BCA: Stay away from South Carolina

COLUMBIA, S.C. - The Black Coaches Association wants prospective football recruits and assistant coaches to stay away from South Carolina after the school ignored the group's recommendation for a more open coaching search.

The group's director, Floyd Keith, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that South Carolina never contacted the BCA. The group sent the school search guidelines before it named Steve Spurrier to replace Lou Holtz last month.

``There was an announcement and a hire,'' Keith said. ``That was so fast that a jackrabbit couldn't have had a family between all that.''

The BCA first made its call in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

South Carolina athletic director Mike McGee said the mission of the BCA is important to college football. However, administrators faced a brief timeframe to land someone with as successful a past as Spurrier, McGee said.

Keith said South Carolina administrators should've shown the same consideration he's seeing from other schools with openings. One athletic director, Keith said, flew into his Indianapolis office to discuss its search.

University of Mississippi Chancellor Robert Khayat has said administrators there are working closely with Keith's group as it looks to replace David Cutcliffe.

``Maybe people are beginning to get it,'' Keith said.

Except, perhaps, South Carolina.

Keith said the school hasn't gotten a response from the Gamecock athletic department since Spurrier was brought on board. ``In my opinion and in the opinion of my association, what this says to us is they don't care,'' Keith said. ``We want athletes and parents of color to start taking stock in the process that institutions take in choosing coaches.''

Keith had nothing but praise for Spurrier. ``It's not about him,'' Keith said. ``This is about the process.''

McGee was attending a College Football Hall of Fame banquet in New York with Spurrier and was unavailable for comment. However, he issued a statement saying there were ``unusual and extraordinary circumstances that we faced'' when Holtz decided with several weeks left in the season to step down.

``We had the opportunity to replace an accomplished and national championship coach with another,'' McGee said. ``The window for that to occur was clearly uncertain. It certainly was not the normal type of coaching transition that an institution faces.''

Keith didn't buy that. ``That man (Spurrier) wasn't going anywhere. He played golf all winter,'' Keith said.

Anton Gunn, a former South Carolina offensive lineman with public advocacy group South Carolina Fair Share, said his alma mater has a good record of inclusion and understands McGee had to act fast to hire Spurrier. But he says the Gamecocks are caught up in ``a confluence of things.''

Three of the five black college coaches Notre Dame's Tyrone Willingham, New Mexico State's Tony Samuel and San Jose State's Fitz Hill won't be back with their schools next season.

Plus, Gunn said South Carolina has a history of racial problems affecting sports, such as the NCAA's continuing moratorium on awarding championships to the state for flying the Confederate flag on Statehouse grounds.

The BCA supports the NCAA's position and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's tourism boycott.

``Those things have added fuel to the fire,'' Gunn said.

When asked if the past problems had anything to do with the present call, Keith said, ``That's for others to decide. All I do is deal with the facts.''

Keith's group will keep spotlighting situations where minorities don't get a chance for a job, he said.

In the end, potential assistants and student athletes should not ``go where you can't coach, or even have an opportunity to be interviewed,'' Keith said. ``Don't go there.''