I step off an elevator, and he looks up and says, "Come in."

Wonder if they do it this way at Florida, Georgia or Tennessee.

In the hour that I'm there, Spurrier jumps from subject to subject, from his desk to the big window that overlooks Williams-Brice Stadium to the pictures on various walls of family and former players.

One of the pictures is of his 1989 Duke team celebrating at North Carolina after beating the Tar Heels 41-0 to win a share of the ACC championship.

"We weren't trying to rub it in," Spurrier says.

He promised his players they could pose beneath the goal post if they won a championship, and the goal post happened to belong to the Tar Heels.

Spurrier is 63, tan and fit. He wears a white Under Armour golf shirt and mustard-colored shorts with pictures of palm trees. He talks fast, talks with his hands, asks me if I know his Uncle Bob in Charlotte.

I do not.

"You want to talk to Uncle Bob?" he asks.

Does Uncle Bob want to talk to me?

"He reads the paper," says Spurrier. "He'll know you. He probably won't stop talking."

Spurrier opens a notebook crammed with handwritten numbers.

"Here's Uncle Bob's," he says.

Here's Spurrier's: 21-16.

In three seasons at South Carolina, Spurrier has gone 7-5, 8-5 and 6-6. By the school's standards, that's good work. But Spurrier's standards are not South Carolina's. He won six SEC championships and one national championship at Florida, and, more impressively, he won at the Duke that's in Durham.

"We're just not quite good enough, and we hope that we can get there," Spurrier says.

Even more than Uncle Bob, that's his theme. He can be talking about how excited he is about junior quarterback Tommy Beecher or the new defensive coordinator or taking a shot at Clemson's schedule and he'll suddenly say, "But, anyway, maybe someday we can get there. It's doable."

There has never been doable at South Carolina. The SEC is the best conference in college football, and if you ranked its members, the Gamecocks traditionally would be Among Other Schools Receiving Votes.

Spurrier, whose teams opens the season by hosting N.C. State at 8 p.m. Aug. 28, says that when he arrived the talent wasn't comparable to Florida's, Georgia's or Tennessee's.

"We're getting close to their talent level," he says. "When you see our guys run onto the field, we're going to look like an SEC team now."

Spurrier told the media last week that if South Carolina doesn't win it should look for another coach.

"Oh, that was just common sense," he says. "If after seven, eight years, I'm not competing for the conference championship here, they ought to get a new coach. You can't settle for mediocrity. Steve Spurrier's the coach and you're going 7-5? Let's not be happy with that."

He talks about his defense and his offensive line. In the old days, the only line for which he was known was the dig he took at an opponent. But how do you take a shot when you don't win?

Well, there is this school in the other part of the state ...

"I wish one of the sports writers, when they start picking everybody's record this year, would write how they'd do if Clemson played South Carolina's schedule and South Carolina played Clemson's schedule," Spurrier says.

The truth is that if Clemson played South Carolina's schedule, Tigers fans would stop talking about going undefeated and start talking about going above .500.

"But anyway, that's the way it is," Spurrier says. "There's no big deal about it."

The big deal is competing for the SEC championship.

"We're trying to do things that have never been done before," he says.

Can you?

"With the schedule we play, it isn't going to be easy," says Spurrier. "But it can be done. I keep telling everybody if Wake Forest can sneak in there and win an ACC championship, certainly South Carolina can sneak in there and win an SEC."

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