SEC insider on USC: Short term bleak, but long term optimistic

If you’re Will Muschamp, South Carolina’s first-year football coach, and a guy known nationally as Mr. College Football shows up for your preseason media day – uh, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Relax, USC fans. It simply means the 2016 season is upon us, and Tony Barnhart is doing what he always does this time of year: covering the Southeastern Conference – as the slogan for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, his former employer, used to proclaim – “like the dew.”

Barnhart was in Columbia this past Monday? No more significant, he said, than his visits Friday in Starkville, Miss., or in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Sunday. USC was the first stop on his annual SEC tour.

“It just worked out for me to be in Columbia that day,” Barnhart said, “because I had to go to Charlotte the next day to fill in for (Paul) Finebaum,” host of the SEC Network’s signature daily call-in show, and Barnhart’s only competition for “Mr. SEC” status.

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We’ll spare you details of Barnhart’s August; it includes visits to nine or 10 SEC schools (he got to all 14 this spring), plus Dallas, Memphis and Cartersville, Ga., for speaking engagements. It’s how he’s done it for decades: go to the source(s) and report the news.

“I’m home (Atlanta) about four days” in August, he said. His one non-negotiable day off: Aug. 27, when “The Mighty Sloane,” aka Barnhart’s granddaughter, turns 4.

At 63, he’s a multi-media maven: penning four columns weekly for the website GridironNow.com, writing for the SEC Network’s website, and serving as a studio analyst for each Saturday’s games. Barnhart rivals Finebaum as the ultimate SEC media insider, in large part because of his history, knowledge and old-school work ethic.

You want opinions? There are plenty scattered across social media. You want the facts? You read Mr. CFB.

“Someone asked me, ‘What do you do?’ ” Barnhart said. “I tell them, ‘I’m a reporter who likes to tell stories. That’s what I do.’ Yeah, I’ve got opinions, too, but it’s more about the stories. That’s what people want to read and hear.

“And to get the story, you’ve got to get on a plane and go where the story is.” He laughed. “That’s why I’m on all these campuses.”

In Columbia, “the story” is Muschamp’s inaugural season, following the now-departed Steve Spurrier. Barnhart and Muschamp needed no introduction; “I remember Will as a player at Georgia (their mutual alma mater), and I saw him every year at Florida,” where the coach was sacked after four seasons and a 28-21 record.

Barnhart also remembers conversations with Muschamp, then a defensive coordinator, about his ambitions to be a head coach. Hired by USC’s athletics director Ray Tanner a year after being axed in Gainesville – a decision that, at the time, drew mixed reviews – Muschamp faces an uphill job rebuilding a USC program that, after three 11-2 seasons, produced last fall’s 3-9 flop.

One CBSSports.com reporter rated Muschamp’s “hot seat” quotient this season at 3 on a 1-to-5 scale. Barnhart laughed at that. “All ‘hot seat’ definitions are different,” he said. “Mine is, if you have a bad season, you’re fired; not, if you have a bad season, fans will be upset – gee, when has that happened?

“The fact Ray Tanner hired this guy speaks volumes. He understands the long view. I think it helps Will to have Ray in that (AD’s) seat.”

Long-view-wise, Barnhart believes Muschamp will have success at USC. “This year’s team will be well-coached, disciplined, but not extremely talented,” he said. “They’ll probably struggle in the short term, but the long term is very optimistic.”

Muschamp’s staff is “a very good bunch of recruiters, and from what I’ve heard, they’ve updated the recruiting operation, the social media aspect,” Barnhart said. “It’ll take him two to three years to recruit, but they’ll be able to do it. And when they get (talent), they can win.”

Barnhart says USC’s 10-15 record the past two seasons was due to 1) a drop-off in S.C. high school talent and 2) Clemson’s rise to prominence, further diluting that base. Those Gamecocks “weren’t nearly as talented; you watched, and it was obvious,” he said.

Which brings us to 2016’s prospects, starting with the opener at Vanderbilt, “a dangerous game,” Barnhart said. “(The Commodores) made strides last season, and they’re going to make more this year.”

South Carolina’s strides are liable to take longer, but Barnhart said USC has shed “the attitude that you just can’t win consistently here. They’ve got the fans and now the facilities. Now, Will can say, ‘We can do this. Spurrier proved it.’ ”

However it plays out, Barnhart will be watching. And reporting and writing about it, along with the other SEC stories in 2016. Mr. College Football keeps rolling along.

This story was originally published August 4, 2016 at 12:35 PM with the headline "SEC insider on USC: Short term bleak, but long term optimistic."