How players are preparing for reunion with Will Muschamp when USC faces Georgia
The optics are, admittedly, bizarre.
For almost half a decade, Will Muschamp patrolled the sidelines in Columbia as the head football coach at South Carolina.
On Saturday, though, Muschamp will stride along the hedges at Sanford Stadium in Athens as he ditches his garnet and black for the red of his alma mater when No. 2 Georgia takes on South Carolina.
“Muschamp is a great coach,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said during his Monday press conference. “I feel like he has a plan for us to be prepared and to have us in the right position to be successful.”
Saturday, Muschamp will reconvene — or at least stand opposite — slews of players he and his staff identified, recruited and signed at South Carolina during his nearly five-year tenure with the Gamecocks.
It’ll also mark the first time he’ll meet his former employer since his ousting in the middle of the 2020 season. The University of South Carolina paid Muschamp a lump sum of $12.9 million in a contract buyout settlement.
Hired as a defensive analyst over the offseason — at a salary of $300,000 — Muschamp has been thrust into an on-field role at Georgia after assistant coach Scott Cochran took a leave from the program due to undisclosed health reasons.
Smart downplayed the connection during his Monday press conference. Shane Beamer, too, added that Muschamp might be able to help recognize personnel, but the schemes and staff are almost completely different.
“You guys write about it, make a big deal about it, and it’s not that big a deal,” Smart said. “He’s not in their meetings, he doesn’t know their game plan. He does know who their players are, and I just don’t know how that helps you a lot.”
But for what Beamer and Smart might see as an overplayed narrative, the connections between Muschamp and South Carolina’s roster run deep.
Converted receiver Dakereon Joyner, who quarterbacked South Carolina during an upset win over Georiga in Athens in 2019 alongside Ryan Hilinski, reflected back on the first conversation he had with Muschamp as a high-schooler.
Rated the No. 4 player in South Carolina and a four-star recruit recruit in the 2017 class, per 247Sports Composite, Joyner was at USC for a camp when he and Muschamp first traded words. The pair discussed staying home and bolstering the in-state feel for the program.
Joyner’s eyes light up when he thinks back to the pitch.
“(Muschamp is a) great guy,” he said. “I’ll be excited to see him after the game, but it is what it is.”
Offensive lineman Jovaughn Gwyn, like Joyner, was one of eight four-star recruits Muschamp signed in the class of 2018.
Speaking with reporters during South Carolina’s weekly press conference Tuesday, Gwyn echoed Joyner’s sentiments. Muschamp, at least in part, is why Gwyn ended up in Columbia.
“He was a great coach,” Gwyn said. “He’s the reason why I came here. I have respect for him.”
Even Beamer has connections, albeit limited ones, with Muschamp. The two spoke a handful of times in December and January about the South Carolina job and questions Beamer had on personnel and other pieces to coaching in Columbia.
The connection isn’t quite as deep as, say, Smart and Muschamp — who worked on staffs at Valdosta State and LSU and both played at UGA — but Beamer still speaks highly of South Carolina’s leading man.
“(Muschamp is) somebody I have a ton of respect for,” Beamer said Sunday on his teleconference with local reporters. “I know he’s doing a phenomenal job for Kirby (Smart) over there in Athens and I know it’ll be an exciting night for him on Saturday night as well.”
Muschamp storylines aside, this weekend pits an undefeated South Carolina squad against a No. 2-ranked Georgia squad that boasts national title aspirations. Muschamp is just a small piece of what USC will face.
There will still be pleasantries and handshakes shared before and after the game. In between? South Carolina will look to spring an upset in Athens for its second consecutive trip.
Unlike the 2019 edition, though, Muschamp will stand on the Bulldogs sidelines.
“I’ll probably see him before the game, after the game — chop it up and say, ‘What’s up,’ ” South Carolina running back Kevin Harris said through a smile. “That’s really it. We’ve got a game to play.”
This story was originally published September 14, 2021 at 2:54 PM with the headline "How players are preparing for reunion with Will Muschamp when USC faces Georgia."
