Photo: USA Today Sports
It wasn't long ago that Big Ten coaches were complaining about Urban Meyer's recruiting tactics. Now it looks like they may be delving into some of those tactics themselves.
In an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Steve Spurrier had this to say:
We don’t run into much of any negative recruiting around here as SEC coaches,” Spurrier said. “We were involved with a player who was being recruited by a Big Ten school. They got negative a little bit with ‘There’s a lot of crime in Columbia, the big city. They don’t graduate their players,’ which was completely untrue. They searched for a little bit of everything but the player came with us anyways.
To me, this is more of a plus to Spurrier and the Gamecocks than a negative. In the quote, Spurrier says that the opposing coach talked about the crime in Columbia and their questionable graduation rate. Guess what they didn't touch on? The Gamecocks performance on the field and that's because, as we pointed out not long ago, the Gamecocks have become part of college football's elite over the last four years. Spurrier has things headed in the right direction and, despite his age, he doesn't appear to be slowing down.
As for the Big Ten, there has been a big turnover in terms of coaches in the last few years and they have also added some new teams to the conference. If there ever was a "gentleman's agreement" in place for B1G recruiting, it looks like it's gone.
