Ok honest opinions on something folks..

I wasn't into football as much as I am now (I was only in middle school) when Spurrier got hired but I'm surprised anyone wanted to come here after our performance against Clemson and 'the brawl'. TBH, I don't know how we got the OBC here in the first place. I'm not sure anyone else could have done what he's done though.

Hey I am calling a spade a spade.. OBC has done wonders and if he keeps going in the direction hes going.. then USC will show up in Atlanta again. No Flame or Trolling here. Bad as I hate losing to the sum buck. He is a damn good football mind for sure.

When USC was looking for coaches at that time were there any other Coaches on their short list other than Steve.

quote:

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And our next coach will be Chip Kelly

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SOLD!

However, he would have to get some good assistants who can recruit the southeast, which I'm sure he would.

Holtz sold Spurrier on the job because they are really good friends. I dont buy that anyone could have came in here and changed the culture like Spurrier did. Holtz began laying the foundation but fell short due to serious illness his wife fell under. Before those two started there magic... USC would have a decent season what.. every 10 years...? And I mean decent as in 7-8 wins and a bottom of the barrel bowl game.

My honest opinion was that our FB program was going to improve over the years regardless of whether or not Spurrier became our HC. Perhaps quicker or perhaps not as quickly. It would depend on who our administration hired to replace Holtz, and the patience of our fanbase with him.

If it was another Sparky Woods or Brad Scott-type HC - someone who had little to no HC experience at the highest levels - and they had the same type seasons that Spurrier had from '05 through '09, I doubt he would've survived that. Our fanbase would've felt that going 7-6 was the best he could do for us, and wouldv'e clamored for his dismissal. Even Spurrier was getting heat from a portion of the fanbase after the '08 and '09 seasons...

But for all the "Offensive Genius" talk regarding Spurrier, it has been our defenses that have lifted our program up to it's present status. We have never had a top SEC offense - top 3 in a year where SEC offenses were good - at any time under Spurrier, for various reasons. But our defenses have often been among the league's best.

Spurrier has had little to do with that short of hiring his DCs....but Ellis Johnson wasn't a top SEC DC or national DC when he was hired. He had experience and was considered decent, but he made his biggest rep as a DC during his time at USC. Nix had very little prior DC experience, if any. Ward had none. So while Spurrier surely has great standing within the coaching circles, he has never really gone out and hired the "Big Name" coordinator to work under him in Columbia.

Our recruiting has been solid to great from time to time, but has never been excellent.

Overall, Spurrier certainly has a wealth of experience in putting together a successful college FB program in the SEC, which for us was paramount.

Holtz also had this kind of experience, although not so much regarding the SEC. His wife had little to nothing to do with any issues while at USC like was above mentioned. He had Skip as his OC and ran a certain type of offense that Skip designed that was responsible for any success that Holtz had at USC. Recruited players for that offense. Then Holtz totally re-wrote the offense identity to his old veer offense from his Notre Dame days in the middle of his tenure, and demoted Skip to QB coach. Those were the last 3 years under Holtz, and we stalled out.

The recruiting efforts under Holtz was never stellar: we had some highly rated classes but they were full of JUCOs that never panned out, and players of poor character. Holtz seemed to build the program with a 3-4 year window in mind, but when his time went past that he didn't know what to do and the program wasn't prepared. So it sunk back down...

Since the 2000s the SEC has exploded: huge TV contracts are bringing in money; television games on national networks every week has driven up member school recognition with prospects every year. Bringing in Holtz helped put our program on the national map in terms of name recognition whereas before we were like a C-USA program pretending to be a SEC program.

But as long as our AD did it's job and brought in a competent HC with experience in how to run a program, IMO we would've had improvements. It's an odd head-scratcher to me always that with our stadium (was always one of the bigger ones in terms of capacity over the years), fanbase support, and being in a very highly regarded FB conference since 1992, that we didn't start having more consistent success sooner than we did. If not conference titles, then definitely 8 & 9 win seasons regularly.

The only thing I can think of that held us down was all the previous years pre-SEC that our athletic programs were allowed to fall behind in most areas, when we were an independent. Our AD and school administration was obviously incompetent and not very forward-thinking.