CHARLOTTE, N.C. — From the time his tenure at South Carolina ended following the 1993 season, Sparky Woods was determined to stay in the game.
After serving an offensive assistant with the New York Jets, Woods had stops as an offensive coordinator at Memphis, Virginia and Mississippi State before taking over as the running backs coach at Alabama. He was then named the head coach at VMI and after four seasons there, Sparky joined the Richmond Spider program as running backs coach along with serving as the recruiting coordinator and co-special teams coordinator.
After four seasons with the Spiders, Woods joined Mack Brown’s staff as a senior advisor to the head coach. While he does no on-the-field coaching, Sparky’s job as an advisor keeps him quite busy with running clinics, camps and dealing with the officials and whatever duty the head coach needs him to tackle.
This isn’t the first time Woods has been on the opposing sidelines of a South Carolina game. When he was in Starkville, Woods returned to Williams-Brice Stadium when Mississippi State came to Columbia. In 2019, Woods was on the staff when North Carolina and South Carolina kicked off the season in Charlotte.