This was unexpected, yes. But it can't be considered surprising. No way.
Not if you've seen Steve Spurrier's demeanor in recent weeks. The man had one eye on the beach. He didn't bite even when reporters lobbed him softballs that gave him an opportunity to spin that train wreck in something of a positive light.
The thing I simply can't wrap my mind around: What was Spurrier seeing before the season when he went on that bizarre tirade? What was he seeing in that roster when he expressed confidence that they were going to get back to winning?
He's one of the greatest coaches in college football history, without a doubt. You'd think he'd have an ability to soberly look at that team and recognize that they weren't talented enough to beat many people -- let alone the people they were accustomed to beating during the remarkable run of three straight 11-win seasons.
He did great things in Columbia, given their sorry history. Whatever they choose to do to honor the man, naming the field for him or whatever, is absolutely justified. But when we're looking back at how it all went sour, it simply has to be the inability to cash in on the elevated profile with recruits.
For whatever reason -- likely not backfilling with capable recruiters after the departures of Shane Beamer, Brad Lawing, Ellis Johnson, and others -- they took their eye off the recruiting ball. And talent procurement simply has to be a way of life.
Almost exactly three years ago, South Carolina looked like maybe the best team in the country when it ripped apart Georgia. Now they are pretty closely fitting the definition of a dumpster fire. Amazing.
A few Spurrier links:
-- Manie Robinson of The Greenville News says Spurrier aimed high and shot straight.
Yet, through the two decades before Spurrier’s arrival, 7-6 was considered fine dining in Columbia.
Carolina won at least seven games in merely six of 20 seasons from 1985 to 2004. The Gamecocks won at least seven games in nine of Spurrier’s first 10 years.
Spurrier made South Carolina football relevant. He made it enticing for coveted recruits. He made it entertaining for a national audience. He made it attractive for his successor.
According to figures compiled by USA Today, Spurrier’s projected 2015 salary of $4,028,600 ranks 15th among Division I bowl subdivision coaches. It ranks seventh among the 13 SEC coaches included in the compilation.
That competitive compensation package, combined with immaculate facilities, SEC membership and a supportive administration, should help USC lure a reputable replacement. Someone who can revive the passion and the promise of the program. Someone who can restore the recruiting pipelines. Someone who will not cower at the daunting task of following a legend.
Spurrier competed fiercely, coached firmly and managed stubbornly without ever appearing to take the game too seriously. He spoke in no uncertain terms, and he left the game on his own terms.
With his visor and his vigor.
-- Chris Low of ESPN has been close with Spurrier for a while. He reflects in this column.
But Spurrier's career was about so much more than numbers.
"Nobody jabbed at you the way coach Spurrier would, and let me tell you. He jabbed at everybody," said Texas coach Charlie Strong, who worked under Spurrier on the Florida staff in the 1990s. "Most of the time, all you could do was laugh because he just said what a lot of other people thought. There won't ever be another one like him because coaches nowadays are too concerned about how it sounds. With him, he just said it."
Spurrier was the king of the passing game, shaking up the three-plays-and-cloud-of-dust SEC when he returned to his alma mater as head coach in 1990, but he was also the king of the one-liner.
There are too many gems to possibly name them all. But a sampling:
"You know what FSU stands for, don't you? Free Shoes U.
"You can't spell Citrus without UT"
"I always liked playing Georgia the second game of the season because you could always count on them having two or three players suspended."
"Peyton Manning came back to Tennessee for his senior year because he wanted to be first three-time MVP of the Citrus Bowl."
"He's probably the most competitive guy I've ever known, but he's also one of the most genuine guys I've ever known," said Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops, who was Spurrier's defensive coordinator at Florida and remains one of Spurrier's closest friends. "He's special. He really is and of those guys you come across in life that makes you better just having had a chance to know him."
Nearly 20 years later, Stoops still laughs when he thinks about Spurrier looking at him out in the surf while riding waves near Spurrier's Crescent Beach, Florida beach house one early September day and chirping, "Bobby, you think those Tennessee boys are body-surfing right now?"
And this:
He loved going against the grain and loved the gamesmanship even more. After all, what other coach purposely leaves a bogus offensive tips sheet lying around and hoping another team might find it?
That's what Spurrier did in the bathroom of a movie theater in Maryville, Tennessee near the hotel where the Gators were staying the Friday night before their game with the Vols back in the early 1990s. A few years earlier, the whole "faxgate" scandal had erupted when former Tennessee assistant Jack Sells was caught by a Kinko's employee near Tennessee's campus faxing diagrams and notes from the Vols' playbook to then-Florida defensive coordinator Ron Zook.
The hilarious thing about Spurrier leaving that dummy tips sheet is that one of Florida's security officials brought it to him as they were leaving and told him that one of the players must have dropped it.
"No, take it back. We left it there on purpose," Spurrier howled.
-- Kevin Scarbinsky of the Alabama paper reflects.
Stand down, you Sabanistas. I didn't say Spurrier was the best. Nick Saban's won four times as many national championships as Spurrier's single big ring, and Urban Meyer won twice as many in Gainesville in half the time.
If you really ponder it, despite averaging 10 wins a year and winning six SEC titles in 12 seasons, Spurrier didn't squeeze every last drop of sunshine out of his time at Florida. He won six SEC titles at a school that had never won one it didn't have to give back, but he also had a losing record against Bobby Bowden and Florida State.
Spurrier gave the Gators their first national title, beating that dadgum Free Shoes University, no less, but it only squared his record in national championship games. The year before, Tom Osborne and Nebraska had shucked him 62-24.
But neither Saban nor Meyer changed the game the way Spurrier did, and no one has ever taken more pleasure in outsmarting you and letting you know about it afterward.
-- Pat Forde of Yahoo! opines.
On a day when all hell broke loose in college football, this news was the capper. One of the greatest coaches of the modern era suddenly hung it up Monday night, reportedly telling his team he was retiring and that an interim coach will be named Tuesday. Spurrier’s retirement is not a shock in and of itself, but the timing surely is. His team is lousy this year – 2-4 and on its way to a losing record – yet bailing out midyear was not something anyone saw coming. The irony is that Spurrier is getting out five days before facing Vanderbilt – a program he beat 20 times in 22 meetings. Spurrier modernized the Southeastern Conference in the 1990s at Florida, winning six league titles in 12 seasons. And he was a larger-than-life character, thoroughly full of himself when things were rolling. Spurrier spared few rivals from smart-aleck remarks and run-up-the-score touchdowns, making him a coach opposing fans both feared and loathed. The sport will be a poorer place without him, but the golf courses of the South will be that much more lively.
-- USA Today takes a look at how Spurrier left his stamp on college football.
He liked being called an "offensive mastermind," and earned the title: Spurrier led the embrace of the passing game across college football, now the in-vogue style in every conference in the country. He liked being the smartest guy in the room, and in the world of football coaches, he was.
He rewrote record books. Had a spotty record of antagonizing and intimidating the media. Won games. Never won a conference title with South Carolina. Took home one national title, lost another. At Florida, dominated the SEC like no coach since Bryant; at South Carolina, couldn't quite solve an Alabama, an LSU, an Auburn.
And he left on his own terms, as expected, with the legacy intact. "I want to be able to walk out of here," Spurrier said when he left Florida in 2001. "I don't want have to run out. I don't want to be chewed up and spit out."
-- And we close with a really nice cover from Ryan Adams:
LW
