2010 Gamecocks Football

The 2010 NCAA College football season is upon us and will begin in just about 5 months or so. Spring practices have begun and you can feel the electricity of the coming season.

The University of South Carolina will be fielding a very young team this year composed primarily of sophomores and juniors and all of which will have lots of experience. Most other SEC schools have very young teams as well but those young teams consist of many freshmen and sophomores with little experience. Florida lost most of its defense and its main offensive threat, Tim Tebow. The toughest team appears to be Alabama but they lost 2 very key defensive players.

The Gamecocks return 2^nd year starter at Quarterback, Stephen Garcia who “grew up” last year and started every game at quarterback. Stephen has matured and should be a great dual threat this season. The Gamecocks will also have a stable of potent running backs in Kenny Miles, Jarvis Giles, and newcomer, Marcus Lattimore, possibly the biggest running back prospect in the nation. This could be one of the best stables of running backs in college football and will be dangerous, very dangerous if the offensive line can come around and block for them. The Gamecocks have some very young, quick receivers to compliment the offense as well as a big, tall tight end and a couple of very tall receivers who can go up and get it down at the goal line.

The Gamecock defense is back with almost everyone this year as well. Eric Norwood is gone but at least 9 of the players on defense have lots of experience from last year. Stephon Gilmore, who was an All SEC Freshman last year is back. Gilmore is by far one of the best, if not the best prospect on this young South Carolina team. Gilmore can not only play defense but showed his offensive prowess last year completing 1 of 1 passes for 39 yards on a beautifully thrown ball against Clemson and he rushed for a number of yards and ran the Shotgun-Spread-Option offense to a “T.” If Spurrier puts him back there at QB again some this year, look out.

Now… Speaking of Spurrier, SOS, if you will. Spurrier is very, very  stubborn. He is extremely pass-happy and will not bend hardly at all when it comes to his offense. However, if he would just go back and look at what happened in the Clemson game last year, he could easily see that his passing game is not what is needed by this Gamecock team, it is the Spread-Option offense ran out of the shotgun formation. He has too much talent in the backfield not to utilize it to open up his passing game. You have to allow your backs to get going. If the Gamecocks would have ran the offense they ran against Clemson last year, they could’ve probably been at least 9-3. Just look at what Gilmore did against Clemson… Look what Maddox did…. Look what Miles did… If you throw Giles in there with either Garcia or Gilmore the offense adds another 2 dimensions.

All in all, this college football season is looking up for the Gamecocks. This is the year that the Cocks get their chance to win the SEC and play in a BCS bowl game. My prediction is if Spurrier remains stubborn, the Gamecocks go 8-4… However, if Spurrier gives a little and adds the spread-option offense, the Gamecocks have the chance to do something special and could end up undefeated and at least 10-2 with a BCS Bowl game win. I predict 9-3, though, because there will be games the Spurrier remains stubborn and the same outcome will happen but even so, these young kids will do what they need to do to pull off a couple of the wins.