Jan. 16, 2007
Columbia, S.C. – South Carolina head football coach Steve Spurrier met with the media on Tuesday, Jan. 16 to discuss the arrival of four incoming freshman to the Gamecock football squad and the beginning of spring semester classes.
Opening Statement
“We have some new players joining us here in January. We have some others that are here but I guess a piece of a transcript, or test score hasn’t arrived, but I’m confident that they will be in school in the next day or so.”
“First of all, Ladi Ajiboye, I really like (him). We tried to get him last year, he committed to Virginia Tech, he didn’t qualify and after a half of a year at Hargrave (Military Academy) he decided he wanted to come where his (high school) teammate Carlos Thomas plays and wanted to come to South Carolina. He is a defensive tackle, I believe he lead his high school team in tackles his last year and had 10 sacks as a junior. He makes a lot of tackles as a defensive tackle, he is an elusive defensive lineman that can knife around and make some things happen. He wanted to come here and we are excited that he is here with us now.”
“Ryan Broadhead we signed with last year’s freshmen class and he decided to help us out and come in this January. I think he worked out, lifting and running for about four or five months. He really looks good and hopefully he will be able to come in here and help us either this year or next year, probably offensive tackle. Ryan looks good physically and we will find out what kind of ball player he his when practice starts.”
“Stephen Garcia is a quarterback from Tampa Jefferson. Stephen, what I like, is he can run and move around. I think he is an excellent passer also, set a whole bunch of records down there and so forth. I think what Stephen gives us is a good passer that can also run. He has a lot to learn, a long way to go and I’ve told him that. He is a competitive guy that loves to play and if he gets tackled four or five times this spring by his ponytail than we might convince him to cut it but other than that, its part of his mo, his ponytail.”
“Travian Robertson a defensive lineman from up in Laurinburg, finished up early and wanted to come on down. We are excited he is down here in school and ready to go with practice.”
“We have a lot of guys back from last year’s team. Sidney (Rice) leaving just opens it up for some of these other receivers coming in and we have several committed. Maybe we will have one or more before it is over with. We are looking forward to winter conditioning that starts next week. I think the lifting, with coach Mark Smith, starts on Wednesday than the winter conditioning at 6 am on next Monday morning will start.”
“Other than that, we are going to try to improve our academics. Our academics last semester were not as good as it should have been. We have some guys that didn’t perform near as well as they should have. We are not real proud of what the football team did academically, although there is only about 10 or 12 that I just had a little extra meeting with. That’s too many. We need 99 percent of our guys in good shape academically instead of 85-90 percent. We need to get better there so hopefully we will improve this semester. We have some new little policies, new little guidelines to insure that our guys go to class that I really believe will be helpful.”
(On new players arriving early)
“It depends on the individual. Obviously if Stephen (Garcia) plays next year, it will have helped him. We will just have to wait and see. Travian, a defensive lineman, we will have to see how he compares with our other defensive players and how he performs in the scrimmages and practices. A lot of kids like to graduate early, take off, some like to stay and finish their high school careers. It is an individual choice, I don’t advocate it one way or the other, we leave it up to the players on what they want to do.”
(On players redshirting a year)
“We don’t tell anybody they will be redshirt (too much) unless a guy really wants to. We tell them I think what all coaches do, come ready to play and compete but if you are not ready and you are not going to play a lot, we are going to redshirt you because we don’t want to waste a year. We’ve been able to redshirt a lot of our players over the last couple of years and that should prove to be beneficial two to three years from now.”
(On team academics)
“I don’t want to give the football rules completely out but we have our own class attendance policy. The university one didn’t work for us. Too much leeway, you can miss three or four here, three or four there and still be okay and that doesn’t work for our football players. They need to go to every class. They need to go all the time, not most the time. Just like they need to go to every practice, every weight lifting, they need to go all the time. So the university policy didn’t work for us so we are not going to use it, we are going to use the football policy, the Carolina Football Policy and just go to class. If you don’t go, than you will run stadium steps. Simple as that, if it gets out of control than maybe (the player) we let transfer and go play somewhere else. We need to tighten up around here. We are not near where we need to be to be a good team so we are trying to get more discipline in everything we do and that should carry over to the way we play
