Winter is coming for the Head Ball Coach but Spurrier's still got zingers
Steve Spurrier was his usual self at the 2015 SEC Media Days on Tuesday, but one can't help but wonder when he will turn in his whistle.
By
Dennis Dodd
•
4 min read
HOOVER, Ala. -- If this is really the end, the Head Ball Coach is going out zinging.
“I figured a bunch of you guys would have retired by now,” Steve Spurrier said to the assembled masses Tuesday at the 2015 SEC Media Days.
Actually, right back ya, HBC.
There’s really just one question now for South Carolina’s Septuagenarian Spurrier. Entering his 29th season as a head coach, when’s he going to hang it up? The Gamecocks came perilously close to the second losing season of Spurrier’s career last season, finishing 7-6.
There were whispers the coach then came perilously close to hanging it up.
Rejuvenated, he’s now into outlasting people. It’s a young man’s game and suddenly Spur Dog, 70, is the second-oldest FBS coach. (Hall of famer Bill Snyder at Kansas State is first at 76.)
No SEC coach has taken the field past the age of 69, including Bear Bryant.
“Most coaches all get run out,” Spurrier said in a quiet moment with a couple of reporters. “Nobody quits or retires anymore. The last guy to step aside on his own? Barry Alvarez.”
That may or may not be true; this is, though …
“And he wasn’t really done coaching there.”
Alvarez, the Wisconsin athletic director, gladly came back for a couple of bowl games when his coaches quit.
There was something sad about watching the man who brought the modern forward pass to the SEC glow about surviving Miami in the Independence Bowl.
“Everybody can’t play in the SEC Championship Game,” Spurrier rationalized.
But that’s part of what’s keeping him in the game. South Carolina has never won the conference. A lot of us never thought we’d see the day. This is a man -- assessing Bobby Bowden late in his career -- who said he couldn’t stand going 7-6.
Spurrier has now done it three times at South Carolina.
“Same as Tennessee and the same as Arkansas,” he said of last season’s record. “I think they’re sort of celebrating big seasons last year. So we were celebrating also.”
Spurrier hasn’t lost any speed off that (zinger) fastball. Meanwhile, the league has changed around him. In what used to be a provincial, good ol’ boy conference, Spurrier is a rarity. He’s the only current SEC coach who was born in the conference’s footprint and played at an SEC school (both Florida).
“I’m one of the few coaches who had success as a player,” he said. “I did win the Heisman, you know?”
We know. There are exactly zero existing head coaches who have YouTube video of them being honored as All-Americans on the Ed Sullivan Show. That was 1966.
Elsewhere, kicker Elliott Fry was telling the story of his coach roaming the halls spouting “random” facts.
“He goes up to our other kickoff guy, Landon Ard, and tells us we’re only team in the country with two kickers who have three-letter last names,” Fry said.
“I don’t even know how you think about that in your head.”
SEC Offensive Player of the Year candidate Pharoh Cooper said “[lack of] confidence was a big key,” last season. In the opener, the Gamecocks gave up 511 passing yards to Texas A&M’s Kenny Hill, a player who eventually was suspended and transferred to TCU.
“That first blow that we took was a major one,” Brown recalled. “From there we kind of went downhill.”
You either believe Spurrier can get it back at a (historically) mediocre program and recreate the highest times in South Carolina history -- the Gamecocks won 11 games three years in a row (2011-2013) -- or you don’t.
Really, what are the odds of that happening?
Spurrier may have answered tangentially Tuesday looking out into the crowd for oddsmaker Danny Sheridan.
“I wish he did the odds on every coach being there four years from now,” Spurrier said.
He might be one of them. Spurrier has a contract through 2018 and has said he wants to coach four or five more years.
“If there’s a point where South Carolina wants a better coach or needs a better coach it’s time to move on,” he added. “But from I sense they all still like me.”
Yes, they do. In the winter of years, Spurrier has turned into a sort of sage. He was out front on the Confederate battle flag issue following the murder of nine people in Charleston. He has a standing rule that if you touch a woman, you’re off the team. In these days, when that inexplicably isn’t a rule for every coach, Spurrier stands tall.
For all the rollicking good times he has created and scoreboards he has broken with his offenses, it’s sad to think we are seeing a sunset.
“I breezed right through age 60. I breezed right through 65,” Spurrier said. “I’m going to try my best to breeze right on through 70. I can still remember just about everything.”
The answer to all the questions is fairly simple for the 70-year-old firing those zingers from the podium.
Why is he still here?
“I forgot to get fired,” Spurrier said, “and I don’t cheat.”
