With the retirement of Steve Spurrier, college football is losing a one-of-a-kind personality and one of the sport’s greatest coaches.
The news broke Monday that Spurrier would be stepping down at South Carolina effective immediately, bringing an end to his incredible run as a college football coach (out of respect, we’ll ignore his NFL tenure).
In his 26 seasons as the collegiate level, Spurrier went 228-89-2. He inherited three woebegone programs (Duke, Florida and South Carolina) and turned them into winners.
He spent just three years at Duke, from 1987 to 1989, but in that time was able to guide the Blue Devils to an ACC title in his final season at the school. Duke hadn’t won a conference title in 27 years prior to the 1989 season, and it hasn’t done it again in the 26 years since Spurrier’s departure.
From there he moved down to Gainesville to take the reins at his alma mater.
Though Florida is now regarded as a perennial powerhouse (or at least it was before Will Muschamp showed up), the Gators were far from that prior to Spurrier’s arrival in 1990.
However, the Head Ball Coach quickly turned Florida into a national power, altering the way football was played in the SEC along the way.
Spurrier brought a pass-oriented “Fun ‘n’ Gun” offense to the SEC, which had traditionally been dominated by run-oriented offenses. In Spurrier’s 12 years at the helm, the Gators captured six conference titles and won a national championship during the 1996 season, the first in school history.
After a failed tenure in the NFL with Washington, the Head Ball Coach returned to the SEC in 2005, this time with the Gamecocks.
South Carolina had long been a moribund program, but Spurrier reversed its fortunes, just like he had at Duke and Florida. Though the Gamecocks never won a conference title in the ruthless meat grinder that is the SEC during his tenure, they did make the SEC championship game for the first time in 2010. In addition, he guided South Carolina to 11-2 records in each year from 2011 to 2013, the best three-year stretch in school history.
But Spurrier wasn’t just as tremendous football coach. He was also the sport’s greatest personality.
In a profession dominated by vanilla personalities that rely on coach speak and spout clichés like it’s a bodily function, Spurrier easily stood out with his penchant for speaking his mind and taking jabs at his rivals.
Florida State was “Free Shoes University.” He loved playing Georgia early in the year “because you could always count on them having two or three key players suspended.” When a fire at an Auburn library burned 20 books, he quipped, “The real tragedy was that 15 hadn’t been colored yet.”
He was a media darling and a fresh change of pace from most of his peers. With Spurrier gone, it’s essentially up to LSU head coach and noted grass connoisseur Les Miles to add a little flavor to his otherwise bland profession.
Though South Carolina stumbled out to a 2-4 start to the year and it was only a matter of time before Spurrier hung up his visor, it’s still a sad day for college football. At every stop during his career as a college coach, Steve Spurrier left the program in better shape than when he inherited it. He finished as the winningest coach at both Florida and South Carolina, and helped change the way football is played in the SEC. A strong argument could be made that he had a greater effect of the conference than any coach other than the legendary Bear Bryant.
He’ll go down as one of the greatest coaches and personalities in the history of college football, a man who truly stood out from the pack in his profession in a way that few others ever have. Though his trolling may have got on the nerves of some (I’m looking at you, Clemson), his candor will be missed by many.
Now get this man on College Gameday already.
Are you saddened by Steve Spurrier’s retirement? Where does he place on the list of greatest college football coaches of all-time? Let Zach know at zach.rastall@dailycardinal.
