The University of South Carolina football team didn’t just go to Knoxville, Tenn., and piss into the wind — it turned a firehose to its face in the very first quarter, doing everything in its power to put the game out of reach before pumpkin-faced fans had time to settle into their seats.

Nine games into head coach Steve Spurrier’s fifth season, the Gamecocks do the following things poorly: score touchdowns, block, tackle, cover kickoffs, punt. They do the following things well: fumble, throw interceptions, allow sacks, set up easy opponent scores, run poorly, throw inconsistently, commit drive-killing penalties with predictability and generally present an undisciplined offense with no identity, no direction and no leadership either on the field or on the sidelines.

It’s an all-too familiar pattern this far into Spurrier’s tenure and one, I believe, that would have most fans begging for the head of the offensive coordinator and head coach were the pair’s names anything other than what they are. But because of Spurrier’s success at Duke and Florida — which is almost a decade ago now — USC fans are forced to endure embarrassment after embarrassment from the one side of the ball the man was supposed to know something about.

This is nothing new.

In Lou Holtz, USC fans subsidized the retirement of a Hall of Fame coach looking for one last payday he could make a family affair. However, affairs of the family were precisely what went wrong in Columbia as Holtz’ relationship with his offensive coordinator/son Skip soured to the detriment of the entire program, the wheels of which didn’t just come off toward the end but went flying into the stands NASCAR-style.

Into that breach stepped another man in the exact same situation — an out of coaching, Hall of Fame-worthy resume and national championship ring wearer eager for one last payday that he could make a family affair. As I have said before, in Holtz’ case, the younger Holtz was not allowed to run the progressive offense he wanted to and the tension between that and the senior Holtz’ offensive vision was palpable.

Now, the younger Spurrier is the one charged with play-calling and game-planning, and while it’s crystal clear that he’s out of his depth, the senior Spurrier is too loyal to him to demote him and take over play-calling by himself — the very skill for which he was hired and for which he previously had been successful.

It’s that sinister chemistry which has plagued two of the game’s great coaches in Columbia, one that has sent the first legend into permanent retirement and may well do the same to the latter sooner than later, especially if the offense continues to insult fans of exciting — or even competent — offensive football. USC fans deserve better that to have their football team be any single coach’s dysfunctional family reunion, much less two of them in a row.
It’s sad, in hindsight, that the best an athletic administration can do to support success is beg aging coaches in their dotage for a taste of the glory they achieved in younger, hungrier years.

That it didn’t is no surprise. Does anyone believe Eric Hyman scares Steve Spurrier? Does anyone think that when Hyman walks past Spurrier’s office, Spurrier tries to look busy? Of course, the move has been great for the Spurrier family. Spurrier decided to put his youngest son, Scotty, on scholarship this year — I guess asking Spurrier to pay a single student’s tuition was too much for the family to bear; awarded his oldest son a job he’d never get at another SEC school (and $200,00 base salary); and uses the offseason to be close to the golf courses he loves so dearly. Great work if you can get it.

But when the next hire comes — and it will be within the next three years, if not sooner — USC needs to abandon the idea of giving retirement-age coaches one last shot at success on the Gamecocks’ dime, coaches who, in both cases, were and will always be associated with success at their dream school (Notre Dame for Holtz, Florida for Spurrier). USC needs a coach for whom this will be their dream school, who wants to make a name here, not somewhere else, because he genuinely cares about the university’s success and won’t stop working harder than anyone else to achieve it.

I never have believed that losses by Holtz and Spurrier at USC ever have affected their self-image, and both came into this job knowing that if things didn’t work out, their reputations would be intact forever and, at the worst, they got to spend some quality family time together and make a fortune. The reality, however, is that three-quarters of the way through Spurrier’s fifth season of providing football teams for SEC competition, USC still makes the kind of vomit-inducing mistakes on offense that his pedigree alone was supposed to eliminate. Fans are sick of coming close, they’re sick of Spurrier’s “But, anyway,” they’re sick of year after year being “a struggling bunch right now.”

If your name is Spurrier, good for you. You milked the university well. If your name doesn’t happen to be Spurrier, the joke, unfortunately, has been on you. 

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