It’s not such a compelling story anymore when Steve Spurrier comes home, although anytime a former national championship coach and Heisman Trophy owner returns to the scene where he found his fame, it’s hard not to notice.
It was while watching a football game at Florida Field — before it was ever known as Ben Hill Griffin Stadium or “The Swamp” — that Spurrier made his decision to become a coach.
A little over thirty years ago when he came the first time just to watch a football game as a fan, Spurrier forevermore changed the landscape at Florida Field/Ben Hill Griffin Stadium — if not the landscape of college football.
Back then, nobody had a clue how good of a coach Steve Spurrier would become someday, including Spurrier himself.
When you’ve been a ball player all your 33 years and run out of teams to play for, the thought soon occurs that you need to find a real job.
That’s how it happened for Spurrier after his pro football career ended. After being drafted No. 1 by the 49ers and being lightly used from 1967-75, he had one season with the original Tampa Bay Bucs expansion franchise in 1976, tried his hand one more time at two other NFL clubs the next summer and called it a career.
“I had to do something,” Spurrier said Tuesday, reflecting on that day when he had an epiphany while watching Doug Dickey’s team. “I didn’t have enough money to lay around like former NFL players do today. So I said, ‘that might be fun, coaching.’ I’d been around some good coaches and also some sorry coaches. And I said, ‘if them boys can make it in coaching I got a chance to make it also.’ So that’s when I sort of got the idea this is what I want to do right here.”
Boy, did he coach after a rough start. Oddly enough, as Doug Dickey’s quarterback, the first quarterback he ever coached was John Brantley III, father of Tim Tebow’s backup.
We all know the rest of that story.
Urban Meyer is appreciative of the legacy he inherited and has made it point to give Spurrier full credit for setting the gold standard at UF. This is not really a week when he prefers to go around raving about the Ol’ Ball Coach but in more private moments Meyer has told me he has great admiration for Spurrier and that the two of them speak often.
This time the more compelling story line about Spurrier is that he and his South Carolina Gamecocks are standing in the way of something The Florida Gators want: Their eighth SEC title and possibly third national championship.
Friendship and reverence ends at 3:30 on Saturday.
Though the Gators are 21-point favorites at home, Spurrier still strikes fear in the hearts of The Gator Nation. His team is playing well, especially on defense, and he has turned around his season in seven weeks.
He is on the record as saying Florida has a better team than last year, when the Gators smoked the Gamecocks, 51-31.
“When we were 1-2, if somebody would have said you’ll be 7-3, we’d be jumping for joy,” Spurrier said of the turnaround. “Every game we’ve lost we’ve led at halftime. And we only lost by a touchdown. We’re a better team now, but we’re not a great offense.”
You sense by the lightness of his comments that the fun is back for the Ol’ Ball Coach. The rumors of his demise were greatly exaggerated. And in a time when some of his old adversaries are biting the dust, Spurrier is talking about extending.
“I told ESPN, ‘I feel like I got four or five more, but that will be about it.’ I’m not going to coach into my seventies like some of these coaches,” he said.
Nothing is forever and job security is scarce, even for those with long track records and even championship credentials. Ask Phil Fulmer, one of two Spurrier rivals who has been fired in recent weeks — Tommy Bowden of Clemson being the other.
“It was surprising because they both signed extensions, and they both got big buyouts,” Spurrier said. “We all know coaching is not forever. Pepper Rodgers used to say there were two kinds of coaches — the ones that got fired and the ones who are going to get fired. I’m going to try and be the kind that never got fired.”
So he makes the second trek to the stadium he nicknamed “The Swamp” as South Carolina’s coach and from the sound of things it won’t be his last.
They are familiar surroundings of course — the spot over there where he kicked the field goal against Auburn that won him the Heisman, that place over there were Danny Wuerffel connected with Ike Hilliard for that touchdown … and, of course, his name on the façade of the South end zone with all those SEC titles and national championship are painted.
I asked him what he’ll feel when his eye catches “Steve Spurrier” up there.
“It will mean a lot more when my coaching days are over and I’m coming into The Swamp to watch ball games,” said Spurrier. “That’s when it will probably sink in, ‘that’s pretty neat.’ Right now, when I go in there I’m trying to help our team win a game. Sometimes when you’re coaching, you don’t pay attention so much to who the opponent is. You’re just trying to coach your team to play as good as it can. That’s where I am mentally for this game Saturday. I’m sure someday it will really neat to come back there and watch the Gators play.”
I didn’t ask Spurrier to confirm this, but what I read that Spurrier reportedly said after Florida national championships in football and basketball sounds like him: “Looks like we turned Ohio State into Runnerup U.”
You see, even Steve Spurrier never falls far from the tree, Down Where the Old Gators Play.