Usually spring is the season of unbridled (and in many cases, unrealistic) optimism for college football fans. Not so in Columbia, South Carolina.

An unspectacular recruiting season combined with disarray at the quarterback position (redshirt frosh Stephen Garcia was cited for underage drinking last month, his fourth offense in his short tenure at South Carolina) set the stage for the Gamecocks' spring scrimmage. After Spurrier's last spring game put fans to sleep (it was a low-scoring, 14-7 affair) the Ol' Ball Coach enacted new rules for '08: no pass rushing, no blitzing, and the defense was forced to play one of three base coverages.

Sounds like a recipe for an offensive extravaganza, right? Nope: QBs Chris Smelley and Tommy Beecher combined for 8 interceptions versus the declawed 'Cock defense.

Add to this the fact that Spurrier has designated his son, Steve Spurrier Jr., as the new playcaller. And, yes, Junior was calling the plays. For both offenses.

Does Spurrier have one foot out the door already at South Carolina? If Spurrier fails to produce a competitive team in this, his fourth year in Columbia, you've just gotta wonder. The OBC is grooming his son for the head coaching job, hasn't been lighting it up on the recruiting trail, and has already been in public scrapes with the university over admissions issues. Gamecock fans are nervous about what ROI might come from their pricey head coach in his remaining time in the Palmetto State, and rightfully so.

Getting old is sad. Just ask fans of Florida State or Penn State or Queen Elizabeth. It's even sadder when the old monarch starts installing his nitwit son in places of importance and the nitwit son calls nothing but hopeful downfield jump balls or starts a war in the Falklands or something. Once the old guy starts the nepotism train, it's all over.

South Carolina fans, this is your cue to panic:

South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said he will turn some of the play calling duties over to Steve Spurrier, Jr., but that he will still be the offensive coordinator.

Say it ain't so, Steve! What's next, road rage? Coke-bottle glasses? An unquenchable thirst for the brains of the living?

It's all downhill from here, except for that one year when you're inexplicably good and get to play an ACC team in the Orange Bowl. Which, if you're South Carolina, probably sounds pretty good.

The latest news out of South Carolina is that quarterback Stephen Garcia is once again in trouble with The Man, this time for... get out your College Stupidity 8-Balls, readers... Underage Drinking! (hint: it's always underage drinking). As the AP reports, Garcia was one of three football players arrested for underage drinking near a campus dormitory ("Yes, the dorms! They'll never look for alcohol here!")

Worse, Garcia's older brother Jerry* was cited for providing beer for a minor, because if there's one thing holding society back, it's 20-year-olds with beer. Hard liquor we can totally understand, mind you; there's nothing worse than some idiot sophomore reeking of Curve for Men and Captain Morgan as he apologizes for knocking your drink over. But giving beer to underage college students should be fine. They just get happy and play video games. And vomit.

This is Garcia's third run-in with the law; he was arrested once for drunkenness about a year ago, then a month later was charged with keying a professor's car. Garcia, as you can probably imagine, was indefinitely suspended by The Ol' Ball-Coach; it lasted about a month. Spurrier is expected to announce the quarterback's fate with the team soon; it's hard to imagine he'll get dismissed for a victimless crime of impatience, but it's always a fool's endeavor to pretend to know what goes on in TOBC's mind. Sort of like Jesus, but with a visor.

We officially endorse a punishment of two weeks' suspension, heavy amounts of stairs in the morning, and a hand-written apology to Garcia's brother for ratting him out on giving the players beer. The answer is always, always the following: "We found it over there." Then you point somewhere. Must we teach you everything?

*not his brother's real first name

Few things gray the hairs of a five-day-a-week coach (Steve Spurrier's gotta hit the links, natch) like players getting into moped-related accidents.

[South Carolina] Backup tight end Nick Prochak was hospitalized with a broken leg after being struck by a car Jan. 18 on Blossom Street; reserve fullback Clark Gaston avoided serious injury when he collided with a car backing out of a driveway on South Marion Street on Wednesday afternoon.

Neither player was wearing a helmet, which are required for drivers under 21 in South Carolina.

Those tribulations set in motion a team meeting where said coach wagged his finger incessantly or something. The star quarterback-in-waiting got the message, maybe.

Freshman quarterback Stephen Garcia, one of about 30 players with scooters, said Spurrier addressed the issue during a team meeting.

"He just said, 'Be careful and wear a helmet,' " Garcia said.

Also: beat Clemson.

The whole football coaching thing is working out pretty well for Steve Spurrier, but if he ever needs a career change, the OBC may want to look into being a high school counselor or motivational speaker. The recent hiring of David Cutcliffe at Duke was tangentially tied to Spurrier, who supposedly advised Duke on their coaching hire when he met with officials there a few weeks ago. Spurrier also offered some words of encouragement to Coach Cut: "If anyone can [turn Duke's program around], you can." Hey, you can't spell "Chicken Soup for the Revitalized Coordinator's Soul" without S-P-U-R-R-I-E-R.

When he's not getting people new jobs, the OBC is getting them more money. Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster got a nice raise after being offered the same post at South Carolina, and Sylvester Croom is looking for more cash to spread around his coaching staff at Mississippi State now that Ellis Johnson is said to be the leading candidate for the post. Spurrier is reportedly going to give his new defensive coordinator much more than the $195,000 Tyrone Nix made doing the job last year. Nix himself got about a $100,000 raise for leaving Spurrier's staff and joining Houston Nutt at Ole Miss. For the record, Gamecock fans weren't too upset about Nix's departure, more evidence of how Spurrier's keeping everybody happy these days.

Here's why athletic directors are frowning this morning...

Jimmy John's would like to thank these two young men for the kind of advertising money just can't buy: Ah, early, hazy morning. To a college student in the throes of consumption, the 2 a.m. world is devoid of limits; think zombo.com realized. The world, once cruel and complex, is transformed into a simple melange of urinals, instruments of passion, food, and weapons. Often, even those definitions blur; who among us hasn't spent drunken minutes engaged in the all-important "do I pee on, make out with, eat, or wield this" debate with ourselves? Unfortunately, it looks as if a Florida football player and his former teammate have chosen... poorly.

In what definitely looks like the runaway arrest of the year, Florida DE Jermaine Cunningham and former LB Jon Demps were arrested while fleeing a Gainesville Jimmy John's. The crime? First-degree battery with a sandwich. Okay, the name of the crime is just "first-degree battery," but it was perpetrated with empty cups and a sandwich, and the entire issue was whether one of the young men would pay a dollar for a bag of chips. If that were any more incredible, they'd have to find room on Mount Rushmore for it.

Best yet, in the surest sign yet that greatness begets greatness, we have this sublime line from the Tampa Tribune's Andy Staples:

The report did not specify exactly what kind of sandwich struck the victim.

Andy Staples, answering questions that the rest of us are too afraid to ask. A Pulitzer awaits.

When you go into the postseason 6-6 and are one of 10 (!) bowl-eligible SEC teams, you know you're far from a lock to make a bowl game.

The PetroSun Independence Bowl strongly considered the Gamecocks, but ultimately chose the 6-6 Crimson Tide of Alabama instead, citing the university's geographical proximity to Indepence Stadium in Shreveport, Louisiana. The Tide will face Big 12 representative Colorado in that game.

For the Gamecocks, it's over. What a weird ride; Starting the season 6-1 and at their apex, holding a Top 10 ranking; then finishing with a 5-game slide, going 3-5 in the SEC and missing a bowl game altogether. Head coach Steve Spurrier's stated goal of winning the SEC in the preseason probably shouldn't have been on the board in 2007.

From GamecockCentral.com:

"We're a little disappointed we didn't get to a bowl game, but we understand we have no one to blame but ourselves," Spurrier said. "We had five games to win No. 7 and we didn't get it done. We had our chances. The guys played pretty well much of the time, and we coached fairly well a lot of the time. But we didn't play well or coach well a lot of times too."

Agreed, Steve. Agreed.

Say goodbye to seniors Blake Mitchell, Cory Boyd and Jasper Brinkley. Could Defensive Coordinator Tyrone Nix be far behind?

You've seen it a million times if you've seen it once. Some dorky-ass, no game-havin' simp befriends a smoking hot girl in a relationship and spends hours upon hours chatting on the phone (more likely IM) about their girl problems. And all the time, he doesn't have the balls to man up and just admit that he wants to do her. Instead, he pines "why can't I meet more girls like you?" and the girl is none the wiser because she's never seen Chris Rock's "Bring The Pain" and really thinks platonic relationships can exist like that.

It would pretty difficult to see Duke AD's Joe Alleva's meeting with Steve Spurrier in a different light...if not for the fact that The Ol' Ballcoach was the one to initiate it. For all of you smart dumb cats, Spurrier wasn't the last coach to lead the Blue Devils to a bowl game, just the last coach to have them be good over a span of time that was longer than a week or two. And in the preseason coaches poll, he always dedicates a #25 vote for Duke, so it's obvious he still has some feelings for the place.

Of course, he's "cast his lot" with South Carolina (very encouraging endorsement, btw), so we likely won't get the movie script ending Alleva desires just yet, but as those 6-6 seasons keep piling up in Columbia, who knows?

South Carolina's embattled Defensive Coordinator, Tyrone Nix (not shown at right) started the season with one of the SEC's best defenses.

But as they say, you're remembered for how you finish, not how you start: Nix ended up with the nation's 58th ranked defense (ranked 9th in the SEC) and 108th in rushing defense, allowing an average of 209 yards per game on the ground.

Hot? Not so much.

Garnet and Black Attack has been keeping track of Nix's status with the 'Cocks via their Tyrone Nix Firing Watch.

Although the meter started at 80% probability of Nix's firing, the latest update suggests that Nix might actually leave on his own accord to take over the vacant head coaching job at Southern Miss.

... the firing of Jeff Bower at Southern Miss, Nix's alma mater, might open up an opportunity for everyone to save face. The Eagles' former linebacker is set to meet with the school -- at an "undisclosed location," so the get-together might include Dick Cheney -- about their vacancy.

In any case, I still believe Nix is all but gone at the end of the year. But he might get out without being fired.

The Cool Chicken, meanwhile, doesn't care if Tyrone goes away angry, just that he goes away:

While I would hate to see Spurrier Jr. head to another school, I would love to see Nix head out of town. I think that would be a fantastic deciscion [sic]. Maybe not for Nix but most definitely for the Gamecock nation.

Stay tuned to FanHouse for updates.

The ACC gets called a lot of things as far as being a football conference, but "executioner" is most certainly not one of the most oft-used appellations. But as of this past Saturday, that's where they stood as two of its teams stood in the way of their SEC equivalents' dreams. South Carolina had fallen off with a velocity that suggests that maybe the earth is flat after all and was looking to salvage a disappointing season with a scalp against a bitter rival. And as far as Vanderbilt goes, they stood on the precipice of having their bowl bid equation fail once again. You know the math: a couple of OOC gimmes, some wins against the Mississippi schools, and odd upset here and there, voila- 6 wins and a possible postseason berth for the first time in over two decades.

Perhaps it was a minor slap on the wrist for the SEC advocates' incessant superiority complex, but Clemson and Wake Forest managed to get the job done, bolstering their bowl profiles and all but relegating USC and Vandy to December couch potatoes. Clemson, on the strength of Mark Buchholz's game-winning field goal, bested the Gamecocks by the score of 23-20 and Wake had a subtly dominating performance against the Commodores that resulted in a 31-14 victory. South Carolina, now possessing a victory that likely robs UGA of a shot of a national championship has lost five in a row and stands in grave danger of missing the bowl season altogether. Meanwhile, Vanderbilt has performed in a manner that suggests that they could likely sniff at breaking their 23-year itch in 2008, but against possible Nebraska coaching candidate Jim Grobe, they appeared overmatched.

While the Tigers appear headed to either a Gator Bowl or Chick Fil-A Bowl appearance, Wake is a primo candidate for the Meineke Car Care Bowl...which has to constitute the most overlooked 8-4 season from a school with less than 4,000 enrolled undergrads.