Hero or villain? Best that ever was or what might have been? Golden god or miscreant? Legend or loser? It’s up to him. “I had a rough spring,” Garcia said. “Thankfully, I had Marcus [Lattimore] and Alshon [Jeffery] and the rest of the players on the team that took to their Twitter accounts and Facebook [to support me]. It really put in my head how much I love these guys. I’m very thankful to still be here.” South Carolina’s incumbent quarterback has said — at least, said when he has been allowed to speak — how grateful and appreciative he is of yet another chance to play for the Gamecocks, following the fourth and fifth suspensions of his checkered career during spring practice. Since returning to USC in May and being fully reinstated to the team just before preseason camp began, Garcia has said he is done with outside distractions and is walking the straight line of behaving himself, concentrating solely on football and leading USC to what is expected — its greatest season in history. He very well might. It was easy to believe Garcia as he sat at the table during Media Day, saying he had finally come to terms with severe issues with maturity and focus, but it was all behind him now. Talking with the quarterback that day, it seemed that it was a mere baby step for him to take over his rightful place atop the USC passing charts.
Past the Past? Going into his fifth season, quarterback Stephen Garcia says he’s focused on the team, not his personal legacy. Photo by Paul Collins
WILL HE LEAD? Stephen Garcia’s Last Chance
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o here he stands, back for a fifth season and a sixth chance. Stephen Garcia knows this is the last shot for him to cement his legacy.
The problem is his past. It will never go away. While Garcia swears he is done with the shenanigans, he said the same thing after his third suspension. And his fourth. Scarcely two weeks after the fourth, he was asked to leave an athletic seminar due to being rude and disruptive, while numerous sources have confirmed that Garcia had alcohol on his breath. That triggered his suspension, which Coach Steve Spurrier, Athletics Director Eric Hyman and USC President Harris Pastides each signed off on, sending Garcia home to sort it all out. “Back at that little seminar, it kind of got a little crazy towards the end and the guy asked me to leave,” Garcia says. “I left.” He called the moderator the next day to apologize, but didn’t realize what was about to occur. “I didn’t think it was going to be this kind of a deal, but it happened,” he said. Spurrier told him that he was welcome to transfer if he wanted to, subtly suggesting that a fresh start might be the best option for everyone involved. Garcia thought about it until his teammates took to their social media outlets to defend him, saying they loved and supported him no matter what he was going through. That caused him to hesitate, then recommit. He took the list of conditions USC gave him in order to be reinstated, accomplished them and came back.
usc VS east carolina: 2011 season openeru