ESPN role shows announcer that Muschamp ‘desperate to field championship-level team’
There wasn’t a lot of consistency for South Carolina’s football team this season.
But there was Taylor Zarzour.
It felt as if almost every week when broadcasting assignments came out, he was the one on play-by-play for the Gamecocks’ game on one ESPN property or another. Six times, the Charlotte resident got the chance to drive down Interstate 77, meet with Will Muschamp, players and coaches, and get ready to call a Saturday game with this particular 2018 squad.
In those Friday meetings with Muschamp, he saw someone who didn’t quite get swept up in the preseason hype, nor change as USC’s season had ups and downs. He saw something else.
“He is an extremely competitive guy that, as badly as any Gamecocks fan wants to beat Clemson and wants to compete at the top of the SEC East, I think he wants it 10 times more than that,” Zarzour said. “This isn’t good enough for him.
“You can just sense that he doesn’t want to waste any moment. He wants to get to that point. He’s desperate to field a championship-level team.”
Zarzour will get one final look at the Gamecocks this season. He’ll be on ESPN radio Saturday, calling the Belk Bowl between the 7-5 Gamecocks and 7-5 Virginia with his usual broadcasting crew of Matt Stinchcomb and Kris Budden. They had five games during the regular season, and he got pulled in for the crew on the makeup game against Akron.
As he looked across the span of the 2018 season, Zarzour focused on the turnovers that dried up for the Gamecocks. Those turnovers helped power South Carolina to some level of overachieving his first two seasons, when Muschamp’s group got six wins from a team that could’ve been closer to four, and then nine from one that could’ve been closer to seven or six.
“It’s kind of like the golf gods that get you on the golf course,” Zarzour said. “It didn’t bounce your way in a couple of games.”
He pointed out that he’s had the chance to watch the transition from Steve Spurrier to the Muschamp era, and on defense the depth of talent hasn’t been there to contend for titles. But each year, the staff has done what it needed to maximize what it had.
He also said that in those Friday morning meetings, he’s not seen Muschamp fall back on excuses about injuries, even as his team took something in the neighborhood of 14 season-ending ones this season. Some coaches look to those to explain what happens, but even in those settings, Muschamp hasn’t.
“He is never the guy to play the ‘woe is me’ card,” Zarzour said.
This week, Zarzour has a chance to see the Gamecocks one last time, chat a little with Muschamp about how far the team has come, what it’s gone through. He was in Williams-Brice to start things in 2018, and he’ll be in the building for a seventh time to watch the Gamecocks finish things.
And beyond somehow becoming the on-air chronicler of this squad, there were a few other perks he enjoyed seeing the team so often.
“Personally, it’s been gratifying because I live in Charlotte,” Zarzour said. “So driving to Columbia on a Friday for Will’s meeting and the assistant coaches meetings, staying there on Friday night and then coming back home on Saturday has been nice, but I love it.
“I think that South Carolina fans have, no matter what, always supported their program at a high level, so as a broadcaster, you always want to be in a passionate environment.”
This story was originally published December 28, 2018 at 9:15 AM.