Spurrier Speaks Out About Rejected Recruits
By Phil Kornblut

USC football coach Steve Spurrier took the opportunity of his Media Day news conference Sunday to express his feelings about the university's denial of admission of two of his recruits, both of whom had qualified under the NCAA standards. Following is the text of his comments:

"Again, I've got to apologize to two young men that we recruited and they qualified, they signed with us in February, and they were denied admission to our school. Personally, I don't think that's the way you do business. I'm embarrassed that I, and our coaches, basically misled these young men into believing they were coming here. Now, I'm not blasting the president or the provost. The president has already told me how we're going to change how we do admissions here, but I think we need to get it out to the high school coaches and the players out there that this is not going to happen again. As a head coach, one of the big things I've always tried to follow, in a player-coach relationship, honesty has to be the centerpiece of everything you have to do with your players. And it starts when you recruit them. I don't always tell recruits what they want to hear. I try to be honest with them and all I ever guarantee is an opportunity. And when you tell a young man that if he qualifies he's coming to your school and it doesn't happen, somebody is misleading, and it's me. I'm the guy. The head coach is the face of every college football program. It's my fault. It's nobody else's fault but mine. This happened two years ago with a couple of players. I begged and pleaded, pleaded and begged, and our provost relented and let them in. They were very good players and both started last year. It happened again this year. One of the three got in. But we had a plan in place that if we oversigned, there's a perception out there that South Carolina oversigned and that they are just getting rid of guys, and that's not true. That's not true on our coaching staff. We had a plan in place to grayshirt if they all qualified. We were going to to that. As it turned out, we're not going to have to do that right now. In my opinion, our school, me, we made a mistake in doing this. Again, I'm not criticizing the president, he said we're going to change how we do it. We're going to change, but for our creditibility, mine and the coaching staff, I just want the high school coaches, the parents of the players and all of them to know that that's not going to happen here if I continue to be the coach, and I plan on being the coach here a long time. We can have a heck of a big time college football program here at South Carolina if we want to do things the right way, and we've got to do things the right way. Hopefully, I truly believe this is the last year this is going to happen because I can't operate like that. I can't operate misleading young men. And our coaches can't. We suffered a severe blow credebility wise around North Carolina, Anson County, where Michael Bowman is from, and Jacksonville, FL where Arkee Smith is from. I'm trying to do what I can to help that right now and to try to restore whatever credibility that we can get in those schools. As long as I'm the coach here, we're going to take guys that qualify. If not, then I'm going to have to go somewhere else because I can't tell a young man you come to school here, he qualifies, and not do that. And we did that this year."