South Carolina reportedly hires Will Muschamp as new head football coach

Will Muschamp is reportedly the new head football coach for the South Carolina Gamecocks.

It’s been a wild 72 for the South Carolina Gamecocks, but it appears they finally have their man. According to Thayer Evans and Pete Thamel at Sports Illustrated, Will Muschamp will be the next head football coach for the Gamecocks and will be announced on Monday .

The news comes not 24 hours after Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez interviewed for the South Carolina coaching position, and subsequently deciding to stay with the Wildcats.

Muschamp ending up as the Gamecocks’ head coach was thought a possibility last year, though he took a circuitous route to get there. After being fired from Florida, it was widely speculated that Muschamp would partner up with Steve Spurrier in Columbia as the latter’s defensive coordinator and the program’s coach in waiting. Spurrier and Muschamp had struck up a relationship due to their ties to Florida, and the timing seemed perfect – Muschamp stows away for a year or two, learns how to better govern a program under a laissez-faire leader and then transition over.

Alas, Coach Boom decided to take his talents back to The Plains of Auburn, where he once roamed the sidelines as a defensive coordinator. What was expected to be a super-coaching cyborg named GusChamp, the chemistry experiment between Muschamp and Tigers head coach Gus Malzahn found tempered success. The Tigers were without defensive stud Carl Lawson for large swaths of time, which hampered their defense. Likewise, at times Muschamp’s fiery personality and preference towards ball-control schemes seemed to clash with Malzahn’s tempo offense.

Now in Columbia, Muschamp gets one crack per year to face his former employer, Florida. The kicker: he’s still on the books at Florida, via severance pay.

During his tenure at Florida, Muschamp compiled a record of 28-21 (17-15). His 2012 team went 11-2 and was an errant fumble against Georgia from playing in the SEC Championship Game – that year’s de facto play-in to the BCS Championship Game. If ever there was a coach that appeared snakebitten, it was Muschamp in Gainesville. His teams were often besieged by injuries, most notably to the offensive line. Beyond that, turnover at offensive coordinator and receivers coach, as well as a blind loyalty to some players undid what were promising teams on paper.

If there’s a knock on Muschamp it’s that he was too strong-handed in controlling his team. He knew how to guide players on defense, but constructing a staff was his Achilles’ heel. Perhaps not-ironically this is a far cry from the final days of Spurrier, where the Head Ball Coach was a figurehead directing all the troops and being too hands-off.

With a strong pedigree – ties to Nick Saban and Mack Brown – it’s safe to assume Muschamp has reflected on the errors of his ways and will change course in his second stint as a head coach. After all, the strength of this year’s SEC East-winning Florida team was defense, and it was all Muschamp’s creation.

South Carolina’s hiring of Muschamp marks the second SEC West defensive coordinator to defect east. Auburn’s Iron Bowl rival Alabama lost Kirby Smart to his alma mater Georgia earlier this week.