Mike Bobo takes over as USC’s interim coach. A look at his head coaching experience
It’ll be a while yet before South Carolina football has a permanent replacement for Will Muschamp, who was fired as the Gamecocks’ head coach on Sunday evening.
But for the rest of the 2020 season at least, USC will be led by offensive coordinator Mike Bobo, who was named interim head coach by athletic director Ray Tanner and president Bob Caslen. It will mark the second time in six years that South Carolina has needed an interim head coach to finish out a year. Shawn Elliott took over in 2015 after the abrupt retirement of Steve Spurrier and went 1-5 in his half-season in charge.
Unlike Elliott, however, Bobo already has head coaching experience going into this interim role. In fact, this will mark the sixth year in a row where Bobo will serve as a head coach in college football.
From 2015 to 2019, Bobo was head coach at Colorado State, a position he took after eight years as Georgia’s offensive coordinator. With the Rams, Bobo went 28-35, 20-20 in the Mountain West Conference. After posting three consecutive 7-6 seasons to start his tenure, Bobo struggled in his final two years, going 3-9 and then 4-8 in 2019 before he and the school “mutually agreed” to part ways at the end of the year.
From there, he was unemployed for just a short while before Muschamp hired him to take over as South Carolina’s offensive coordinator.
Now, Bobo will be an SEC head coach for the very first time in his career — and not at Georgia, where he had spent most of his adult life before heading to CSU. He played quarterback for the Bulldogs from 1993 to 1997, then immediately transitioned to being a member of the administrative staff, followed by a stint as a graduate assistant. He spent one season at Jacksonville State before returning to Athens as QBs coach under Mark Richt from 2001 to 2006, before adding offensive coordinator duties in 2007.
Bobo’s time as a head coach at Colorado State was impacted by some health issues — he was diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy in 2018, an autoimmunue disease that hospitalized him for 10 days in the preseason with numbness and pain in his feet and hands from nerve damage, according to the Coloradoan. His mobility was limited throughout the season.
But Bobo’s struggles at Colorado State late in his tenure were especially apparent against the school’s rivals, such as Wyoming, Colorado and Air Force. He went a combined 2-13 against that trio, per Sports Illustrated. He also lost 10 of 11 games at one point between the end of 2018 and the start of 2019.
He did, however, produce several future NFL players, such as receivers Michael Gallup, Preston Williams and Bisi Johnson, and brought the Rams to three consecutive bowl games, becoming only the second CSU coach to ever do so. They did lose all three of those bowls.
After he was hired by South Carolina, Bobo was accused of abuse and racial insensitivity during his time at Colorado State by anonymous former players and coaches in a news report, though former players were quick to defend him and South Carolina conducted its own internal inquiry.
South Carolina 2020 football schedule
Sept. 26: Tennessee 31, South Carolina 27
Oct. 3: Florida 38, South Carolina 24
Oct. 10: South Carolina 41, Vanderbilt 7
Oct. 17: South Carolina 30, Auburn 11
Oct. 24: LSU 52, South Carolina 24
Oct. 31: OPEN
Nov. 7: Texas A&M 48, South Carolina 3
Nov. 14: Ole Miss 59, South Carolina 42
Nov. 21: vs. Missouri, 7:30 p.m., SEC Network Alternate
Nov. 28: vs. Georgia
Dec. 5: at Kentucky
