Grade School – Wherein We Rank Things

Its that time of year, gentle reader:  Preseason polls are trickling out, early All-American lists are being announced.  We here at TRC are not immune to the prognosticatory (word?  eh, maybe) ranking impulse, but we don’t EVER want to be mundane or redundant.  We want to be different.

Accordingly, we’ve decided to rank . . . our football coaching staff.

Yeah, it doesn’t make any real sense, and sure, we may well be doing it just to be ironic, but you’ve read this far, which must mean you are as starved for Gamecock football info as we are.

So here goes with the inaugural Grade School Preseason Ranking, which we may (or may not) update each week of the season.

1.  Steve Spurrier – Who else?  At this rate, the cat might just make something of himself one day.  He will be ranked #1 in this space for as long as he wants, a period of time he often describes as “two or three or so years at least.  Well, anyway.”

Score

2. Ellis Johnson – Grossly overranked here, in my opinion, but our rankings are composite scores and my other TRC cohorts are obsessed with the guy.  To me, he’s always trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, and that’s not even when he’s coaching.

3. G.A. Mangus – Popular pick in the old blogosphere.  Young, energetic, and a tireless recruiter, many have him pegged for the HBC-in-waiting.  We’re not ready to go there yet, but like his potential.

4. Shawn Elliott – based entirely on facial expressiveness.

Default Elliott Face – it gets much worse

5. Brad Lawing – based entirely on loyalty to the program.  He first coached here under Sparky Freaking Woods, for crying out loud.

6. Jay Graham – He helped get #21 on board.  And then he shepherded the freshman runningback through a record-setting year.  Heck, we’d rank him #6 on the strength of last year’s UGa beatdown alone.

7. Craig Fitzgerald – Chains, tractor tires, and attitude in the weightroom all speak well of this guy.  But its the heavy lifting of those mammoth eyebrows that earns our #7 ranking.

8. Lorenzo Ward – Our secondary, talented and experienced, was constantly confused and out of position last year, so someone – SOMEONE – has to be to blame, don’t they?  Well?  DON’T THEY???? HELLO?

9.  Junior Spurrier – Tough call.  We’ve had some hecka awesome receivers during his tenure, but we’re scared to rank him higher lest this morph into an awkward Skip Holtz situation.

10. Jeep Hunter – I dunno, but what does he coach again?  Heck of a recruiter and a super guy by all accounts, so he makes our top 10.

11. John Butler – Not ranked, due to insufficient data set.  A kickoff returned for a touchdown this year would instantly catapult him into the top 5.

12. Chris Cosh – yes we know he isn’t a current coach, but we’ve got 63 reasons to still be hatin’ on him.

[note: our individual ballots can be found here, if you are REALLY hurting for more info.]