dpodoll68
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SI: Jeffery's success extra sweet with hometown South Carolina team
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...h-carolina/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t12_a1
Selected excerpts:
- Alshon Jeffery could have done this anywhere. He knows that. Any coach in America could have taken Jeffery's oven-mitt hands and street brawler's body and put them to proper use. The South Carolina wide receiver could still be an All-America candidate, first-round draft prospect and red zone monster no matter where he'd gone to ply his trade.
It just never would have felt this good.
"It's so much more satisfying, being here," said Jeffery, a Saint Matthews, South Carolina native who originally committed to Southern Cal before choosing the Gamecocks. "If I had gone to the West Coast or somewhere else, I wouldn't have been able to do as much for the program. Here, we're trying to start something. We're just trying to keep kids in state and represent."
- And then there was a speech, delivered by coach Steve Spurrier over a meal, that told Jeffery what awaited him in Columbia.
"He looked at him, and he told him that football programs are like math equations," said Walter Wilson, Jeffery's high school coach. "He said it's one thing to go into an equation that already works, to be just another variable. It's another thing to be the independent variable, the variable that makes the equation come together.
"He said the equation at Southern Cal works every year. South Carolina needed that variable, and that could be Alshon."
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...h-carolina/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t12_a1
Selected excerpts:
- Alshon Jeffery could have done this anywhere. He knows that. Any coach in America could have taken Jeffery's oven-mitt hands and street brawler's body and put them to proper use. The South Carolina wide receiver could still be an All-America candidate, first-round draft prospect and red zone monster no matter where he'd gone to ply his trade.
It just never would have felt this good.
"It's so much more satisfying, being here," said Jeffery, a Saint Matthews, South Carolina native who originally committed to Southern Cal before choosing the Gamecocks. "If I had gone to the West Coast or somewhere else, I wouldn't have been able to do as much for the program. Here, we're trying to start something. We're just trying to keep kids in state and represent."
- And then there was a speech, delivered by coach Steve Spurrier over a meal, that told Jeffery what awaited him in Columbia.
"He looked at him, and he told him that football programs are like math equations," said Walter Wilson, Jeffery's high school coach. "He said it's one thing to go into an equation that already works, to be just another variable. It's another thing to be the independent variable, the variable that makes the equation come together.
"He said the equation at Southern Cal works every year. South Carolina needed that variable, and that could be Alshon."
