Nine top Muschamp moments from 2018 SEC Media Days
South Carolina football finally got its moment in the spotlight at SEC Media Days on Thursday, as coach Will Muschamp and three players spoke with the press in Atlanta at the College Football Hall of Fame. The Gamecocks were the last team to appear at the unofficial opening event of the season, and Muschamp offered his opinions, analysis, jokes and perspective on a wide range of topics.
Here are some of the best moments.
Fashion choices
Muschamp had an answer locked and loaded when asked why he always wears all black on the sidelines during games.
“I look skinnier. It’s true. I need it,” he said, to laughs. “I need all the help I can get. (Men’s basketball coach) Frank Martin tells me to wear loose shirts, but I can’t untuck my shirt on gameday. That wouldn’t look very good.”
Recruiting Georgia hard
This is the first time the SEC football media days have been held outside the state of Alabama, and Muschamp took the opportunity to highlight the job he and his coaching staff have done to raid South Carolina’s neighboring state for talent.
“It’s great to be in Atlanta. We have 24 players from the state of Georgia on our roster. We have 16 from the Atlanta area. We made it a priority when we came to South Carolina to recruit the state of Georgia. Those guys are thriving at our place. It’s a three-hour ride from Atlanta to Columbia, and it’s amazing, those guys come to our place and say what a wonderful place it is,” Muschamp said.
Chocolate cake and blitzes?
When asked about the overall quality of quarterbacks in the SEC, Muschamp spoke about the depth of signal callers across the league and also pointed out that as more offenses use run-pass options (RPOs), his defense will need to play man-to-man coverage and get more pressure without blitzing extra defenders. That led to an interesting analogy.
“We need to rush four guys better,” Muschamp said. “We need to be able to affect the quarterback with rushing four guys, because you can’t get into a pressure deal all the time in playing man coverage. Too much chocolate cake will make you sick, and that will dang sure make you sick.”
Deebo unchained
Muschamp is not tamping down expectations for USC star receiver Deebo Samuel, even as he comes back from injury. Muschamp said he fully expects Samuel to come back and play at a high level right away.
“Deebo for 11 quarters last year was probably the most explosive player in college football, so we’re looking forward to giving him the ball a bunch and him having a healthy senior season,” Muschamp said. As for the team’s plans on special teams, where Samuel will serve as kick returner?
“We don’t plan on fair-catching any.”
Lake wars
Muschamp couldn’t pass up another opportunity to rib Alabama coach Nick Saban for getting stranded on a lake with some of his players. It was originally reported that Saban’s boat ran out of gas, but he told media members Wednesday that it was an issue with the engine.
That didn’t stop Muschamp when he was asked about his summer vacations.
“We always have a good time (at the lake),” he said. “We didn’t run out of gas or anything. It was awesome. ... I’m not buying (Saban’s) bypass line.”
He also explained why those trips to the lake are good for the players.
“I think more than anything it’s important for them to see myself and our staff not as coaches, but as husbands, as fathers,” Muschamp said. “At the end of the day, if they understand that you really care about them, they’re going to play harder for you.”
Depth on the lines
In the trenches, Carolina enters the 2018 season with starters basically ready on both sides of the line. But as last season showed, there often needs to be talent and experience at least two-deep on the offensive and defensive lines. And Muschamp said the Gamecocks aren’t there yet.
“We have six offensive linemen that I’m really excited about, about 80 starts between those guys. But we do have a gap from that from the standpoint of, I think we’ve recruited extremely well on the offensive line, but those young guys have not played. We have no experience past those six guys. We’ve got to figure out in training camp who will be No. 7, 8, 9 and 10,” he said.
“I would talk about our defensive line a lot like I talk about our offensive line — I like the first group we’re going to put out there. But we’ve recruited well, we got some really good young players in our program, they just haven’t played yet.”
‘I don’t think our game is under attack’
At one point, Muschamp was asked about the controversial comments of North Carolina coach Larry Fedora, who said at ACC Media Days on Wednesday that football is under attack and seemed to question the link between the sport and CTE, a degenerative brain disease that has been found in a high rate among former football players.
Muschamp disagreed with Fedora’s claim that the sport is under attack and highlighted South Carolina’s approach to head injury prevention.
“As far as CTE and concussions and all those things that we’re talking about, I feel very comfortable with the policy and procedures we have in place at South Carolina. We have a neurologist on the field, we have a neurologist in the box on gameday, we have a neurologist at practice. ... The more research we’re able to do, the better we’ll be.”
Hot start to training camp
While plenty of people wanted to ask Muschamp about the Gamecocks’ Week 2 matchup with Georgia in Columbia, the USC coach kept returning to the importance of the team’s training camp, which will begin Aug. 2.
“Our focus right now is to finish summer and have a great training camp, because you can have all the goals you want and all the expectations you want, but none of that matters unless you understand what it takes to achieve those,” he said.
There’s a simple reason for that focus, Muschamp said — he’s seen it work in the past.
“I reflect back to the national champion team in 2004 at LSU and the multiple conference championships I’ve been a part of, and they’ve all had great training camps. They came out of the gates fast, and that’s what we need to do,” he said.
Dream car
Because this is SEC Media Days, Muschamp ended up fielding some off-topic questions that had nothing to do with football, including one about what his dream car was when he was 16 years old.
“Anything. I had a 1982 (Oldsmobile) Cutlass. The radio didn’t work. The rearview mirror — We didn’t have a rearview mirror and my dad said, it’s all right, just don’t worry about, just don’t look back, keep moving forward,” Muschamp said.
“I’m not into cars. I was just happy to have something.”
This story was originally published July 19, 2018 at 2:19 PM.