As a huge fan of Steve Spurrier, naturally I had to watch the ESPN 2 telecast of the spring game up at South Carolina. You can check our link here for a more overall analysis but I wanted to offer just a few of my own observation.
1. It is nice to see SOS prowling the sideline of a college football game, even if it is for an in conference rival of my Alma Mater.

2. It is a work in progress, but you could start to see the old pass patterns developing that dominated the SEC for so long. Nice mid-range to deep posts, fades and tons of crossing patterns. Although with Spurrier, it isn’t so much the patterns as when he calls for them and how he sets them up that should keep South Carolina fans happy.

3. As usually, the Fun and Gun runs more than people think which a heavy dose of draws, counters and traps. Sumners could have put up nice numbers in this system.

4. The defense looked good and will be much more aggressive in the regular season. John Thompson maybe a touch gimmicky, but gimmicky can work in college when the quarterbacks can’t study film 24/7.

5. The quarterback play will determine the success of the Gamecocks this year, no question about it. Unfortunately for them, the quarterbacks are clearly not ready… but they both showed flashes of potential. Blake Mitchell was more consistent and had an awkward looking shot put throwing motion, which old ball coach has had an affinity for in the past, but was unspectacular and not consistent enough. Although Antonio Heffner was a bit more inconsistent, he showed flashes of great potential with an ability to by time in the pocket and nice zip on his passes… he just has to stop missing open receivers. We here at EDSBS.com are absolutely giddy at the thought of a man names Heffner leading Cocks next year (even if the name is spelled slightly differently).
Can he consistently hit the wide open tight end?

Overall, I suspect this season to be on par with or slightly better than last year but I look for good things to come in the following years. Watch out Clemson.

Sooners’ qb race still wide-open following spring scrimmage. In happy news, Sooners’ fans looking forward to having qb with knees.

Chris Fowler, Lee Corso, and Kirk Herbstreit shamelessly shiiling for the men in orange aprons. Surprisingly good interviews, however. Corso, in his interview. reveals his favorite moment in Gameday history:

Lightning hit my car. In Blacksburg, Virginia, the Georgia Tech-Virginia Tech game, we had an electrical storm, and lightning hit my rental car and blew it up. Fifty thousand people there, twenty-five thousand cars, and lightning hit my car.

Oh, Lee, it was almost our favorite moment, too. Almost.

The Meineke Car Care Bowl is here. Please, calm down. It’s not like they’ve announced a playoff system or anything. I can’t wait for the Zyprexa Marbles Bowl (Zyprexa-helping you keep your marbles since 1996!) or the Oxi-Clean Sparkle Bowl, featuring halftime entertainment by a lone, elderly Oak Ridge Boy and the Shelby County, TN Drill Team. Why don’t we give Boise a second bowl game? Or better yet, let’s have one in Oaxaca, with amateur Mexican rodeo at halftime? They can clean up the bodies by the start of the third quarter. Labor’s cheap down there! Or the Intel Outsource Bowl, live from Bangalore? Notre Dame’s gotta take the invitation, and we hear those fans really travel well.
I can’t wait to hear the thinly veiled contempt of the ESPN announcers assigned to the hinterlands to cover the games-it’s like you can hear the ice clinking in their glasses they stole from the Hampton Inn. The new Sisyphus of the sports broadcasting world is Bill Curry of ESPN, slogging his way through the third quarter of the Insight.com/Tangerine/Butter Bowl game, watching fifth seed ACC/Pac-10 scrub get killed by equally mediocre but lucky Pac-10/ACC fourth seed scrub, just hoping someone will club him over the head with a blackjack and end the misery.
Insert miserable, frustrated pro-playoff comment here…

Pitt conducted their spring football game this Saturday to a standing room only crowd… at a local high school stadium. Regardless of the small facilities, over 8,000 Pitt Panther fans crowded in to see what Wannstedt had in store for them this upcoming season.

Dave Wannstedt single-handedly trying to bring back the Magnum P.I. look… but why no Hawaiian shirt?
From the sounds of it, not much. Looks like Pitt will attempt to recreate the dynamic offense that enthrawled Dolphin fans during his inexplicably long tenure (given his success level). Don’t lose hope Pitt fans, Ohio State won a national championship with a boring offense and Pete Carroll was a failure in the NFL too. Wannstedt might just be a lethal combination of both.

Sure, we understand how level-headed and logical you are at heart. They’re just spring games, just practices…JUST THE ONLY TASTE OF FOOTBALL YOU GET FOR THE NEXT FOUR FUCKING MONTHS OF YOUR MISERABLE, PETTY LIFE. So since you’re so calm, cool, and not at all obsessed, here’s a rundown of this weekend’s major spring scrimmages.
-Reggie Ball scrambles a lot, but doesn’t throw ball away on fourth down in Georgia Tech’s defense-heavy spring game.

Reggie Ball: may improve despite Chan Gailey, a.k.a. the man who made Kordell Stewart the qb he is today.
-Colorado’s freaky Bernard Jackson-a qb-busts a 78-yard TD run in the Buffs’ scrimmage. Starter Joel Klatt looks good, too. Wanna bet Gary Barnett can’t create a qb controversy where there isn’t one? He is a genius, after all…across the state, acclaimed “non-genius” Sonny Lubick’s CSU team was on the field, too.
-Virgina Tech looks like themselves in brutal, low-scoring Maroon/White game. Marcus Mexico-er, Vick- shows “flashes,” which means he should probably begin an appropriate course of antibiotics immediately.
-South Carolina didn’t burn up the scoreboard in the Garnet and Black game, but seeing the ball fly over ten yards through the air seemed to satisfy the record crowd at Williams-Brice stadium. Across the state, Clemson racked up huge yards in the Orange and White game. The over under for Clemson/SC this year: 132 points.

A guy named Bowden will play a guy named Spurrier in a bitter rivalry game this year. Paris says the look for 2005 is retro.
-NC State’s defense tallies 12 sacks in the Red/White game. Did anyone else know they were the number one defense in the nation last year? Despite allowing 24 points to a team coached by Chan Gailey? And 45 to a team quarterbacked by Brock Berlin? And having a head coach who wears his sunglasses at night?
-Vols, who have enough players to hold a proper scrimmage despite recent legal pecadilloes-assault? Who doesn’t get arrested for assault every now and then?-stoke the fires of the lamest of sportstalk conflagrations, a qb controversy in Knoxville.
-Jeff Bowden’s offense continues its holding pattern as the FSU defense throttles the offense in Tallahassee. Bowden says he sees improvement, potential, and little pink elephants on parade wherever he looks.
-Houston Nutt tells QBs to “go run around and do stuff,” defense romps in Razorbacks’ scrimmage. Nutt chews on towel, throws hands in air, rants, and holds post-game press conference in hog suit he wears at second job as barbecue restaurant greeter. (We can only dream…)

Famished, Houston Nutt orders a sandwich “this long.”

The Los Angelos Times is reporting that several Trojans are in jeopardy of not being eligible next season. We are sure the fans of the Cal Bears feel terrible about this… but be careful, with the way USC has been recruiting recently, the backups might just prove to be better anyway.

In the off season, non-events like a scrimmage and a verbal joust between two old rival coaches, are all the college sports news we really have, so we get excited about it. We are all hoping Phil Fulmer might take another shot at Steve Spurrier follow two more arrests at South Carolina this weekend for marijuana possession. The ball’s in your court Phil… say something funny.