Tampa, Florida					Thursday, September 09, 2010

SOS Made The Call That Suits Him Just Fine
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
TAMPA—Steve Spurrier returned to as the head man at the University of South Carolina because it was the job he was offered, under solid conditions, because it is in the Southeastern Conference, and a day later, he likes the decision. No, he was not offered the job back at his old, coveted University of Florida whom he took to the top repeatedly, and no, the South Carolina job does not include a membership at nearby Augusta National, home of The Masters. He dismissed both of those thoughts that had been thrown out there Monday on a return phone call to me in Tampa. “Mike McGee,’’ said Spurrier of the present South Carolina athletic director who is a former AD at another important football stop—Duke—where Spurrier led Duke, remarkably, to an ACC football championship years before Florida, “all Mike said was his search was over. He wanted me to be the head coach.” “Jeremy Foley (Florida athletic director), had said Florida was going another route—that Florida was going to conduct a coaching search,’’ which apparently would include Spurrier—as an interviewee. Hardly necessary, most would say, for in the cases if the Florida Heisman Trophy winner, who as a head coach of the Gators won six SEC titles and a national title. “I told you on the phone the other day I was not interested in going back to Florida and I was not. I’ve been there. We’ve been there. We’ve won there. You know how much I loved it and still do. That’s my school. Now it is Florida and South Carolina. That’s a fine school as well. And I love the South. I was never going back to Florida. It would simply not have been the right thing to do. Oh, up here some of the Florida newspeople kept asking questions Monday about Florida. But, I said no, I’d done that. And I say again it is time to give another young man a shot at head coaching at that great school—my school—your school. Will I love playing the Gators? Well, it will be mixed. But, I love the SEC and Jerri and my family love the South.’’ A rumor, and a neat one, had Spurrier being offered a membership at the Masters home course in Augusta, Ga. Nobody loves golf more that Spurrier—or has—and no one has more respect for golf lore—as there is at Augusta—than SOS. “No, that was just talk,’’ Spurrier said. “Just talk. Never in the mix.’’ But, many members of Augusta National, including its president, are South Carolinians. He will be able to play on that grand course as he wants, be sure. Spurrier is a solid golfer. The word “gimmee’’ is not in his vocabulary. Putt ‘em all out. And give an honest handicap. The golf is but a carryover from his lifestyle. Thoughts of cheating in recruiting are foreign to him. “So the truth is, we took what was there—the good job with South Carolina and we are planning to do a good job no matter how hard we have to work. I am going to work harder than anyone,’’ said the 59-year-old who looks forever 40s. “And, yes, hey, David Reaves (son of former Gator QB John Reaves of Tampa) is on the Lou Holtz staff. I’ll keep. He can recruit down in	the Tampa area. Good. “I also have my eye on a quarterback up in North Carolina. Will see him next week,’’ said SOS. Teaching QBs is a long suit of Spurrier and he had fine ones at Florida, including Heisman Trophy winner Danny Wuerffel. “I took this job because Mike offered it and made it clear I was the man he wanted—as he had before—just like Lou Holtz,’’ said Spurrier. “You know Lou and I are friends, too. SOS takes the place of Holtz at SC. Of course, nothing is automatic at Carolina. Winning won’t be easy, on a big scale and “I know and like being in the SEC East with Georgia, Tennessee and Florida. But, I am going to work right now. I know how tough it will be. I think, I have gained humility after those two years with the Washington Redskins there. Spurrier could not win in the NFL. He acknowledges that now. Defensive speed may have been too much for him. He left the Gators when they were at their apex years to take a five-year- $5 million a year job with Dan Snyder at the Redskins. It did not work. It has not worked for returning head coach Joe Gibbs either. Spurrier sat out a year looking. Came this opportunity, “The only big one I wanted I got,’’ he said. “Now, I am going to work, and I mean that.’’ Some Gators judge him a turncoat, not all by far. He gave Florida so much more than anyone before him but chose to leave on his own. In came Ron Zook, a Foley choice that seemed to some doomed from the start. Zook had no previous head coaching experience and brought to the Gators a harried sideline which could not win in the stretch. As Bobby Bowden of Florida State said, “These Gators,’’ who had just beaten him last week in an upset, “were but inches away from a great season. Inches, in four games.’’ So it was that Zook was fired early in the season, emphasizing the Spurrier drama. But, now, Florida, President Bernie Machen said, “can move ahead in its coaching search. And it will but the coach who will guide the Gators just had his job turn tougher. He will now have to face Spurrier’s Gamecocks next Fall in South Carolina. “We wish Steve well,’’ said Gator booster Frank Campisi, “but not on one game a year.’’ The Gator talk exhausted, Spurrier on the phone, said, “Bucs getting better, aren’t they? Good win over the Niners,’’ and it was and frankly, there has always been, I think, a secret desire of SOS to coach these Bucs right here in the town he head coached the Old Tampa Bandits Burt Reynolds owned in the United States Football League. But, that won’t be, now. Steve Spurrier is at his head coaching stop—where this original Buc’s career stops. Oh, yes, he was the first quarterback of the Tampa Bay Bucs, the 0-14 Bucs. SOS knows the good, the bad and the ugly and I have known and written about this special achiever and friend since the spring of 1963 when former Florida Coach Ray Graves said the preacher’s son from Tennessee would be the starting Gator quarterback in 1963-64, and he was, being in our football lives since then. ##
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