Steve Spurrier laughs at ESPN supervillain tag, cites ‘Art of War’
The biggest supervillain in college football history laughed when hearing about his most recent notoriety.
“Yeah, I’m getting some publicity,” Steve Spurrier told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday. “I don’t care too much about it, but I think it’s pretty good.
“You know, Sun Tzu says, ‘if your enemies have nothing bad to say about you, you have done nothing to disrupt their way of life.”
Spurrier, now 81 years old, has long been a fan of the book “The Art of War” and the psychological tactics within it.
So when ESPN named Spurrier college football’s “greatest supervillain” of all-time — ahead of the likes of Lane Kiffin, Johnny Manziel and The “Boz” (Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth), it was hardly surprising.
Spurrier always seemed to have a verbal jab — or a late touchdown — in store for each rival.
“Here’s the thing about that,” Spurrier once told the AJC, “those things were never about the game we just played, it was all about getting in their head for the next game.”
It worked, to the point that 10 years into retirement Spurrier was recently selected by ESPN as the biggest archenemy of four different Power 4 teams: Georgia, Tennessee, Florida State and Clemson.
Phillip Fulmer, a first-ballot College Football Hall of Fame coach and one of only four to win back-to-back SEC title games (Spurrier, Kirby Smart and Nick Saban are the others), understands why Spurrier was the pick for Tennessee.
“I always respected Coach Spurrier and those were always clean, hard-fought games,” Fulmer said. “It seemed like half the time we were at least as good as them, but we’d do something to screw it up.”
Spurrier didn’t disagree as he shared his take on each of the four rivalries in which he was deemed the biggest villain.
Spurrier vs. Tennessee
Spurrier famously said, ‘You can’t spell ‘Citrus’ without the U and the T, in reference to the Vols’ runner-up finish to the Gators in the SEC East, relegating them to the Orlando bowl game.
Spurrier grew up in Johnson City, Tennessee, before opting to play at Florida rather than stay in-state and play in what was then a run-heavy Vols single-wing offense.
“That was part of the reason I didn’t go to Tennessee, but my dad also said ‘why don’t you go to Alabama and play for Bear Bryant?’ “ Spurrier said. “I said they’ve already won national titles and gone undefeated, and I wanted to go somewhere that hadn’t done it, and Florida was on the verge under coach (Ray) Graves.
“A lot of people don’t know this, but Ray Mears also offered me a basketball scholarship there at Tennessee. I think I made the right decision.”
Spurrier had a 22-10 record as the Gators’ starting quarterback between 1964-66, winning the Heisman Trophy his senior season.
Florida, however, didn’t win its first SEC football championship until 1991, after Spurrier had come back to coach a program he would lead to a 122-27-1 record that included six SEC championships in 12 seasons.
Tennessee was rich with NFL draft talent during Fulmer’s tenure, but not even future Hall of Famer Peyton Manning could conquer Spurrier, going 0-3 in his starts against Florida with six interceptions and seven sacks in those games.
“Tennessee didn’t play very well against us, and we played well against them, I don’t know how else to describe it,” said Spurrier, who was 8-4 against Tennessee while at Florida. “With Peyton, they had a bunch of turnovers. But then they beat us in 1998 and 2001 when I thought we were the better team.”
Spurrier was 5-5 against Tennessee as South Carolina’s head coach, after the Gamecocks had lost the previous 10 games to the Vols before he was hired on Nov. 23, 2004.
Spurrier vs. Georgia
Spurrier went 11-1 against Georgia as Florida’s head coach, but he was quick to note why there was added incentive in the border-state rivalry.
“It was a rivalry they’d owned over the Gators prior to 1990; they’d won 10 of 12 and beat me (as a player) two out of three,” Spurrier said. “They were way ahead in the series … I told the guys we had to flip the tradition of us getting on the bus to go to Jacksonville and getting our asses kicked the first week of October.”
Spurrier’s first Florida team beat Georgia 38-7 in 1990, and it could have and would have been worse, Spurrier recalls, “but Shane (Matthews) fumbled on their 1-yard line, and we were inside their 20 three other times and didn’t score.”
Spurrier famously scored in the final minutes of a 52-17 win over Georgia in Athens in 1995 — one year after beating the Bulldogs 52-14 in Gainesville, with Jacksonville’s Gator Bowl Stadium being renovated.
“Lawson Holland, one of our assistants, told me on the bus ride from Atlanta to the stadium that nobody has scored 50 on Georgia between the hedges,” Spurrier said.
“We had all our backups in the game, but we threw a couple passes to get it up to 52. I didn’t know it was that big of a deal at the time, but I guess some still talk about it.”
Spurrier also beat four ranked Georgia teams during his tenure as South Carolina’s head coach from 2005-2015, and to this day he’s the only Gamecocks coach that’s led that program to an SEC Championship Game appearance.
Spurrier vs. Clemson
Spurrier’s 6-4 record against Clemson wouldn’t seem too intimidating, but five of those victories against current Tigers coach Dabo Swinney were in a row from 2009-2013.
“They actually won three of the first four against me,” Spurrier said. “I saw Dabo’s recently caught a little junk over going 7-6, but that guy has won two national titles and nine ACC championships, which is more than all the other coaches in the league combined.
“I look back and wonder how in the heck we beat those guys five in a row.”
Spurrier, who left Florida following the 2001 season and coached the Washington Redskins in 2002 and 2003, said he took the South Carolina job in 2004 “because it was the only offer I got in the SEC and there was nowhere to go but up.”
Spurrier announced at the first Gamecocks’ club meeting one of his goals was to be the winningest football coach in school history.
“I had to get to 65 to set the record,” Spurrier said, “and I ended up with 86.”
Spurrier vs. Florida State
Spurrier was 5-8-1 against the Seminoles during his 12-season tenure at Florida.
The Gators met up with Florida State after the 1994 and 1996 seasons, the latter in a 52-20 BCS Championship Game win that led to Spurrier’s only national championship.
“FSU beat everyone so much, I guess we’re the only ones that could beat them part of the time back then,” Spurrier said. “I didn’t like back then they bragged about knocking quarterbacks out of the games as long as they were clean hits.
“They said they hit to the echo of the whistle, and I said no one else did that, and I didn’t think it was a part of football, but they recruited well and had great players and first-round picks.”
Spurrier famously said the FSU acronym stood for “Free Shoes University,” referring to suspicions that Florida State’s recruiting might have crossed lines.
“You know coach Bowden had corny things he’d say about the Gators, too, at his booster clubs,” Spurrier said. “But for some reason those things never got out, only the things I’d said about them.”
Indeed, Spurrier’s words and many final scores involving his teams remain etched deep into college football rivalry memory banks.