South Carolina Football: Ranking the top Gamecock head coaches of all-time

South Carolina Football’s Greatest Head Coach of All-Time:
Steve Spurrier

The greatest coach in South Carolina football history is Steven Orr Spurrier (2005-2015). The Head Ball Coach came to Columbia after not winning as much as he would have liked in the NFL with the Washington Redskins. The winning ways he demonstrated at Duke and Florida returned to the HBC as he rattled off 10-straight non-losing seasons in a row to start his Carolina career before a bad final year in garnet and black.

During his time in Columbia, Spurrier built upon the groundwork laid by fellow legendary head coach Lou Holtz. No longer a laughing stock in college football, the South Carolina football program actually became one of the best teams in the nation, winning 11 games in back-to-back-to-back seasons from 2011 to 2013.

During the 11-year reign of Steve Spurrier, South Carolina football also put out more NFL talent than ever before. The Gamecocks certainly had had times of success at sending players to the next level (namely in the late ’80s and early 2000s), but the Spurrier era surpassed those eras.

#1-overall pick Jadeveon Clowney, multi-year Pro Bowlers Johnathan Joseph and Melvin Ingram, and potential Hall of Famer Stephon Gilmore headlined the professional Gamecocks who played under Spurrier.

Spurrier’s legacy as a Gamecock is tarnished a bit as he walked away from a losing team in the middle of his final season, but the 1966 Heisman Trophy winner had always said he would step away from coaching the minute he thought he wasn’t able to help a team win.

The Head Ball Coach is one of just four men enshrined into the College Football Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach, and he is the all-time winningest coach in both the histories of the Florida Gators and the South Carolina Gamecocks.