Inside USC coaching search: Changes along way, but Ray Tanner got his guy
Three hours into a seven-hour interview, Ray Tanner knew he was going to hire Will Muschamp.
“I had the feeling,” South Carolina’s athletics director said in an exclusive interview with The State. “There were some boxes to check, but I had the gut feeling, ‘This guy could be our guy.’ I had that gut that he has the characteristics. The culture that he talked about just made me partial that he would be a great fit for us. There just were a lot of strong points that got me excited about him being here.”
That culture?
“Committed, dedicated, tireless worker, fire in the belly,” Tanner said. “You can talk about those things, you can say all those words, but it’s another thing when you show it. That’s not easy to do, and that’s what I read during our conversation, all those things. It resonated so powerfully with me.”
Muschamp was the head coach at Florida from 2011-2014 and was fired after going 28-21, but that’s not a black mark on the coach’s resume in Tanner’s eyes. Muschamp was named the Gamecocks 34th head coach on Dec. 7.
“Five years ago, Will Muschamp was the head coach in waiting at the University of Texas, so any school that would have hired Will Muschamp at the time, it would have been a coup,” Tanner said. “That’s the guy we got, except more experienced.”
Tanner views Muschamp’s four years at Florida as a positive rather than a negative. In fact, he called it a “tremendous benefit.”
“We hired a coach who was very special, and he’s even more special now than he was at that point based on his experiences that he has gone through. He won 28 games at Florida. (Alabama head coach) Nick Saban won 28 games in his first four years as a head coach. (Michigan State coach) Mark Dantonio, he won 25 games in his first four years,” Tanner said. “We got that guy that was head coach in waiting with more experience and better prepared to lead our football program. That’s exciting to me.”
He is aware the hire is not exciting to everyone.
“You have your critics, and I’m OK with that,” he said. “I think there have been some people in the national media who have not been very fair to Will taking over here, but I’m OK with that. I’m OK with playing or coaching with a chip on your shoulder here or there.”
Tanner’s search lasted 54 days, and he acknowledges “there were changes along the way.”
“But you are correct that halfway through that meeting I had with Will, I said, ‘This is our guy. He’s going to fit perfect for us,’ ” Tanner said. “That hit me at that time, and it has escalated since.”
Tanner and Muschamp have talked about the expectations for the coach’s first season in Columbia, but only in general terms. The Gamecocks finished 3-9 in 2015 and will play their first three SEC games on the road next fall.
“While we only won one game (after Steve Spurrier’s resignation), we were extremely competitive and played very, very hard,” Tanner said. “I was encouraged by the effort of our players and it gave me some optimism going forward, which I shared with him, but it’s challenging.
“He hasn’t been to practice with these guys yet, and he doesn’t know how the recruiting class is going to be, so we didn’t talk about pinpointing expectations for 2016, but we talked about the things we had in front of us. While he may not come out and talk about numbers and things like that, he’s going to try to win the next game, I can assure you.”
This story was originally published December 21, 2015 at 4:13 PM with the headline "Inside USC coaching search: Changes along way, but Ray Tanner got his guy."