Spurrier says quarterback competition ‘wide open’
Incoming freshman quarterback Lorenzo Nunez should be ready to play, but not necessarily start, this fall, South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said Tuesday at the SEC’s annual spring meetings.
“He’ll be in contention to play a lot,” Spurrier said. “Now, whether he can start the first game of the year, that’d be asking a lot, but who knows? We will get him ready to play some.”
Nunez is a four-star, dual-threat quarterback out of Kennesaw, Ga. Redshirt sophomore Connor Mitch remains the frontrunner to win the job in the fall.
“But the other players are going to go through the summer with the idea that it’s wide open, and it is wide open,” Spurrier said. “We will have competition for it. We will compete for it in preseason, and we’ll name one, probably, the first week before North Carolina.”
Indoor facility The Gamecocks’ indoor facility is expected to be done “by the end of September,” Spurrier said.
“You don’t really have to have one in the South, but since everybody has got one, you probably need to have one now,” he said. “The weather is pretty good in the South, but occasionally you need one.”
Standing pat Don’t expect any significant changes to the disparity in cost of attendance figures, incoming SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said.
“There are litigation outcomes that dictate how we have to handle this,” Sankey said.
“Sometimes in life, that is just the way it is,” Spurier said of the disparity. “If one school can give $5,000 a year and another $4,000, that’s just what it is. We all would like to think $400 or $500 wouldn’t be the reason a kid picks a school, but again we really believe that is out of our hands.”
Summer camp The SEC will try to get all of college football to adopt its rule banning satellite camps before changing its own rules to allow them, outgoing league commissioner Mike Slive said.
“All of us are against it, obviously, but there comes a point where we need to start doing it to keep up with Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, the northern schools that are coming into the South,” Spurrier said. “Whether or not we need to allow some of our schools to do it will be discussed later.”
Easy living Alabama coach Nick Saban opened his Tuesday news conference with an update on his non-football endeavors.
“We caught five tarpon last night in an hour, which is, like, a record,” he said. “I caught one that was pushing 180 pounds, six foot long. Everybody in the boat caught one. (His granddaughter) had tubes put in her ears this morning, and she’s doing fine. And (his daughter) is getting married on Saturday. All right, so that’s what’s going on. See, you guys think that we don’t have a life. That none of the stuff that happens for you, happens for (coaches). We go fishing, we have grandchildren, we have children getting married, we have weddings. We have wives that put on weddings.”
Saban has stayed out of the wedding planning, he said.
“I kind of found out early in the down that the wedding wasn’t just about Kristen, but it was a little bit about Miss Terri, too, so we just kind of stayed out of it, you know,” he said. “It’s kind of like playing against the wind. You’ve just got to run it.”
Extra points The SEC will put an “independent medical observer” in the replay booth of each game played by a league team to monitor player health. The observer will have the power to have a player removed from the game to be evaluated for a head injury. … The league plans to “substantially” increase its fine structure for storming the court or field. … Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze topped Spurrier, Auburn coach Gus Malzhan and Kentucky coach Mark Stoops during a Tuesday morning foursome.
This story was originally published May 26, 2015 at 8:34 PM with the headline "Spurrier says quarterback competition ‘wide open’."