What the last few weeks have been like for South Carolina’s Mike Bobo
Mike Bobo wasn’t thinking about it, but the texts and the calls somewhat brought it to his attention.
The South Carolina offensive coordinator spent the past three weeks in a time of uncertainty, just by what’s gone on around him. His boss, Will Muschamp, was fired. He was installed as interim head coach, a position that’s temporary by nature.
But he, as a classic coach, let it slide off.
“When things aren’t going well, your friends and people, they text you all the time, ‘How are you doing, what’s going on?’” Bobo told The State. “I was raised tough guy, hard-nosed, coach’s son. I’ve always believed I was built for this. I played quarterback. There’s a ton of criticism when you play quarterback, there’s a ton of (non-stability). There’s a ton when you’re an offensive coordinator. So noise, that doesn’t bother me.”
He knows he can coach. He’s been an offensive coordinator or head coach for nearly 20 years.
Those years have featured heat when he worked for Mark Richt. They featured a run at Colorado State that started well and fell off at the end. They most recently featured this season, when Bobo’s presence reinvigorated the run game and had South Carolina’s offense mildly improved before a late slide.
But even with a coach’s constitution and outlook, there are others around him who have thought about the situation.
“My kids have,” Bobo said after the season finale against Kentucky. “They have asked me where we are going to be and are we moving again? I tell them, ‘The good Lord is going to take care of us and put us where we need to be.’ If it’s here at South Carolina, that’s where I’ll be and if it’s not, we’ll move on, and I’ll continue to try to show my kids at home that Dad continues to go to work and respond the right way.”
It’s a bit of the flip side of a story new head coach Shane Beamer told about his kids playing “Sandstorm” when he got home from work as he was interviewing for the USC job.
Bobo could well end up staying on with the new staff. South Carolina has to make sure he gets $1.2 million next season, the second year of a two-year contract. He’s a key tie to five-star 2022 QB commit Gunner Stockton, and his veteran hand could boost Beamer in his first head coach job.
Maybe his time in Columbia rolls on. Or perhaps a stable career, which featured two stops from 2001 to 2019, has one more move.
The majority of the on-field staff won’t be back. As the 2020 season wore down, Bobo, piloting a ship with uncertain direction, had a message for that staff.
“I told our coaches, there’s a lot of good coaches in this league,” Bobo said before the Kentucky game. “Everyone here can coach. Don’t doubt yourself. Sometimes we doubt ourselves because of the noise. Things just didn’t work out, for whatever reason — things that you might have done wrong, things that you could have done better. And I think you learn more through failure than you do from success. So I look at it as a learning opportunity.”
