South Carolina Boots Former Starting Quarterback Stephen Garcia

Garnet And Black Attack, SB Nation’s blog covering the Gamecocks, put the Garcia Era into perspective quite well.

Over at Team Speed Kills, a blog covering the SEC for SB Nation, they also look back at Garcia’s time as a Gamecock with conflicting thoughts.

Garcia plans to make a full statement regarding his dismissal later in the week.

Suspended indefinitely in April, Garcia was fully reinstated for a fifth time in August after agreeing to undergo periodic tests for alcohol usage. A failed alcohol test led to his dismissal from the program on Tuesday.

As for whether or not Stephen will be transferring to a new school to play football, Gary Garcia said “We have a lot of decisions to make right now.”

Garcia’s father said he plans to contact former Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden, as well as others, in asking for guidance on behalf of his son.

Now a new report adds marijuana to the list of reported mistakes. Here’s Jenn Brown sharing news obtained by Chris Low, one of ESPN’s SEC bloggers:

And, yeah, we’re starting to see exactly why Spurrier let a nearby newspaper columnist have it during a standard weekly press conference. Despite the coach’s frustrations with Garcia, he clearly had a sort of stubborn affection for the quarterback. Seeing a young man throw away his last opportunity to use his talents for good would cause anybody to snap.

So it wouldn’t be surprising to find out Garcia’s latest trouble is once again due to partying. Here’s highly regarded former South Carolina beat writer Travis Haney:

Again, that wouldn’t surprise anybody.

Similarly, athletic director Eric Hyman lamented Garcia’s off-field performance:

Garcia was suspended in the offseason for one or another act of rowdiness, one of many such suspensions he’s received during his time in Columbia. He was reinstated just before the season, earning his starting job back from Shaw before handing it right back.

Spurrier told the media Thursday that Garcia is currently in Tampa, FL for his grandfather’s funeral.

He has mentioned that Garcia has a “minor elbow injury” and his status as the backup quarterback for this Saturday against Kentucky.

Despite all the star power, this team was still clearly only going to go as far as the quarterback would allow it to go. That is true in any offense, but it is particularly true in Steve Spurrier’s. At Florida, that was often because of the star power of the position. At South Carolina, it has been as much because of the limitations.

But even that didn’t necessarily seem like a concern. Stephen Garcia had raised his game significantly in 2010. Garcia was a career 55-percent passer, but he upped that to 64 percent last season. His passer rating went from the 110s to 149, his yards-per-attempt average from 6.6 to 8.8. He took fewer sacks as well (his sack rate fell from 7.9 percent to 6.4). With Jeffery emerging as one of the nation’s premier receivers -- few combined a high-volume target rate and a large per-catch average with such a steady catch rate in 2010 -- Garcia’s job became easier, and after battling maturity issues (to say the least) throughout his first two seasons, he seemed to take a demonstrable step forward in this regard. There were fits and starts, sure, but there was also clear progress.

The tipping point appears to be last week’s 16-13 loss to Auburn, in which Garcia went completed nine of his 23 passes for just 160 yards and two picks. The Tigers’ defense entered the contest with the worst pass defense in the SEC.

Here is more details from practice via The State’s Josh Kendall:

A field goal was also blocked.

Vanderbilt intercepted Garcia for the fourth time at the start of the fourth quarter, but the Gamecocks defense held strong and forced a three-and-out.

For more news, notes and coverage of this game, visit our Vanderbilt blog Anchor of Gold and our South Carolina blog Garnet and Black Attack.