Gordon, a state officer with the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said Spurrier’s call for the removal of the flag was “the moral equivalent of calling our ancestors ‘nappy-headed hos.’”
Posted on Sun, Apr. 15, 2007
Spurrier: Removing flag would help S.C.
By JOSEPH PERSON
Steve Spurrier does not want to be a politician.
But the USC football coach believes the state would be a better place to live if the Confederate battle flag were removed from the State House grounds.
Spurrier brought up the flag issue Friday while accepting a leadership award from City Year at the service group’s Ripples of Hope banquet at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center.
Spurrier said Saturday that he believed he was in an appropriate setting to voice his opinion.
“It would make us a more progressive, better state, I think, if the flag was removed. But I’m not going to go on any big campaign to have it removed. That’s not my position,” Spurrier said in an interview with The State. “But if anyone were to ask me, that would certainly be my position. And I think everyone in there, it was their position, too.”
Spurrier said it was “embarrassing” last year when someone waved a Confederate battle flag behind the set of ESPN’s “GameDay” before the Gamecocks’ home game against Tennessee.
“Some clown or some dude was waving that big ol’ Confederate flag right behind them about the whole time they were on,” Spurrier said.
State legislators have said little about the flag since reaching a compromise in 2000 that moved the flag from atop the Capitol dome to a Confederate monument on the State House grounds.
“I’m not trying to be a politician. I just gave my opinion,” Spurrier said. “I did mention that if our team wins big and wins the conference championship, then I’ll have a bigger voice. That’s just the way life is. If we stumble-bumble around, no one gives a dang what I say.
“If I want to make a change to hopefully make this state better, we need to win big.”
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