5 things in college football

Yesterday, Steve Spurrier resigned as head football coach at the University of South Carolina, and it immediately became a major national story.

There were rumors that Spurrier – not yet known as the Head Ball Coach or the Ol’ Ball Coach or any other nickname that would morph into an acronym – would leave for Florida shortly after the bowl game.

“Usually, when a coach resigns or gets fired or leaves, he usually goes into hiding, but I’m not going into hiding”, Spurrier said. He coached in the USFL and is the 3rd winning-est head coach in the league going 35-19 in three seasons with the Tampa Bay Bandits, before going back to the college game and becoming the head coach at Duke. And it’s my fault, I’m responsible. Coach Ray Graves at Florida, originally from Knoxville and a great player at UT under General Neyland, recruited me and that’s how I wound up at Florida.

“He used to go with me to the South Carolina football games and I’d be directing traffic and Shawn would go to the top of the steps and holler, ‘Hey Daddy!’ And he’d tell me, ‘One day”.

Sounds like the move was more of a hat tip to his coaching staff, who get the chance to jockey for new positions within the program, as opposed to staying hitched to Spurrier (who clearly knew his firing with imminent). “I planned on being on the shoulder pads of the team coming out of the Georgia Dome with an SEC Championship and that didn’t work out”. I’ve never been to the Big House in Ann Arbor. After my junior year in high school, Coach Ray Mears, the young and brash new UT basketball coach, offered me a full scholarship, the first offer I ever got.

Spurrier had never had a losing season in 25 previous seasons coach at Duke (1987-89), Florida (1990-2001) or South Carolina, where he has been since 2005 talking about achieving things that hadn’t been accomplished before with the Gamecocks.

“It would help recruiting – this recruiting is a lot earlier now, and when a coach has been there, and it looks like he’s not gonna be there much longer, he needs to get out of the way”. Rex Enright held the record to that point.

The company had about 50 visors in stock Monday when the first reports of Spurrier’s retirement went public. He’s second, behind Alabama coach Bear Bryant, in SEC wins, with 208.

When people expressed hatred for his willingness to run up scores at Florida and South Carolina, he simply said even his teams’ backup players ran a passing offense, and it was up to the defense to rescue themselves from the shallow end of his depth chart.

All three college programs Spurrier headed were struggling before his arrival.

Miles spoke at length with Spurrier before and after last Saturday’s game which dropped South Carolina to 2-4 and 0-4 in the SEC in Spurrier’s 11th season.

“I’m thrilled to death to lead the University of South Carolina, whether it’s one game, six games”, he said. “I think it’s obvious our talent is not quite as good as it was, and that’s my fault”.

Spurrier declined to endorse any of his assistants for the interim tag, leaving athletic director Ray Tanner and deputy athletic director Charles Waddell to speak with multiple assistants in addition to four team captains. He has been an inspiration to us all.