It only took watching one practice for Stephen Garcia to realize how much different South Carolina’s football team is now compared with when he played for Steve Spurrier.
“The amount of organization that is there compared to when I was playing, it’s night and day,” Garcia said. “There is no stone left unturned. There are 13 periods, and it’s boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.”
Periods are the increments, usually five minutes each, that measure South Carolina’s practice, helping coaches know when to move from one drill to the next. Under Steve Spurrier, the Gamecocks did not have practice periods, relying mostly on Spurrier’s gut, Garcia said.