Division champs based on its 5-1 division record as compared to South Carolina’s 4-2 division mark.

You know what would happen then, right?  Spurrier and the USC board of the trustees and everyone else from Beaufort to Ninety Six would be screaming that the team with the better overall record should go to the SEC Championship Game.

As Staples correctly points out, if Carolina had just beaten an 8-5 Auburn squad on its own home turf last fall the Cocks would have reached Atlanta as East champs.  But they didn’t… so they didn’t.

Spurrier joked that his proposal “probably won’t pass because I made it.”

No, it won’t pass because it’s a bad idea, a shortsighted idea, and an idea that no other major sports league uses.

That’s why it won’t pass.

Spurrier needs to stick to football and leave the scheduling to the league office and the whining to babies.  He’s turned Carolina into a winner not by making excuses and rigging schedules but via hard work and smarts.  He needs to stick to that plan.

South Carolina’s Frank Martin is asking for it. 

The new Gamecock basketball coach has granted a release to 6-9 sophomore Damontre Harris who wishes to transfer.  So far, so good.  But he’s not going to let him transfer to NC State.  And he’s going to take some heat for that stance.

Just ask Derek Dooley at Tennessee who tried to ban DeAnthony Arnett from transferring to Michigan or Michigan State.  Or ask Maryland coach Randy Edsall who tried to ban a number of transfers from jumping to Vanderbilt.  They learned that the court of public opinion usually comes down on the side of the teenager, not the millionaire coach and his multi-million dollar sports program.

In this case — as was also the case with Dooley and Edsall who both eventually buckled — it’s believed some tampering has occurred.  You see, ex-South Carolina assistant Orlando Early is now at NCSU.  Harris’ high school coach, Heath Vandevender, says he thinks that’s the issue:


“Frank told Tre that (Carolina AD) Eric Hyman would not release him to NC State… My opinion would be that Eric feels that Orlando tampered in some way with Tre.

That’s just simply not true.  If that’s his reasoning, then that’s not very good. … I just think the whole thing is ridiculous.”


We agree.  In this case, Harris has seen the coach he signed to play for — Darrin Horn — fired.  He’s seen fellow starter Anthony Gill be granted an unrestricted release to transfer.  And he’s now learned that fellow starter Bruce Ellington will once again play football and miss the start of USC’s hoops season.

There are a lot of things going on there and none are within Harris’ control.

“I know they struggled last year, but there’s a chance for them to struggle even more (next season),” said Vandevender, trying to explain why Harris wants out.

If Harris wanted to transfer inside the SEC, that would be one issue.  But NC State is in the ACC.  And surprisingly USC has apparently put no restrictions on other SEC institutions.  (Harris’ high school coach said Florida and Georgia have contacted him about his ex-player’s services already.) 

So it’s better to face Harris inside the conference than allow him to go outside it? 

Martin’s position is understandable.  He — and Hyman — don’t want other school’s coaches poaching their Gamecock players.

But coaches rarely win these types of PR battles.  When the smoke clears, it’s still a millionaire coach at a mega-institution blocking the options and impacting the future of a kid.

Martin and Hyman had better be prepared to have this used against them on the recruiting trail… unless they cave like so many other coaches and schools have before them.

Better to cave now and get it over with.


Sidenote – The Tulsa World reports today that Jordan Clarkson — the Golden Hurricane’s leading scorer last season — has been “granted permission to contact a limited number of schools.”  Of eight schools requested by the player as possible transfer destinations only Colorado, TCU and Vanderbilt have been given new coach Danny Manning’s seal of approval.

Steve Spurrier is an ass.

Whether he’s a laugh-riot smart ass or a loose-lipped jackass depends, of course, on whether or not he’s coaching your favorite team.  The same South Carolina fans who love him now — and will rage against this site “for hatin’ him” — once despised his same barbs n’ bully routine when he was at Florida.

One thing about Carolina’s coach is that his level of assdom directly corellates with his team’s win total.  At the 2010 SEC Media Days, for example, Spurrier was lower than the proverbial snake’s belly.  The Cocks were coming off a 7-6 campaign and had lost 20-7 to UConn in a miserable Papajohns.com Bowl performance.  With the SEC media on hand, the coach failed to crack wise.  He had no insults for rival schools or coaches.  Frankly he seemed down, like a man on the verge of tossing in the towel if his team didn’t perform in 2010.

Ah, but his team did perform in 2010.  The Gamecocks whipped Georgia, Florida and Tennessee in the same season for the first time.  They won their first-ever SEC division title.  By Media Days 2011 Spurrier was feeling good enough to poke a little fun.  Asked about Mike Slive’s idea — which has now become a reality — that schools award multi-year scholarships to players, Spurrier was the only coach willing to shoot down the proposal with both guns blazing.  “No, that’s a terrible idea, Commissioner,” he said to big laughs.

The coach himself has even admitted during his mediocre and quiet years in Columbia — while he was building up his program — that he didn’t have much to talk about with his team losing.  In other words, once USC got good enough, then he’d feel like taking shots at others again.

In many ways Spurrier — who we don’t hate, by the way, and who we’ve said has done an A-1 job at Carolina — is still like a teenager.  He gets mad and pouty when he loses.  He gets brash and braggadocious when he wins.

And he’s winning again.

In an interview with ESPN.com’s Chris Low posted yesterday afternoon, the Ol’ Ball Coach let fly with some gibes:

* On not playing Georgia early in the season this year:  “I don’t know.  I sort of always like playing them that second game because you could always count on them having two or three key players suspended.”

(Mark Richt, being the class act he is, simply responded: “How ’bout that; I think that that’s funny.  That sounds like Steve.”  Richt could have easily said, “That’s because we don’t give guys five and six chances that way he did with Stephen Garcia.”)

* On Nick Saban and his success at Alabama:  “He’s got a nice little gig going, a little bit like (John) Calipari.  He tells guys, ‘Hey, three years from now, you’re going to be a first-round pick and go.’  If he wants to be the greatest coach or one of the greatest coaches in college football, to me, he has to go somewhere besides Alabama and win, because they’ve always won there at Alabama.”

(Spurrier did go one to say that he believes Saban is the best coach in conference.  “You are whatever your record is,” he said.)

Funny little tweaks to be taken with a grain of salt?  Then you must be a Gamecock fan who’s in love with your coach now that’s he’s delivering wins.

Smart aleck remarks that make you hope Spurrier takes it on the chin this fall?  Then you must be a fan of one of the other 13 SEC institutions.

As for this writer, I enjoy Spurrier on the rise.  When he’s losing it’s sad to watch.  But when he’s winning big — for two years in a row — he gets a little too mean-spirited.  Somewhere in between is just about right.  Like Media Days 2011.

Judging from his comments to ESPN this week, some of Spurrier’s Media Days 2012 quotes could be downright nasty.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Steve Spurrier just complained about his team’s offense, especially its passing game.  Spring or fall, the Ol’ Ball Coach never lets up on his throwers and catchers.  Connor Shaw, welcome to Stephen Garcia’s world. 

Following practice yesterday in Columbia, Spurrier spilled his disgruntled guts:


“We had a sorry practice for the offensive guys.  They looked pretty pitiful, pretty sad, couldn’t block anybody.  As (linebacker) Damario Jeffery said, the defense whooped up.  They whooped offensive butt out here in shorts today.  Hopefully, we can get a little bit better on offense, but it was sad watching our guys try to play today.  Maybe we’re practicing too many quarterbacks.  They all looked pretty average.  But anyway, it was sort of sad watching (the) offense attempt to play today…

I’m thinking about closing practices so you people don’t have to watch us try to throw and catch.  I think we hit one out of 20 (in the passing skeleton drill with no pass rush).  It was ugly.  It was ugly.  But anyway, I guess that’s why you practice.  We’ve got to start throwing and catching better and see if we can look like a better passing team.  I see why coaches lose practice now.  They don’t want people to see how bad they are, I guess.  But we were lousy throwing today and hopefully we’ll get a little bit better as we go.”


When quarterback Stephen Garcia was dismissed and tailback Marcus Lattimore was shelved by injury mid-2011, the Gamecocks had to refinagle their offense to better utilize Shaw’s spread-option talents.  Over the final eight games of the season including a Capital One Bowl win over Nebraska, Shaw was able to rush for 485 yards and 8 touchdowns. 

However, Spurrier pulled back the reins on Shaw the passer allowing him to attempt just 18, 25, 12, 18, 20 and 17 passes over the Cocks’ final six games… very Spurrier-like numbers.  Call it the un-Fun-n’-Gun, but it worked as USC went 5-1 over that stretch (losing only the game in which Shaw put up 25 passes).

Carolina and Shaw will need to be better in the pass game in 2012 if they’re to contend for the SEC title.

Frank Martin to South Carolina.

Admit it.  You still can’t get used to South Carolina having a “name” basketball coach.  No up-and-comer.  No one on the downside of his career.  Nope.  A hot property who starred on CBS’ NCAA Tournament coverage just a week ago (where co-analyst Charles Barkley told him to take the Gamecock job).

Whether this one works out or doesn’t — and most Carolina basketball hires haven’t — you have to give AD Eric Hyman and the USC administration credit.  Gamecock fans should know — with the hires of Steve Spurrier and Dawn Staley and now Martin — that their school’s leaders want to have an upper-echelon SEC program and they’re willing to spend to get it.  Sure, that means fans will be paying more for tickets and parking and the like, but the effort of folks from president Harris Pastides on down should be appreciated. 

You can bet not all SEC fans feel their school is doing everything possible to bring in top-notch coaches and build first-class facilities.

As for Martin, his contract is a 6-year pact — the deals for new coaches are getting longer and longer these days — worth $1.9 million the first year, $2.0 million the second, and $2.1 million annually from the third year forward.

Describing himself as “the most positive human being that you’ll ever come across,” Martin met the media yesterday for the first time during his introductory presser.  He won that dog and pony show easily with comments like this:


“I don’t promise things.  The only think I promise is that our guys will be held accountable every day.  Our guys will be known as the hardest-working team in America.  There is no out on that on…

If you told me right now that I have to run a marathon and you told me where the finish line is at, it’s going to be hard for me to finish.  But if you show me where the next step is at, I’m willing to take that step.  This is not something that’s going to happen because I’m standing in front of you today, but it’s a process that’s going to happen.”


Part of that process could be made easier with the addition of Missouri and Texas A&M to the SEC.  Those programs are quality.  And the league will increase its in-conference slate of games from 16 to 18 per season.  But depending on the scheduling format chosen by the league’s athletic directors and approved by the SEC’s presidents this spring, Carolina might — emphasis might — avoid having to face Kentucky, Florida and Vanderbilt twice each season as is currently the case.  That would be a plus for USC.

One possible minus, however, is the loss of Bruce Ellington… at least for a while.  After announcing he would play basketball only prior to Darrin Horn’s ouster, the two-sport star began to have second thoughts about hanging up his football cleats.  Last night, Spurrier said the point guard will indeed play football in the fall. 

“He thought it over and thought he made a little too quick (of a) decision,” Spurrier told The Charleston Post & Courier.  “He was quick out here (at practice on Tuesday).  He was one of the fastest guys on the field today.” 

While Spurrier gains a return man and receiver, Martin loses a veteran point guard who can score for the early part of his first season.  That’s just the first hurdle of many that the new hoops coach will have to clear to build Carolina’s program.

But if Day One was any indication, he’s already off to a good start.

South Carolina AD Eric Hyman started today’s presser by saying that his school is determined to have a top-flight basketball program.  He compared his hoops goals to those that were once set for the football program… goals that Steve Spurrier has met.

And then he confirmed what everyone already knew — Frank Martin is leaving Kansas State for Carolina.

Hyman said a major plus for Martin during the search was his ability to recruit nationally, something that will be necessary in the Palmetto State.  He also said that he talked to everyone from players to coaches to the NCAA to shoe company reps during his search process.

Yes, it took a nasty breakup for Martin to split from KSU, but Hyman — on paper — has hit a home run with this hire.  He managed to bring in a coach with a successful track record from a big-time basketball state. 

Martin — during his portion of the presser — credited former USC coach and friend Eddie Fogler for helping his career.  He also thanked numerous players and coaches who helped him get to this point in his career.

He also addressed the comments he made on CBS this weekend in which he said he sent money to former players at different schools.  “I’ve never paid a player in my life.”  That’s a little different than the quotes we showed you yesterday, but, hey, it’s an opening presser.  Martin said USC will do things the right way on his watch.  “Surprises will never happen and rules will always be respected.”

It’s hard to flunk an introductory presser and Martin didn’t.  “Our guys will be known as the hardest playing team in America.”  With comments like that, he aced it.

Any way you cut it, South Carolina basketball appears a lot healthier today than it’s been in a long, long while.

The University of South Carolina’s board of trustees are scheduled to hold a conference-call meeting at 10am ET this morning to talk about a “contractual matter.”  That matter is believed to be the near-$2 million contract that’s bringing Frank Martin from Kansas State to South Carolina.  According to WIS-TV in Columbia, the hoops coach will ink a six-year pact worth $12 million.

One Martin’s deal is rubber stamped by the board, a press conference to “discuss the men’s coaching situation” will be held at the Colonial Life Arena.

The Martin era at Carolina is about to get underway.  You can watch the presser right here.

(Sidenote — Speaking yesterday to a radio audience, Carolina AD Eric Hyman said his new coach told him during the interview process: “You know, you’ve got Steve Spurrier, you’ve got Dawn Staley and you’ve got Ray Tanner.  Something must be going right at South Carolina.“)

Frank Martin has confirmed to ESPN that he will leave Kansas State to become South Carolina’s basketball coach.

Martin told ESPN his communication with South Carolina officials began on Saturday. He agreed to become South Carolina’s coach after meeting with school officials on Monday.

South Carolina is reviewing a potential $2.05 million offer to hire Martin, according to ESPN. His contract at Kansas State paid him $1.45 million annually.

Martin arrives at South Carolina after compiling a 117-54 record in five seasons as Kansas State’s coach. He helped Kansas State reach the NCAA tournament four times and won at least one game in each appearance.

That success makes it even more surprising that Kansas State athletic director John Currie made minimal effort to keep Martin from leaving, according to multiple reports. That’s why Jeff Goodman of CBSSports.com predicts a return to mediocrity for Kansas State.

And South Carolina fans will be more than happy to welcome a proven coach to Columbia.

Kansas State basketball coach Frank Martin confirmed to ESPN.com Monday afternoon he was meeting with South Carolina officials to discuss the Gamecocks’ head coaching vacancy.

Martin told ESPN’s Andy Katz via text message that a deal is not done as has been reported by the Associated Press and other media outlets, including the Kansas City Star. Katz offered these details on a potential contract offer from South Carolina:

“According to a source with the direct knowledge of the situation, South Carolina is reviewing a potential $2.05 million deal to hire Martin. Martin’s Kansas State contract paid him $1.45 million a year. The source said the South Carolina board is reviewing the proposal and if the framework of the deal is accepted then a formal offer will be made to Martin and he would accept. A press conference would be held later Tuesday if accepted.”

Meanwhile, South Carolina’s Board of Trustees have called a meeting via conference call for Tuesday morning at 10 eastern time in Entertainment Suite A of the Colonial Life Arena. The school will allow television cameras to be setup at 9.

On the board’s agenda: a “contractual matter.” You can take it from there.