College football analyst Jesse Palmer made an appearance on The Paul Finebaum Show on Friday and made some interesting comments regarding Steve Spurrier, the Tennessee Vols and the SEC East race this season.

Here are the highlights:

On calling the South Carolina-North Carolina opener on Sept. 3

“Steve Spurrier is 70 years old and I know just a few weeks ago he told everyone he was going to coach another five or six years. I was really impressed watching his energy in practice. It’s not like he’s a guy checking in on different stations. He’s still coaching. He’s got his hands on the quarterbacks. He’s involved in the offense. The energy at practice was really exciting. It looked like a very, very motivated South Carolina team.”

On Spurrier’s influence on his life

“I would say he’s probably the most influential person I’ve had in my life outside of my mom and my dad. I was very fortunate to play for him at an interesting time, a great time in his career. Obviously we had some good teams and he coached a lot of really good quarterbacks during his tenure at Florida. I don’t know if Ie ever been around a guy who was as obsessed with winning and perfection as he was. He had a tremendous work ethic. Every day we took the field at practice, anything associated with football, if you didn’t give 100 percent, you heard about it.”

On Spurrier’s future

“I think he’s very motivated. I think after this offseason, this may be the most motivated he’s been at least since he’s been at South Carolina. I think he’ll admit to you last year there were times he felt down. This guy, his main goal is to win an SEC Championship. I really believe that is the driving force and catalyst during his time at South Carolina. He feels like the team certainly has something to prove and in a lot of ways, may have rejuvenated him a little bit.”

What if the Gamecocks lose the opener?

“He’s kind of the product of his own success because of the stretch of years we talked about. The expectation level at South Carolina is at an all-time high. It’s not just North Carolina and Georgia. Their opening stretch of games is absolutely brutal. It could get really bad, really fast. they lost a lot of firepower on offense. If it gets bad early, it could get really bad really, really quick. It’s important for South Carolina to come out of the gate really strong against UNC.”

On Jim McElwain

“Gator fans don’t like to hear this, it’s going to take time.  I think the biggest enemy the Florida Gators have right now is inexperience. It won’t be this year, I know the SEC East has certainly been the weaker of the two divisions, but I do think it’s going to take a couple years and couple recruiting classes, but I do think he’s the guy to do it.”

On team to watch this fall

“there’s no big surprise about this, but one team I’m really excited to watch this year is Tennessee. As well as butch Jones as recruited over the last two years, I think that needs to start translating into wins and I think that will. Joshua Dobbs will be the best quarterback on the field each and every game Tennessee plays. Dobbs’ running ability can kind of counteract that poor pass protection. Tennessee is a team that, I said this back in March or April, I think is going to win the SEC East. This is year they do it for the first time since 2007.”