The SoCon Spread

Furman head coach Jimmy Satterfield (1986-1993 /photo courtesy of Furman athletics) On April 18 at Hotel Hartness in Greenville, SC, the South Carolina Football Hall of Fame honored its 2024 Hall-of-Fame Class, in what was its 11th such annual celebration of the best talent to ever play football in the Palmetto State.   Among those honored were a pair Southern Conference legends, as well as a future Southern Conference player, who is headed to Furman University to play for head coach Clay Hendrix's Paladins this fall.  The Citadel's former Hall-of-Fame running back Stump Mitchell and former Furman head coach Jimmy Satterfield were the latest Southern Conference inductees from the Palmetto State, while future Paladin offensive lineman Steven O'Dell (Broome High School) was one of three honorees from the state's prep ranks to win the Bridge Builder Award.' In three separate articles, I will take a look at each honoree, and with both Satterfield and Mitchell, I will ta...

No. 97 Furman defensive tackle Bryce Stanfield (Sept. 19, 2002-Feb. 9, 2024)     In the college football world, the first Wednesday of February is routinely celebrated as national signing day. For Furman football, it was not only signing day, but it was also the final day prior to the start of spring practice. And it’s always a big week leading up to the football game everyone watches—the Super Bowl.  Somehow all that seems trivial now.  The date of February 7, 2024, would end up being a very different day for Furman football. It’s one that will leave an indelible imprint on the minds of Furman’s coaches, players, and the parents and family members of rising senior defensive lineman Bryce Stanfield for all the wrong reasons, as it would be the beginning of a 48-hour period that would have a tragic end. The silver lining in the span was the tremendous outpouring of support from football programs throughout the country, as well as the Furman family with encouragin...

Furman quarterback Tyler Huff vs. Montana The 2023 football season would begin in the heat of Northern Alabama and end in the cold, snowy Big Sky Country of Montana, and in-between, we had one heck of  a football season inside the Southern Conference. It was another season in which the league took a step forward in terms of showing its overall competitiveness nationally now a full decade removed from the departures of league titans Appalachian State and Georgia Southern.  With Furman going on the road and representing the league well in one of the toughest venues in all of Division I college football (FBS or FCS), taking national title participant Montana to overtime in the FCS Quarterfinals before dropping a heartbreaking, 35-28, contest, it went a long way in showing the SoCon--a league with eight national titles in its storied history--was ready to compete again among the newly established bluebloods of the classification. Both the SoCon and Furman have long enjoy...