Steve Spurrier<\/a> countless times in decades of covering him, being around him and listening to his stories. They never got old. Still don\u2019t.<\/p>\nRival fans abhorred him. They hated his barbs even more, especially when he was winning SEC championships, \u201cpitching it around the ballpark,\u201d scoring points in bunches and rubbing it in their faces. Over the years, some of those same fans have confided in me that deep down they thought some of those barbs were funny, even though they\u2019d never admit it publicly.<\/p>\n
Spurrier wasn\u2019t for everyone. I get it. But he sure as hell was a lot of fun to cover back in the days when you could really get to know coaches and gain the kind of access reporters rarely get now.<\/p>\n
Like him or not, Spurrier changed the way they played football in the SEC with his Fun \u2018n\u2019 Gun offense. As my former colleague at ESPN, Ivan Maisel, so superbly wrote about Spurrier and his impact on the SEC, \u201cPassing was what you did because you couldn\u2019t run. It was an admission of weakness in an old-school league. We can\u2019t control the line of scrimmage, so we\u2019re reduced to throwing over it.\u201d<\/p>\n
That all changed under Spurrier, who led Florida to four straight SEC championships from 1993-96 (the last school to win four in a row) and capped his coaching career by taking South Carolina to unprecedented success with three straight 11-win seasons and three straight top-10 finishes in the polls from 2011-13. The way it ended for Spurrier wasn\u2019t his finest moment when he abruptly stepped down midway through the 2015 season after the Gamecocks lost four of their first six games, but he remains one of the more transcendent figures in college football history.<\/p>\n
To celebrate Spurrier\u2019s 81st birthday, here are some of my favorite moments with the HBC:<\/p>\n
IN 2012, THE GEORGIA-SOUTH CAROLINA GAME moved from Week 2 to Week 6, and I asked Spurrier about playing the Bulldogs later in the season as opposed to earlier.<\/p>\n
His response was vintage: \u201cI don\u2019t know. I sort of always liked playing them that second game because you could always count on them having two or three key players suspended.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t wrong. Georgia had gone through a rash of players being suspended for off-the-field issues. Even then-Georgia coach Mark Right thought it was (kind of) funny.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat sounds like Steve,\u201d Richt said.<\/p>\n
SPURRIER AND NICK SABAN HAD A GOOD RELATIONSHIP, and there was mutual respect. I asked Spurrier about what Saban had done at Alabama following his second national title in 2011, and Spurrier went full-on Spurrier.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got a nice little gig going, a little bit like (John) Calipari. He tells guys, \u2018Hey, three years from now, you\u2019re going to be a first-round pick and go.\u2019 If he wants to be the greatest coach or one of the greatest coaches in college football, to me, he has to go somewhere besides Alabama and win, because they\u2019ve always won there at Alabama,\u201d Spurrier said.<\/p>\n
Saban shook his head and smiled when told of Spurrier\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody might want to let Steve know that LSU had eight losing seasons in 11 years before I got there,\u201d Saban told me.<\/p>\n
AFTER SABAN WON HIS FIFTH NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP at Alabama in 2017, he was already being hounded by retirement speculation. Spurrier gave me one of his familiar \u201cAahs\u201d when I asked him how much longer he thought Saban would go.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told him he won\u2019t retire until he loses three games in a season. He told me, \u2018If I ever lose three games around here again, they might kill me.\u2019 I think he was joking, but I\u2019m not sure,\u201d Spurrier said.<\/p>\n
THE OFFICIAL FLORIDA RECORD BOOK may state otherwise, but Spurrier will tell you that his record at the Swamp, as both a coach and player, is 83-7.<\/p>\n
Just to be clear, that counts a freshman game against Georgia and a flag football game (yes, a flag football game) against the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity on campus a few years after Spurrier had been out of school. Well aware that Spurrier has a photographic memory, I asked him what he remembered about that game.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome fraternity boys wanted to play a bunch of us former players, so we cut off about half the field and played them. We beat them 20-19. Helluva game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
SPURRIER GREW UP IN EAST TENNESSEE as the son of a Presbyterian minister and reveled in poking at the Vols, especially with the Gators owning the rivalry in the 1990s when Tennessee had some of its most talented teams, including Peyton Manning.<\/p>\n
The Gators had won five in a row in the series heading into the 1998 season, and Spurrier was speaking at a function in Panama City Beach, Florida, that spring. He and his longtime football operations director, Jamie Speronis, were walking up the beach, and Spurrier spotted a guy wearing an orange Tennessee shirt.<\/p>\n
As the man approached, Spurrier piped up and said, \u201cHow them mighty Vols going to do this season?\u201d<\/p>\n
The fan, amazingly enough, didn\u2019t recognize Spurrier. He held up his index finger and said defiantly, \u201cNational champs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even today, Spurrier gets a kick out of that exchange.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be damned if he wasn\u2019t right,\u201d Spurrier said. \u201cThey did win it that year.\u201d<\/p>\n
FOR THE RECORD, Spurrier has told me several times that Manning should have won the Heisman Trophy in 1997 and that he voted for Manning.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody knows he should have won it, but as we all know, the best player doesn\u2019t always win the Heisman Trophy,\u201d said Spurrier, who was the 1966 recipient of the award.<\/p>\n
Spurrier said he \u201cprobably would have been a Vol\u201d coming out of high school in Johnson City, Tennessee had the Vols not been running the single-wing offense at the time. He wanted to throw the ball, though, and went to Florida.<\/p>\n
Spurrier said his favorite win over Tennessee didn\u2019t come when he was at Florida, but as the offensive coordinator at Duke when the Blue Devils beat the Vols 25-24 on Sept. 4 to open the 1982 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe World\u2019s Fair was in town, and they had Reggie White, Willie Gault, just a heck of a lot of good players,\u201d Spurrier told me. \u201cIt was my first game coaching in Neyland Stadium. I had been there for games with my dad and brother growing up, but never coached there. So I already had chill bumps walking in there, and then the announcer comes on and says, \u2018It\u2019s Football Time in Tennessee,\u2019 and I almost had tears in my eyes. I was so jacked up. I was telling those guys on our staff, \u2018It doesn\u2019t get any better than this.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a little boy from Tennessee coaching on Rocky Top. That was thrilling.\u201d<\/p>\n
DURING HIS PLAYING DAYS AT FLORIDA, Spurrier got a job in the summer on the stadium maintenance staff thanks to his coach, Ray Graves.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in those days, we didn\u2019t have summer workouts, so my job was repairing the wooden bleachers in the Swamp and fixing the ones that were splintered,\u201d Spurrier once told me. \u201cI\u2019d report to Coach Graves, and most of the time he didn\u2019t have anything for me to do in the afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
So right after lunch, Spurrier would find some golf balls and head to the course.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was my summer, fixing the bleachers at the Swamp in the morning and golf in the afternoon. That would be a violation today, so don\u2019t tell anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
SPURRIER HAS ALWAYS BEEN HESITANT to say which player was the best he ever coached, but he\u2019s quick to tell you who his MVP is \u2013 his wife Jerri. They met when they were students at Florida and will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary this Sept. 14. \u00a0She was by his side when he won the Heisman Trophy in 1966 and by his side every step of the way as he carved out a Hall of Fame coaching career. Spurrier remains one of only four people to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as both a player and coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing would have happened in my coaching or playing career without Jerri,\u201d Spurrier told me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Head Ball Coach turns 81 today, and he\u2019d be the first to tell you that age is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":870976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48,32714],"class_list":{"0":"post-870975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-steve-spurrier"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116440590177799752","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}