Spurrier 1: More humble coach wants to make Gamecocks winners

The "newspaper boys," as Spurrier likes to call sports writers, will be introduced to a toned-down Spurrier, who had the chips knocked off his shoulders after losing seasons in 2002 and ’03 and a 12-20 record with the NFL’s Washington Redskins.

He may even repeat something he said earlier this summer, something no one ever thought would come from the coach who took no prisoners when his Florida teams dominated the 1990s with six SEC titles and a national championship.

"Maybe (before in college), I was a little arrogant," Spurrier admitted.

Well, yes, ordering up a late touchdown pass in a 52-0 victory over Mississippi State in 2001, then explaining it was revenge for a Florida student manager getting cold cocked after State’s victory in Starkville the year before, is a tad over the edge.

"Maybe I ran my mouth more than I should," Spurrier hedged.

Certainly, playing in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando in 1998 and saying, "I’d like to thank the (Tennessee) Vols for letting us use their winter home," wasn’t exactly a veiled jab.

"When you’ve got a real good team, maybe you feel like you have more answers than you really do," Spurrier said.

Like in 1995, when Spurrier was asked why he scored a last-minute touchdown in a 52-17 win at Georgia, he explained that it was because no one had ever scored 50 against the Bulldogs in Athens.

"Hopefully, I’ve learned some humility and a greater respect for all coaches," Spurrier said.

Huh?

Is this really the ol’ Ball Coach? Darth Visor? The man who once hung 73 points on Kentucky and 72 on Vanderbilt, a coach who still has the top four scoring teams in SEC history, someone whose 81.7 winning percentage (122-27-1 from 1990-2001) is second in the league behind Tennessee’s fabled Gen. Robert Neyland?

"Our first goal is to win more than we lose," Spurrier humbly said of this upcoming season. "Don’t set your goals too high if you can’t reach them. Then hopefully someday, we can put our predictions and goals a lot higher."

Quick! Somebody call the police. Who is this guy? They’ve kidnapped Steve Spurrier!

Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina

Spurrier has yet to coach one snap in a game at South Carolina. He has yet to throw it deep, yet to have his offense short-circuit a scoreboard, yet to spike his visor in frustration.

But from Columbia, S.C. to Birmingham, Ala., and even to Gainesville, Fla., where he built his reputation as the best offensive mind in the college ranks, his presence has rumbled like a late-afternoon Southern summer thunderstorm.

At South Carolina, where Spurrier was named coach last Nov. 23, more than 63,000 season tickets have been sold. Gamecock Club boosters have collected more than $13 million in pledges, surpassing last year’s fund-raising by a million dollars. The first three games are on national television.

The State newspaper in Columbia has been tracking Spurrier in the offseason like an approaching hurricane. Recently, the paper conducted a question-and-answer session with Spurrier about his well-known passion for golf. The story ran on the front of the sports section with a color picture of Spurrier and his golf bag, along with a graphic breaking down his clubs, balls, headcovers and bag tags.

In Birmingham, the SEC expects a record 600 media members at its annual three-day preseason interview sessions, with media members from as far away as Minneapolis, Dallas, Washington, Kansas City and Providence.

"We have four new coaches in the league, but I think there’s a broad-based national interest in the return to the conference of Steve Spurrier," said Charles Bloom, the SEC’s associate commissioner for media relations.

In Gainesville, radio station WBXY-FM signed a contract this summer to broadcast South Carolina’s games and Spurrier’s weekly call-in show.

"Another station already has the Gators’ broadcast rights, so getting coach Spurrier (and South Carolina) is the next best thing," said Steve Cox, WBXY program director. "I’m sure coach Spurrier is happy because it helps give him a bit of a recruiting edge."

On Dec. 30, 2003, Spurrier walked away from the final three years of a five-year, $25 million deal with the Redskins, the richest coaching contract in the NFL at the time when he signed it, on Jan. 14, 2002. His immediate plan was to stay out of coaching for two seasons.

"When Steve quit and said he wanted to take two years off, I think he meant it, because he didn’t anticipate a change in the college coaching landscape," said Jimmy Sexton, Spurrier’s Memphis-based agent.

"But he didn’t anticipate some major jobs coming open during and after last season, such as Florida, South Carolina and LSU. It’s easy for a coach to say January through July that he doesn’t miss coaching. But in August when the grass is cut on the field to start practice, they miss having a whistle around their neck like they have for all those years."

Spurrier played so much golf after his resignation that he even got tired of the game. His wife, Jerri, said she knew it was time for him to get back into coaching when they attended a high school powder-puff football game coached by their son, Scotty, and the ol’ coach was trying to coach from the stands.

Gainesville calling?

Things got interesting when Florida announced last Oct. 25, two days after losing 38-31 to 24-point underdog Mississippi State, that it was firing Ron Zook, Spurrier’s successor, at the end of the season.

Naturally, the only person who could ever replace Spurrier as Florida’s coach —Spurrier —happened to be looking for work.

Gainesville (Fla.) Sun columnist Pat Dooley said the sentiment among the Gator Nation over a Spurrier return was 50-50.

"If you took a poll, a lot of people wanted him back," Dooley said. "But there were a lot of big-money boosters who didn’t want him back. There was a feeling that because of his age that he’d be here only six or seven seasons.

"There were some people who felt he could come back and tarnish his legacy."

So was there ever a serious chance that Spurrier would have returned to Florida?

There was a meeting scheduled between Spurrier, Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley and school president Dr. Bernie Machen, who took over at Florida in January 2004.

"Certainly, there were some issues between him (Spurrier) and Foley, though they claim to be friends," Dooley said. "Machen said that they were also considering several other candidates, and it gave Spurrier the feeling that they didn’t know if they wanted him to come back or not.

"Foley told me that if he and Spurrier had sat down and that if Spurrier ‘had told us he wanted to come back, we would had hired him on the spot.’ I don’t know if that would have really happened."

Spurrier fired a preemptive strike, removing his name for a possible second tour of duty in Gainesville.

"I really believe the president wanted to get his own guy," Spurrier said. "After thinking it over, I felt like that was not the best situation for me or Florida. If it worked out that I’d gone back, I would just be trying to redo what we’d already done."

Sexton said that former Carolina athletic director Mike McGee had contacted Spurrier directly about the job, a pending vacancy until Lou Holtz was ready to publicly announce his retirement.

Holtz told McGee on Oct. 31 after a 43-29 loss to Tennessee the previous day that he would resign at the end of the season. McGee asked Holtz if he had any objections to pursuing Spurrier and Holtz replied, "Steve Spurrier can do things for this program I couldn’t."

"Steve called me and felt like South Carolina was a really good opportunity," Sexton said. "He liked the fact they were the flagship school in a southern state, liked they were in the SEC, and really liked they were in the SEC East."

A phone call Dooley made to Spurrier in late December, after he had taken the South Carolina job, then been briefly rumored for the LSU opening, revealed Spurrier’s thinking on why he chose a new locale.

"I called him and he was watching college football on TV — he loves to watch college football," Dooley said. "I asked him about any interest in the LSU job, and he said, ‘No, they’ve already won an SEC Championship, a national championship.’

"He wanted to go to a place where he could turn it around, like he did at Duke and Florida. He knew South Carolina had Florida resources. In the end, I don’t think Florida wanted him and he didn’t really want Florida."