USC trustee Chuck Allen has proposed an amendment to the SEC rules:

“For the purposes of football division rankings, intra-division games shall be valued as a whole (1.0) game and inter-divisional games shall be valued as a half (0.5) game.”

Why count cross-divisional games as a half game?  Because South Carolina had to play one tougher West Division foe in 2011 than Georgia did.  (And if the shoe were on the other foot, USC trustee Chuck Allen would be stone silent right now.)

South Carolina beat Georgia this past season and then knocked off every other team from the East Division.  But the Gamecocks went just 1-2 against the West Division (beating MSU and losing to Arkansas and Auburn).

Georgia ran the table after its Carolina loss, including a 3-0 record versus SEC West opponents (beating Ole Miss, MSU and Auburn.)  Next year, the Dawgs will again avoid Alabama, Arkansas and LSU, while the Cocks will have to face the Razorbacks and the Tigers.

But let’s face facts, if Carolina had won the SEC East last year, Allen isn’t making his proposal and AD Eric Hyman isn’t vowing to push it at the SEC meetings.

Here’s a problem with the logic, though — you could make a pretty good case that it wasn’t the Arkansas loss that cost Carolina last year… it was the 16-13 home loss to a 7-5 Auburn squad that hurt.  Georgia did have to play the Tigers.  And they crushed them 45-7.

If it sounds like we’re not big on schools and coaches whining about schedule slights, we’re not.  When a schedule is made, there’s no telling who’ll be good and who’ll be bad (anyone think Florida would be 6-6 last year).  There’s no telling who’ll be banged up or missing players due to academics or off-field transgressions when two teams meet.  Which teams will start hot and cool off or start cool and heat up.

Beat the teams in front of you.

Until the SEC goes to a 26-game football schedule in which every team will face every other team both at home and away, there’s no such thing as a completely fair schedule.  Someone will always have an advantage.

Championship teams rise above it.  Others spend their time trying to cook up new point systems for the league’s football standings board.

Carolina just had a helluva 2011.  Whining for rules changes is no way to start 2012.

“The record speaks for itself as the best team ever. … This is about as big as it gets for me.  I love it.”

He should.  The man who is now just three wins shy of 200 for his career came to Carolina to prove that he could still build a college football program.  He had done so at Duke.  He had done so at Florida.  But a two-year foray into the NFL had left his reputation slightly dented.  And when he took over in Columbia in 2005, not many people outside the Palmetto State believed the coach could strengthen a program that had spent most of the last century getting its beak kicked in.

Carolina needed Spurrier to put the school on the football map.  Spurrier needed Carolina if he was going to regain his status as a master builder.

Done and done.

At Duke, Spurrier won an ACC title in 1989.  That’s no easy feat, but even in the Blue Devils’ championship season, the team finished just 8-4 (2-3 out of conference).  That’s great work, but certainly not Spurrier’s best.

At Florida from 1990 through 2001, the coach never won fewer than nine games in a season.  He cracked the 10-win barrier nine times.  He won six SEC titles.  And in 1996 he won the school’s first national championship.  Again, that’s a remarkable feat, but Florida is a recruiting paradise and the school itself has deep, deep pockets.

South Carolina?  It’s a school that ranks in the lower-half of the SEC in athletic budgets in the middle of a state that ranks in the bottom-half for population.  Facing those obstacles, it took Spurrier a while to gain traction, but there’s little doubt he’s done that now.

Credit should go to his recruiting and to former top defensive aide Ellis Johnson, who has now departed to become head coach at Southern Miss.  The talent level has risen at Carolina (see: Marcus Lattimore and Jadeveon Clowney as two obvious examples) and Johnson’s defense allowed Spurrier to start winning even though his Fun n’ Gun offense failed to develop as it had at Florida.

But it was Spurrier himself who held everything together in 2011.  When quarterback Stephen Garcia used up his ninth life and was finally dismissed from the Gamecock team, Spurrier leaned more heavily on Lattimore.  When the phenomenal tailback was lost to a season-ending knee injury, Spurrier’s staff reworked Carolina’s attack to feature more zone read plays for new quarterback Conner Shaw.

When it appeared the Cocks would tumble minus Lattimore — he had provided 36% of the team’s total offense — USC instead found new ways to win.  In other words, Spurrier wasn’t just plugging new players into his system.  He adjusted his system to match the talents of his players.  That’s quality coaching.

No, South Carolina didn’t win a national title this past season.  And they didn’t win the SEC.  Heck, USC didn’t even win the SEC East Division.  But when you consider how far Spurrier has brought his Gamecock program in seven years — when you consider the “degree of difficulty” he faced in Columbia — there’s no question the coach did a tremendous job in 2011.

In fact, we at MrSEC.com feel he did his best job.

Act, don’t react.

Those are two lessons I’m still trying to learn at age 40.  Clemson’s Dabo Swinney is a couple of years older than me, but it’s pretty clear he’s still struggling with those wise rules, too.

Swinney unleashed a rant against South Carolina and Steve Spurrier yesterday because of a comment that had been attributed to the Gamecocks’ coach.  Only, Spurrier never made the comment in the first place.

Here’s a handy timeline of what transpired:

* Last weekend, South Carolina beat Clemson 34-13 to nail down the school’s third-straight win over its arch-rival… the first time in decades that that had happened.

* During the broadcast of that game former Cock quarterback and current play-by-play voice Todd Ellis said “As Coach Spurrier says, we may not be LSU or Alabama… but we ain’t Clemson, folks.”

* Someone in the football offices at Carolina heard the comment and took to the official Twitter feed @GamecockFB to send out the following message:

“‘We aren’t LSU, and we aren’t Alabama.  But we sure ain’t Clemson.’ — Steve Spurrier.”

* The problem?  Spurrier has often said that Carolina isn’t LSU or Alabama, but it was Ellis who added, “but we ain’t Clemson.”  “If I didn’t make it clear, then that’s regrettable.  He did not say that,” Ellis said post-furor.

* Spurrier says his daughter told him about the tweet and how it was making the rounds on Wednesday.  “I said, ‘Well, what do you want me to do?  I didn’t say it.”

* But when Swinney was asked about the quote yesterday, he sure wasn’t aware that Spurrier had never said that last part.  Here’s how he responded:

“I heard that.  That’s the kind of things that gets back to you, and I don’t know if he really said that or not, but I guess he did because there has been no rebuttal.  If he said that, that’s disappointing.  I was taught to win and lose with class.

I guess I’d have to say I agree with him.  If I had to say anything, he’s right.  They’re not Clemson.  They’re never going to be Clemson, to be honest with you.  No three-game win-streak is going to change that.  It’s not the first-time they’ve won three in a row.  It won’t be the last time.  It might be 50 more years, but it will probably happen again.

I’ve gone out of my way to be complimentary to them, complimentary to Coach Spurrier.  I’m going to defend my program.  I’m going to defend my players, my coaches.  I’m going to defense Clemson University, because I believe in it.  I think he’s exactly right.  They’re not Clemson.  They never will be.

You’re looking at the best era in the history of South Carolina football right now.  I think they just had heir second 10-win season.  They won a championship in 1969 and the 2010 SEC East.  This rivalry, there’s a lot of rivalries out there.  This is more of a domination.  And that’s a fact.  My kids’ grandkids won’t live long enough to see this ever really become a rivalry.  It is what it is.

Again, I’ve got respect for their program.  South Carolina’s not Clemson.  There’s a lot of differences.  This is a place that’s won a national title, 17 conference championships, two division titles.  Heck, we’ve won more bowl games than they’ve ever even been to.  I think our program has 100-plus more wins that South Carolina.  That’s reality.  That’s the best era they’ve had in 115 years of South Carolina football — right now.  And they’ve done a great job.  They’ve whipped our butt the last three years.  It’s my job to change that.

Coach Spurrier’s been there seven years.  After five years, I think he had 35 wins.  New contract, all that kind of stuff.  After five years and I have only 35 wins at Clemson, there’s going to be a new coach here.  You know what?  There should be, because there’s a different standard.  He’s exactly right.  They ain’t Alabama.  They ain’t LSU.  And they’re certainly not Clemson.

That’s why Carolina is in Chapel Hill and USC is in California.  The university in this state, always has been, always will be Clemson.  It’s right here in Clemson, South Carolina.  Print that.  Tweet that.  Whatever.”

Aw, snap.  So what did Spurrier say when asked about Swinney’s rant about a statement he reportedly didn’t make?

“I don’t know what he said, don’t even care really.  I am not getting into any verbal (altercations) with anybody….

That crap can happen.  They can stick quotes on you.  As long as the story gets straight, that’s fine with me.  I am not mad with anybody.  We have a good relationship with those guys, and it’s going to stay that way.”

Well that was a calm, cool response.  Good for Spurrier.  I’m surprised he didn’t take any kind of shot back at Swinney.

He what?  He said something else?

“Smart people don’t believe everything they read and they don’t believe hearsay. … I guess Dabo believed it.”

Oh.

Ironically, the question was asked just last week in a Palmetto State newspaper if the Clemson-Carolina game should be moved to Thanksgiving in order to give the game a bit more pep.

Doesn’t look like that’ll be necessary at all.

Thanks to Twitter.

What a surprise.

There’s been a pretty steep drop-off in the passing ability of Carolina’s opponents over the past few weeks.  And don’t forget, the Tennessee of that high national ranking is quite different than the Tennessee USC faced on Saturday night… the one with the true freshman quarterback making his first start.

This doesn’t mean that Carolina’s secondary hasn’t improved and hasn’t played well in recent weeks.  But it does mean anyone expecting the Gamecocks to squelch Arkansas’ passing game on Saturday will likely come away disappointed. 

The Razorbacks — for comparison’s sake — rank 9th nationally in passing offense.  And unless Melvin Ingram, Jadeveon Clowney and the Carolina pass rushers can mount some serious pressure, Tyler Wilson will likely put up some passing numbers reminiscent of those posted by ECU and Georgia earlier this season.

He did so with the help of some black jerseys that seemed to fire up his team.  (Nevermind that nothing matched in the ghastly white helmet / black jersey / orange pants combination.)

Now a pair of Vols have tweeted their desire for another “black out” game, once again with Carolina heading to Knoxville.

Da’Rick Rogers:  “just a little something to spark the team when we need it the most … black jerseys for halloween!!”

Tyler Bray:  “Volnation needs to blackout Neyland stadium.  That would really show your support in this must win game.”

Da’Rick Rogers:  “I know yal want a black out! All black everything.  Ha and the orange power T.”

Apparently someone in the UT athletic department got to Bray because moments after that exchange, he tweeted the following:

“Just to clear things up we want our fans to wear black.”

Uh, that’s not what Rogers said.  In fact, Rogers’ initial tweet could be taken as news that the team has already been told they’ll be outfitted in black.

As we said yesterday regarding Kentucky’s new black unis… if everyone wears special black duds, what’s really special about wearing that color?

 

Throwing out last year’s Vanderbilt game — and let’s face it, Carolina could’ve beaten last year’s Vandy squad with Spurrier playing tailback — the Gamecocks are 8-0 in SEC games in which Lattimore touched the ball 20 or more times.  They are 0-5 in the five contests in which Lattimore had fewer than 20 touches.

The Cocks don’t just need Lattimore… they need a lot of Lattimore.

Injuries happen in football and many’s the time some unheralded backup has stepped in and surprised everyone by playing as well or better than the superstar he had to replace.  But in this case, Lattimore is more than a superstar player.  He’s a third of Carolina’s total offense.  He’s a pressure-release for Shaw.  He’s a protector of USC’s defense.  He’s a clock-killer at crunch time.

Freshman Brandon Wilds is expected to start when the Cocks travel to Tennessee in two weeks.  At least they’ll have an open date to get over the shock of losing their workhorse.

But if South Carolina is going to achieve something special this season, they’ll need to have some offensive players step up in a very special way from here on out.

The oft-troubled quarterback reportedly failed a random substance test on October 4th — just one day after Steve Spurrier gave the starting nod to backup quarterback Connor Shaw — and that led to his final dismissal yesterday.

While the rest of the sporting world shrugged its shoulders, not surprised that the five-times-suspended Garcia had somehow stumbled again, the player’s father — Gary Garcia — gave a more complete picture of what’s been going on with his son to Josh Kendall of The State:

“He kind of made his own bed, and this is the culmination of some of those earlier mistakes.  He’s upset that he’s not finishing what he came here to do and that’s win an SEC championship, but he also is maybe kind of relieved to get a little bit of fresh air…

This has got to be the worst two weeks of his life, but it’s not going to be the worst two weeks in his life going forward, I can tell you that.  You deal with trials and tribulations, and you learn from it.  Hopefully, he continues to learn and grow.  We’ll let the dust settle for a couple of weeks and then look at what his options are.”

In addition to losing his starting job and being kicked off Carolina’s team in the past two weeks, Garcia also had to attend his grandfather’s funeral last week.  His father said, “The death of my father along with the Auburn loss and being benched contributed” to his son’s most recent violation.  It’s been reported that the test showed alcohol and marijuana in the younger Garcia’s system.

In the end, we’re talking about a 23-year-old college graduate who needs to get his life in order.  As his father correctly pointed out, Garcia will face more trials and tribulations in his life moving forward.  There are plenty of people twice his age who still rush to a dime-bag of pot or a bottle of liquor when they’re faced with crises.  Here’s hoping Garcia won’t be one of them.

That seems to be the main question following a bizarre press briefing in Columbia, South Carolina today.  Rather than taking his normal seat behind the microphone for his weekly meeting with the local media, Steve Spurrier paced back and forth in front of reporters and said he was going to disassociate himself from The State’s lead sports columnist, Ron Morris.

“In 26 years as a head coach I’ve had two guys that didn’t write the truth that I had to disassociate with,” Spurrier said.

He said that he would refuse to take questions as long as Morris was in the press room.  When Morris stayed put, Spurrier left to do television interviews.  When he returned and found Morris still in attendance, Spurrier wrapped the media session before it started and several beatwriters were ushered to his office instead.

Speaking moments ago with Jay Phillips of WNKT-FM in Columbia, it was made clear to me that Spurrier’s timing caught everyone off guard.

First, a little history:

* All hometown columnists — rightly or wrongly — are lumped into one of two categories: homer or hater.  Morris is viewed by many Gamecock fans as belonging to the latter category.

* When Bruce Ellington joined the Carolina football team this spring, Morris wrote that his sources told him that Spurrier had poached the player from Darrin Horn’s basketball team.

* Spurrier has denied those charges as have Horn and Ellington.  Today, Spurrier called the Ellington column from this spring “completely fabricated.”

* Following Carolina’s upset loss to Auburn, Morris wrote that Spurrier made “poor decisions” that cost his team.

* On Sunday, his column was titled: “Offense better, but it was against Kentucky.”

The coach said today: “The criticism he shows me is fine, I don’t mind that.  I’m just not okay with stories that aren’t true.”  Uh, fine, but the story Spurrier claims is untrue was written in the spring.  (Morris — for his part — has stood behind the column, though he’s been asked by The State not to comment on Spurrier’s actions today.)

So why bring this back up?

Perhaps because Spurrier has and always will act like a bully.  When he’s winning, he’s more likely to throw barbs at others (ask Kentucky fans).  And when he’s losing, he pouts, goes quiet and often acts melancholy.

So is it possible Spurrier dug up an old column that’s still under his skin because he’s feeling 10-feet-tall and bulletproof thanks to a 54-3 whooping of a lesser foe on Saturday?  And because the same writer continues to fire barbs at him and his offense?  If you’ve followed Spurrier’s career, then you know that answer is yes.  It’s very possible.

Why else bring this back up now?  For those who feel that Spurrier was creating a distraction to focus talk away from Stephen Garcia’s dismissal — which was announced later — we’re not buying.

The Garcia situation is a guaranteed hot topic and no amount of smokescreens can keep that story off the front page.  (Click here for proof.)  By going after Morris, Spurrier simply created a second controversy for himself.

Below is the video of the coach’s comments:

What a silly way to handle this.  Six months after the fact.

The NCAA has sent several questions to USC to determine the facts surrounding several specific incidents and as well as to “determine the policies and practices of football, men’s basketball, and men’s and women’s track and field in certain areas of athletics administration.”

The charges claim that 12 Carolina athletes received an estimated $47,000 worth of impermissible benefits from the Whitney Hotel (left) via reduced rent and that nine more athletes received special treatment allowing them to pay late.

There are also claims that two people representing USC made impermissible contact with recruits and provided them with impermissible benefits between the spring of 2009 and February 2011.

“We have and will continue to cooperate fully with the NCAA in all aspects of their review,” said AD Eric Hyman.  “Any pertinent information from the NCAA that can help us strengthen our athletics program will be used as an opportunity to make positive change.”

You may recall that the NCAA first learned of the Whitney Hotel situation while investigating former Gamecock tight end Weslye Saunders.

You might also recall that when this story first broke last August, Steve Spurrier said:

“Anyone can poke around our program.  We don’t have anything to hide.  Poke on everything — the hours we practice and train.  They can poke everything we do.  And our compliance people poke, too.”

Well, apparently Carolina’s compliance department didn’t poke around nearly as well as the NCAA’s investigators did… and for that, USC could really be poked.

Until late last week, Texas politicians had given Texas A&M a free-pass to exit and head east to the Southeastern Conference.  But now legislators are worried that Texas and Texas Tech could bolt from the Big 12 and race west to the Pac-12.  Some/many/most politicos in Texas don’t want to see that happen.  So…

According to Orangebloods:

“Sources said the reason lawmakers are hot is that they received assurances from the Big 12, including (UT president Bill) Powers, that the Big 12 would survive without Texas A&M.

And because of those assurances, lawmakers did not take an aggressive stand against Texas A&M withdrawing from the Big 12.  But that may be changing.

Sources said members of the Legislature are or will be reaching out to Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin to tell him the Aggies may no longer have the blessing of lawmakers to leave the Big 12, especially if it looks like the Big 12 will collapse.”

In addition the site claims that Big 12 sources have said there is “an increasing likelihood of litigation” against the SEC.

Good luck to the Big 12 on that front.

The Big Ten began the expansion craze last summer.  The Pac-10 then began flirting with Texas and others in an effort to swipe four- to six-teams from the Big 12, which would have extinguished the conference in one push.  The Pac-1o was conducting an all-out raid last summer.  By comparison, the SEC simply answered a phone call this July.

When the smoke cleared in 2010, Nebraska had left for the Big Ten and Colorado had departed for the Pac-12 (as it’s now called).

Unless the judge overseeing such a silly case attended Baylor, the Big 12 would have a hard time convincing any sane person that it was actually the third school out the door that destabilized the league.  Especially when Oklahoma president David Boren has been making comments like this to the press:

“The Big 12 is not the same Big 12.  I was extremely disappointed when Nebraska departed.  Disappointed when Colorado departed.”

Missouri football coach Gary Pinkel also stated last week:

“Obviously we have some issues in our league… When Nebraska leaves one year, Colorado leaves and then also now Texas A&M.  So it’s three real good football teams (that) are leaving.”

Do a Google search and you’ll find countless other Big 12 figures who’ve been publicly stating the obvious — that Nebraska and Colorado exited and hurt the league a full year before A&M started looking for an escape hatch.

But while a tortious interference case would likely be hard to prove, that doesn’t mean such a lawsuit still couldn’t gum up the works for Mike Slive and the Aggies.  The mere threat of a lawsuit could cause SEC presidents to slow down out of fear that the person hearing such a case really would be a Baylor grad… angry that his Bears are in danger of being left for dead in this round of realignment.  (Nevermind the fact that the Bears left TCU, SMU, Houston and Rice for dead when Baylor jumped to the Big 12 without remorse in the mid-90s.)

Back in 2003, several Big East schools filed suit against the ACC for a raid that netted the Southern league Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech.  In 2005, the ACC settled that suit for a grand total of $5 million.  Pocket change.

But television contracts have jumped to another level since 2005 and the Big 12 — whoever’s left of the Big 12 — would likely ask for a cool billion of SEC cash.  Well, even if there were just a 1% chance of losing that kind of cash, the SEC would need to do some serious risk/reward analyses.  Perhaps the league would decide to stand pat and not offer A&M a landing spot.  If that were to happen, would the Big 12 then be forced to re-admit a suddenly homeless Texas A&M?  Now that would be a happy, long-lasting marriage, to be sure.

Bottom line?  This thing isn’t over, folks.  In some ways, it may just be getting started.

Oh, boy.  Great.  ’Cause who wants to talk about football?

UPDATE — Pete Thamel of The New York Times reports that Judith Zaffirini — the chairwoman of the Senate Higher Education Committee in Texas — claims the state senate has no intention of getting involved in conference expansion and realignment.