Steve Spurrier, left, head coach of the University of South Carolina and Kerwin Bell, head football coach at Jacksonville University watch the Jacksonville Jaguars during NFL football practice, Thursday, May 24, 2012, in Jacksonville, Fla.And to think the Southeastern Conference’s spring meetings were once a platform for Steve Spurrier to playfully needle Tennessee’s Phillip Fulmer about the Volunteers being picked as the team to beat in the various preseason football magazines.
For a second consecutive year, Spurrier has a divisive agenda heading into the four-day gathering in Destin, Fla., that begins Tuesday. The eighth-year South Carolina coach stirred last year’s meetings with the idea of coaches paying players $300 a game, and his latest proposal is that only games within each division should be used in determining which teams play for the league championship.
South Carolina swept its five East Division foes last season but lost to Auburn and Arkansas, while Georgia’s loss to the Gamecocks was its only blemish in a 7-1 league record.
“What it does is it takes out the scheduling as far as who determines the winners of the divisions,” Spurrier said. “Last year, for example, Tennessee and Florida both played Alabama and LSU, obviously two of the best teams in the country, and us and Georgia did not play them. So obviously us or Georgia were probably going to win the division.
“We had the same schedule as Georgia except for one game — they got to play Ole Miss and we played Arkansas.”