Wiedmer: Summer Elliott also is replacing a Gamecocks legend

At 11:30 Monday night, South Carolina co-offensive coordinator Shawn Elliott left his office and headed home, certain of only one thing: Gamecocks head coach Steve Spurrier had coached the last of his 135 football games wearing the school’s garnet and black colors.

After spending much of the evening meeting with players and athletic director Ray Tanner about the program’s direction moving forward, Elliott arrived at his house to find his wife Summer anxious for news of their future. Their two young children, Maddyn and Max, were sound asleep.

Roughly an hour later the phone rang. Tanner was calling to offer Elliott the interim head coaching gig, which meant the former Summer Scruggs – who starred in tennis at Girls Preparatory School and Appalachian State University in the 1990s – was now the interim first lady of South Carolina football.

“It’s very strange,” she said Tuesday evening. “Lots of different emotions. It’s all happened really quickly.”

It had been a strange couple of weeks in the Palmetto State’s capital city of Columbia long before the 70-year-old Spurrier officially announced he was “resigning.” Flood waters from torrential rains have left the place a giant lake, forcing the Gamecocks to move last week’s scheduled home game against LSU to Baton Rouge. Public schools are supposed to reopen today for the first time in nearly two weeks. Roads are closed, small dams breached, thousands faced with severe property damage.

“We’re fine. Our house was spared,” Summer said. “But a lot of families at our children’s school lost everything. And we still don’t have water we can use.”

But thanks to Tanner, she must now use all her parenting skills to replace the seemingly irreplaceable Jerri Spurrier as a secondary mother figure to the entire South Carolina team.

“She’s a mom to all the players,” Summer said. “I don’t know what we’ll do without her. No one’s like her. No one will ever be like her. I love her to death.”

At least some of those words have long been said of Steve Spurrier. No one’s like the (former) Head Ball Coach. No one ever will be like him.

So all those one-liners he’s delivered over the years – “You can’t spell Citrus without U-T” “You know what FSU stands for, don’t you? Free Shoes University” “The real tragedy was that 15 hadn’t been colored yet (after a fire destroyed 20 books in the Auburn library)” – aren’t likely to find companions in the words of Elliott or anyone else.

But it’s also doubtful Elliott would ever quit at midseason on the Gamecocks should he hang onto the job past this autumn.

“Growing up in Camden (S.C.), I used to fight those Clemson Tigers with my friends in our back yard every day,” said Elliott, who played and coached at Appalachian State before Spurrier asked him six years ago to coach the offensive line.

“I just want to lead. Make (Spurrier) proud. Win a ballgame for him.”

The first opportunity to win a game comes Saturday against Vanderbilt. Elliott and his staff will then have an off week to more fairly come to terms with a change no one saw coming.

“It’s not business as usual,” Elliott added during Tuesday’s news conference. “This doesn’t happen every day. But this program is not in shambles. I’m not sure a change is what (the players) needed. But a change is what they’ve gotten.”

Whether anyone will admit it or not, what the players really got was a kick to the teeth from their ol’ ball coach. In one of those statements that would earn a player a bus ticket home, Spurrier said of his decision to quit midseason: “My answer has always been the same. If it starts going south, starts going bad, then I need to get out.”

Then again, it wasn’t Spurrier who once said, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

And it hasn’t been this tough at South Carolina since Spurrier arrived in 2005 and produced nine winning seasons in 10 complete ones and one 6-6 mark. The current 2-4 overall record and 0-4 conference mark likely would have delivered him his first losing season since his first year at Duke in 1987, when he finished 5-6.

“I didn’t plan on going out this way,” Spurrier said. “I planned on being carried out of the Georgia Dome on the shoulder pads of our guys after winning the SEC championship.”

So he got out.

And Shawn Elliott got the job.

And Summer Elliott gets the chance to follow the Head Ball Coach’s wife, which just might be a tougher task than following Jerri Spurrier’s husband.

But for all those who think it can’t work, that Elliott will be unemployed by December, one need merely look across the Palmetto State to Clemson. Exactly seven years ago Tuesday – Oct. 13, 2008 – the Tigers named Dabo Swinney as interim head coach, replacing Tommy Bowden six games into that season.

After Swinney knocked off Spurrier’s Gamecocks to end that regular season, the interim tag was removed. Seven years later, Swinney’s overall record is 66-26 and the Tigers are a perfect 5-0 this season.

“I would love to be the head coach at South Carolina for many years to come,” Elliott said. “But we’ve got to recruit great players. We need to put a consistent game together.”

Summer Elliott merely hopes to maintain the consistent excellence and thoughtfulness of Jerri Spurrier.

“She not only knew all the players’ names, she knew their parents’ names,” Summer said. “We’d have family dinners on Wednesday night with all the wives, children and coaches so we could eat dinner with our husbands at least once a week. We’d collect cans of food at those dinners for the local food bank. She’s been amazing. She’s a big reason these have been the best years of our life together.”

Yet with all this new responsibility, there must be at least a few perks she hasn’t had before. More tickets for family and friends, perhaps? A new ride? A better parking space at Williams-Brice Stadium?

Said Summer, barely laughing: “How about more stress?”

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.