The 2011 South Carolina Gamecocks football team represented the University of South Carolina in the 2011 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The Gamecocks were led by seventh-year head coach Steve Spurrier and played their home games at WilliamsâÂÂBrice Stadium. They were a member of the East Division of the Southeastern Conference and finished 11âÂÂ2 for the season and 6âÂÂ2 in SEC play.
The defending SEC East champions, South Carolina started the season 4âÂÂ0 and ranked No. 10 in the country. However, in the fifth game of the season, they lost at home to unranked defending national champion Auburn, resulting in long-time starting quarterback Stephen Garcia being replaced by Connor Shaw. Shaw would subsequently start almost every game until the end of the 2013 season, becoming the winningest quarterback in school history along the way, and never losing at home. South Carolina would only lose one more game the rest of the season, a blowout on the road at No. 8 Arkansas. While the Gamecocks finished undefeated against the East Division, the losses to Auburn and Arkansas left them second in the division standings behind Georgia. In the Capital One Bowl, they defeated No. 21 Nebraska 30âÂÂ13, the program's first bowl victory since 2006. The eleven wins were a school record; it was only the second time in the school's 119-year football history that it won as many as ten games. They also finished eighth in the final Coaches' Poll and ninth in the final AP PollâÂÂtheir first-ever top-10 finishes in any major poll.
The 2011 Gamecocks were arguably the most talented team in school history. They are the only team in South Carolina's history with two future retired jerseys (Alshon Jeffery and Jadeveon Clowney). Melvin Ingram was a consensus All-American, only the third in program history. Marcus Lattimore was a frontrunner for the Heisman Trophy until a season-ending injury. Clowney, the highest-rated high school football recruit of all time, was named the SEC Freshman of the Year. The team had three future first-round NFL draft picks and sixteen total future NFL draft picks, the most in program history.
On April 10, 2011, the Garnet squad defeated the Black squad, 21âÂÂ17, in the annual Garnet & Black Spring Game, in front of a crowd of 30,100.
Marcus Lattimore was injured during this game and he remained out for the remainder of the season.
Projected starters and primary backups versus Clemson on November 26, 2011.
The University of South Carolina was investigated in 2011 by the NCAA after it came to light that student-athletes (including some football players) had received an estimated $59,000 in impermissible benefits, mainly the result of discounted living expenses at a local hotel. The school imposed its own punishment, paying $18,500 in fines and cutting three football scholarships in each of the 2013 and 2014 seasons. The school also reduced its official visits for the 2012âÂÂ13 year, from 56 to 30. The NCAA ruled this self-imposed punishment as adequate, stating that "the violations were limited in scope" and "there was no unethical conduct in this case", and went on to praise the school's handling of the affair, with the chairman of the NCAA infractions committee stating, "This has been one of the best cases I have seen from a process standpoint. . . . In this case, it was obvious to the committee that the university wanted to get to the truth." The commissioner went on to state that USC "wanted to ask all the hard questions of all the right people and, in some cases, they even went beyond what the NCAA staff was doing."