SEC agrees to 5 bowl games

Slive said that the league is still in discussion with two or three other bowls --- the AutoZone Liberty Bowl among them — for the last two SEC bowl spots. All the bowl contracts the SEC has agreed to so far have opponents from BCS conferences.

No spearing, please: Bobby Gaston, the SEC's supervisor of officials, said that officials will emphasize enforcing the spearing rule more this season.

"It's hard for an official to determine whether a player is intentionally using his helmet to spear a player," Gaston said. "So we're taking the word 'intentional' out. Anytime we see a player make helmet to helmet contact and leading with the helmet, like on a pass rush, it will be called."

Seeking instant approval: Gaston said that a couple of his instant replay crews will be training at scrimmages at two unidentified league schools on Aug. 13 and Aug. 20.

Gaston said that all replays used this season for review by the instant replay official will come from TV production trucks, not from SEC stadium replay boards. He also said that the SEC has a rule that a play may be replayed just once on a stadium replay board.

Gaston also noted that at all home games for SEC teams, the replay crew will be supplied by the SEC, even though the visiting team in a non-conference game supplies the officials.

"The first case we have of this this season will be Georgia Tech at Auburn," Gaston said. "We'll have a SEC instant replay crew reviewing the calls of an ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) officiating crew."

No swamps in Carolina: South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said he doesn't have a nickname yet for Carolina's home field, Williams-Brice Stadium.

It was Spurrier, as Florida's coach from 1990-2001, who nicknamed Florida's stadium "The Swamp."

"We've had a lot of suggestions," Spurrier said. "One of them was the 'Cockpit' since we're the Gamecocks, but cock fighting is illegal. I think what we'll do is like what a man suggested when he wrote me, that we should just start the season and we'll find a nickname during the course of the games."

Good impression: Carolina tight end Andy Boyd admitted he was wowed when Spurrier first came to campus after being named coach late last November.

"It was like being star-struck, because you had always seen him on TV as a kid," Boyd said. "Over the spring, we got to know him personally and bind to his philosophy. And he worked hard to get to know all of us."

The same, but different

Spurrier was asked the similarities between taking over South Carolina and at Florida where he was named coach in 1990.

"Well, both schools were being investigated by the NCAA, though not many people knew South Carolina was," said Spurrier, drawing a laugh from the crowd.

Family affair: Former Tennessee quarterback C.J. Leak will be reunited with his younger brother, Chris Leak. Chris, a junior, is the starting quarterback at Florida.

''C.J. is looking to get into coaching,'' Florida coach Urban Meyer said. ''He will simply be an office hand, stuffing envelopes and addressing envelopes. We'll make sure that he is an office hand. That is strictly all he will do.''

There's got to be a limit: Just listening to Meyer, you can tell how much he cares about his players and their well being. If it were up to him, he'd spend every day around his team.

There are also some other things Meyer would change if he had his say, such as spending the entire offseason traveling the state to attend various speaking engagements.

''All the Gator clubs and speaking engagements didn't look so bad in the month of May,'' Meyer said. ''I will have to look that over because I'm the type of person that enjoys being around my family and my players. I will be honest, I don't like to do anything else.

''Your job is to coach a football team and make sure of the behavior of the football team and to get to know your guys. That's your job. I understand other things are part of it, as well. I am not sure many other programs ask you to do the kind of things that we were asked to do this spring.''