Steve Spurrier: The Head Ball Coach

[Music] thank you [Music] Welcome to Night talks the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications talk show produced by students for students I'm your host Evan Kitty a sophomore studying media production and marketing and our guest today is the only person alive to be inducted into the National College Football Hall of Fame as a player and as a coach and into the National High School Hall of Fame he's the only person alive to win the Heisman Trophy and Coach a Heisman winner and he's the only person alive to be the winningest coach in school history at two power five universities coach spurger coached the Gators from 1990 to 2002 where he led the Gators to the first ever SEC championships and National Championship his tenure included six SEC championships averaged more than 10 wins this season and only lost five home games in 12 years I'm pleased to introduce the head ball coach himself Steve Spurrier hi coach thank you so much for being here Anthony you have done your homework that was this good introduction I think as I've ever heard so appreciate you doing that thank you very much as a multi-sport high school athlete growing up in Tennessee what were the odds that you'd end up coming to Gainesville uh pretty slim probably uh a kid growing up I was blessed with eye hand coordination I could shoot a basketball hit a baseball throw a baseball but football there's really back in the 60s uh nobody threw the ball much so there was nothing I could do very well I wasn't fast I wasn't big and strong but I kept going out for football because I was a kicker and punter and so my sophomore year that's all I did I punted and kicked off and stuff like that and then I guess I grew a little taller and I just stayed out for football my buddy said you'll quit football because you're no good at it and said you'll concentrate on basketball and baseball in high school but I just played all three Sports kept playing football and I guess I grew a little bit and all of a sudden we started throwing the ball and and then all of a sudden I got a lot of scholarship offers in football basketball and baseball were probably still my best sports we actually won a couple of state championships in baseball which is the highlight of my high school career was winning those two but football I seem to think that was the direction I needed to go in college and then I visited University of Florida and Coach Graves our head coach here was instrumental in me coming to Florida and Florida had not done a lot in football so I felt like I had an opportunity to maybe achieve some things that had never happened before so that was a big reason I came to Florida yeah well we are so glad that you came to Florida I was blessed to come to Florida and met my wife Jerry here and we've been married well over 50 years now and she's been with me every step of the way she's instrumental in physical fitness and doing all the things a head coach wife has to do take care of the players the players parents and all this that and the other and we we had good camaraderie within our coaching staff with all the families because we got together so often sounds like she was the perfect fit she knew how to do it somebody said if there was a head football coach's wives Hall of Fame she would be the first inductee and she would be when you have that really strong support system you can go very very far in life yeah you played football at Florida in the 60s before any Heisman Trophies or championships what was the culture around the sport on campus at the time football was important it was very important but we didn't in the back of our minds we didn't talk about winning the SEC that much we talked about hey let's go beat these guys this week let's go beat those guys I really think we had some teams when I played in the mid 60s there that were capable of winning the SEC but we seemed to lose that one game each year that knocked us out of it in fact Georgia beat Florida every time the SEC was on the line until 1990. if Florida was about to win it Georgia would beat us if Georgia was about to beat us they'd beat the Gators so we finally got that mental hurdle knocked down in 1990 and as you know we beat Georgia 11 out of 12 years we put ourselves in position to win all those SEC championships and that rivalry still continues today it continues they've gotten the best of us the last several years and hopefully we can do something different this year what are some of your most memorable moments leading the Gators as the starting quarterback I guess some of the uh maybe come from behind game we beat FSU here in the swamp in uh 65 they had a one-point lead and we're able to drive oh 75 80 yards and score with a minute left or so Charlie Casey called a little out and up pass that was sort of a fun win because they beaten us the year before and that was the first time FSU had ever beaten Florida was the year before that one so that was a fun one and then probably kicking the field goal against Auburn which actually won the Heisman for me if we beat Georgia the next week that field goal would have been bigger but anyway Georgia beat us the next week and knocked us out of the SEC but uh yeah kicking the field goal with a couple of minutes left uh I guess is what won the Heisman for me that year you were drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in 1967 and played there for quite a few years later you also played for the Tampa Bay Bucks how did your college experience translate to the NFL well I got drafted by San Francisco and uh they actually traded three players to the Atlanta Falcons to get the pick and then they took me John Brody was already the quarterback there he'd been there eight or nine years and they said well he's got two or three years more and then we'll get you ready to play two or three years later so I guess I didn't put a lot of effort in getting ready to play I don't know but I did last nine years out there mostly is a backup quarterback and then the Tampa Bay Buccaneers got the franchise back in 76 and they traded for me so I played one year there and then after that they sort of you know needed a younger guy and so I was released and that was my last year so I came back started watching Gators play I'd always uh came come back to Gainesville unfortunately Doug Dickey who was the coach here then uh gave me the job as quarterback coach so I got my foot in the door and started coaching the quarterback coach at Georgia Tech left for another job and pepper Rogers the coach up there was my backfield coach here at Florida in my sophomore year and he hired me to come up and be the quarterback coach at Georgia Tech and uh about the middle of the Year even started allowing me to call the plays and pretty much act like the offensive coordinator which I was and I met the Duke University coach and they were looking for an offensive coordinator so I got a chance to go up there coach red Wilson was a wonderful guy to work for and he's the guy that handed out some motivational sheets on how to be a good coach and how you act how you talk to your players handle them and so forth and I really credit him for sort of teaching me how how to be a coach and I was there three years and then got a chance to be a head coach with the Tampa Bay bandits in the spring football league usfl so that I was fortunate to be a head coach and lasted 31 years as a head coach there were three other guys my age that were head coaches way back there in 83-84 and the longest any of them lasted was one year the other two got fired during the season wow and so that just sort of goes to show you the coaching profession is not guaranteed for me the last 31 years I feel very blessed to have done that I was here at Florida for 12 years I'm still the longest lasting coach at Florida once you get into coaching and it is a I loved it because it did not seem like working you know you can't wait to get to the office you can't wait to put the game plan in can't wait to coach the guys during the week and then game day was always the most fun for me the game day and try to get your guys to beat the other guys and celebrate a little bit not too much and then get ready for the next game after that and Evan one of the big things that really helped me is that we started goal setting it started at Duke actually before I came to Florida somebody asked me one time how in the world were you guys able to win six secs your first seven years at Florida when they never won one and I said well the players were here to win it obviously they were already here and they just needed the mental part to believe hey we're good enough to win this thing let's go do it so you eliminate the excuses everybody get on the same page let's go win this dang thing the mental part of it to me was huge because we basically took the a same group of players here at Florida that they went 7-5 the year before and I think 75 a year before that and then all of a sudden we started beating all those teams that that used to own us that's awesome today we see players doing quite a lot of media if not all over social media what did media obligations at that level of the sport entail when you played it wasn't near as big as it is nowadays but we did uh we did talk uh to the media obviously and uh but I had a sheet also that tells you how to talk to the media and we coached the players on how to talk to the media every now and then one of them may slip up and say something that might uh irritate our opponents now you might say hey we're good enough to beat these guys which is fine but uh in the off season I would tell some cute jokes at the gator clubs which didn't mean anything because when the season rolled around everybody had already forgotten about uh you know that cute little joke about Tennessee you can't spell Citrus Bowl without a UT in it that was one of the little corny jokes FSU some of their players got some free Nike shoes that summer somebody said FSU free shoe University so I told that corny joke down in Orlando I think but when the season in the game the week of the game we we forgot about all that tried to concentrate on the game itself was the end of your NFL career a difficult time in your life did you have backup plans ready in the works I did not have backup plans when I was finished got cut by a couple teams uh came back watched the Gators play uh and I remember sitting up in the stands watching the coaches watching a game or two and I said you know what I got to do something in life back then we didn't make as much money as those players nowadays in the NFL so I had to get a job and I thought maybe coaching was would be something would be fun I got an opportunity to get into coaching and really enjoyed it and just really fortunate and blessed that some coaches hired me along the way I tell people all the time it was hard I was fortunate because I didn't play at Alabama I didn't work under bear brown or Nick Saban my background was Florida and Duke how many how many football coaches come out of Duke you know yeah I think what you said about uh being able to see kind of what you like in the coach and also what you don't like in the coach I think that was probably instrumental to your coaching exactly in 1983 you took your first head coaching role with the Tampa Bay Bandits of the short-lived United States football league this was followed by Leading Duke from 1987 to 1989. what did you learn about coaching and organizational leadership over these years that led you to being named the ACC coach of the year in 88 and 89. I tried to learn all I could about how to be a good coach especially a good head coach and so forth and and I was an offensive coach I was always the offensive coordinator called the plays and this that and the other so uh getting a chance to go to Duke as the head coach in 87 88 89 those three years we really had a lot of good players and we got those guys believing that they were good enough to win and we're good enough to beat Clemson in North Carolina and all those ACC schools and I think I mentioned about goal setting so prior to the 89 season at Duke my wife gave me a sheet on how to set goals and how to achieve the goals and uh you get your group of people together so I got all of our seniors and our captains maybe about 15 guys and we're going to set maybe four or five goals and we're gonna see if we can hit them this year uh beat North Carolina in state rival write that one down uh another goal was uh uh finish in the top 25. if we finish 24 25 minute it'd be great go to the Bowl game Duke had not been to a bowl game in 28 years since 62. uh 27 years I guess so go to a bowl game I said these are pretty good these are pretty good uh is that it and one of the guys raised his hand our sinner Bubba Metz he said coach we think we can win the ACC football championship and I said wait a minute now when you're setting goals they have to be doable you know you think we can win the ACC football championship and now obviously we did win it and it's the only one in the last 60 years it did so how did that happen it didn't happen because we lucked into it it happened because that guy said coach we think we can win the ACC football championship what you said it always comes back to mindset like if you believe in yourself you can really achieve anything but if you don't you're going to have a really difficult time if you have a chance if you believe you can do it you've got a you've got an excellent chance it's not guaranteed right it's not guaranteed but it does give you an opportunity and when the moment arises hey this is what we're looking for this is what we wanted obviously our teams in the 90s especially with Danny warfel here the belief that all those players had is pretty much what carried our team to those four straight sec's and and the national championship if we can ever play with that attitude and effort and teamwork you know maybe we'd get back to championship football here real soon FSU is the Gators in-state rival and those Stakes were raised dramatic quickly in 1996 with the national championship game against the Seminoles how important are these rivalries and did that Victory feel even sweeter because of it oh it did a little bit I guess because they did beat us the uh last game of the season we went up there we were both undefeated we're both 10-0 I think they were number one we were number two something like that and uh they hit uh they knocked Danny waffle down I think it was 32 times after he'd thrown the ball and they did call rough and Pastor much back then they had different rules for reps and passer than they do now so anyway uh we didn't win it and we thought we were completely out of the national championship pitcher uh but anyway we had Alabama the next week for the SEC Championship so I basically came back and said hey we can't do anything about what happened last week at school went us another sec and go from there so we did we put the shotgun formation in actually that week and Danny waffle threw six touchdown passes against Alabama and we beat him I think 45 to 30. and then all of a sudden these teams that were ranked ahead of us all started losing and it set up a rematch when Arizona State lost the Rose Bowl to Ohio State it set up the rematch and that didn't happen until the night before the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans so we were the last game called college football game of the year that season and our guys were really ready to play and that was the 52-20 win over FSU but winning the national championship was bigger than just beating FSU we'd beat them some they beat us a bunch and they were really good back in those days Bobby Bowden had I think it was something like 12 straight years top five team in the nation so they were they were always really tough back in the 90s you're also well known for your personality behind the microphone as a head coach how did you view your responsibilities and interactions with the Press oh they were always pretty good the only time I'd get mad at the media guy was if he sent them it wasn't true I said you can call me a lousy coach and I called a bunch of lousy plays and I may agree with you but don't just say something it's not true and so I only had a couple of issues with a couple of guys one thing I probably did and I did it on purpose was to try not to say talk away all the other coaches talk I read somewhere in life to be successful in life you can do it like everybody else does it and try to outwork them more hours more blah blah blah or you can do it differently and confidently and that will get you there maybe even better than the other way it's embracing this uniqueness that no one else has right exactly and you showed the players how to interact with the media yeah we would have a little uh team meeting on all right here here's here's how we talk to the media yeah and we try to say good things about our opponents not overly good things you know we'll talk about how great they are just hey they're a real good team and we got to play well to beat them things of that nature uh don't give away too much information like their offensive line is sorry you know we think we can go right through them or something like that so always try to be positive when talking to the media you got to realize your opponents are probably going to read it and uh and that you don't want to give them any fuel to add to the fire as they say uh reminds me of back in 1990 we were undefeated and we went out to Tennessee they had a really good team that year it was only seven to three at half and they ran to kickoff back they got an interception for a touchdown bang bang we're down 28-3 and we could not block their gas so I took Shane Matthews our SEC Player of the Year quarterback out of the game in the fourth quarter in The Art of War by Sun Tzu he says save your soldiers if the battle's already lost don't get guys killed when when it's already lost so I took out Shane and a couple other guys I said you guys ain't getting hurt in this game so we get bit beat 45-3 we got clobbered the next week we're playing Auburn Auburn came to the swamp undefeated and one of their players said if you get ahead of the Gators they'll quit when the dust settled here in the swamp Auburn we beat Auburn 48-7 48-7 so we use that comment by an opponent to maybe give us a little extra fire that night and that was a big win and then we beat Georgia the next week and went on and won the SEC that year you don't let those negative comments ruined your day you actually allow them to inspire you to do even better you step down from your role with the Gators in 2002 and became the head coach of the Washington Redskins for two seasons then in 2005 you returned to the SEC as head coach for South Carolina what did you hope to achieve with the Gamecocks yeah after 12 years here I sort of thought well maybe I've done this long enough and maybe coaching the NFL four or five years would be good and then hang it up didn't work out very well it's the only coaching job I've ever had where I was not in charge of the team so I left and set out a year and then the South Carolina job opened up they offered me the job it was a school that didn't have much history in football we had a lot of good years three straight lemon Seasons top ten Nation did not win an SEC I thought we could put together a team to win one but it never worked out we did win One Division in fact we beat the Gators down here in the swamp in 2010 to win the only division up there leaving the Gamecocks in 2015 you were named Ambassador and consultant for the Florida Gators what knowledge have you been able to pass down to newer generations of athletes and coaches some of the coaches here have asked me to you know speak their team and uh I guess my favorite one was coach Shelton with men's tennis I think back in 2019 he had me go talk to their team I mentioned what we did at Duke as far as setting goals and one of our guys said let's win the ACC Championship and lo and behold we did it and I I'd ask coach Shelton have you guys set goals well we not really you know as far as writing them down and talking about them but our men's tennis two years later won the men's national championship first in school history wow so coach Shelton and his team that was a wonderful night and they played it in Orlando and my wife Jerry and I were able to drive down and watch that I don't know if my talk had anything to do with it but I know that that team was not afraid to go win a National Championship for the first time ever and they did it in Orlando that year in 2016 Ben Hill Griffin Stadium was renamed to Steve Spurrier Florida field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium what does this change mean to you yeah yeah I said it's the time and I still believe it it's the nicest honor I've ever received I've been fortunate to get a bunch of them here there and the other but uh to have your name on uh your Stadium where you played where you coach and uh it's I think the the best honor that I've I've ever received so I'm trying to do my best to sing the Praises of our University everywhere I go to be number five nationally ranked academic State University in the country public school is pretty neat all of our other sports football and basketball are sort of in a slump right now but all of our other sports do so well especially our women's sports are really good gymnastics could win the national championship this year they've won the SEC like five years in a row our women's softball is doing very well I think men baseball this year may have a chance to to go big we'll have to wait and see how that plays out but so many of our sports teams really represent the University of Florida first class weight I think at Florida just having that that winning mindset of I can do this I believe in myself that is definitely instrumental for them in their success definitely since retiring from coaching you've opened spurrier's Gridiron Grill and became a frequent voice on TV radio and podcasts including wruf's inside the huddle what do you enjoy about sports broadcasting and commentary I think it just keeps me a little more connected to all the sports Steve Russell Shane Matthews and I do the inside the Huddle here I do another podcast with Pat Dooley former sports editor of the Gainesville Sun and we just we talk all the sports season each year and so forth and sort of throw an opinion in there and this that and the other but yeah I do enjoy doing those it keeps me connected a little bit to college football as well as the other sports I just happen to be a football coach I can enjoy the other sports just as much as football maybe even more but anyway I do enjoy doing that and you understand the dedication that goes behind all that success oh definitely uh the the commitment that teams have to make nowadays to be successful is a huge part of it as we know you play 12 hours during the season as all but man you you train the whole year for those 12 hours or more if you're in the playoffs and bowl games and so forth obviously you have to have talent talented players in any sport but after that the dedication commitment about the entire team is to me what separates them from everybody else to kind of wrap up this interview what advice would you give to students in general at the University of Florida I would suggest that all students sort of set some goals what they want to do in life most students after a couple of years in college they know what maybe they want to do with their life what kind of profession they want to pursue so I think if you want to really do it sort of write it down look at it every day and you know make each day hey I'm on the way I'm doing I'm progressing toward what I want to do in life so that would be my suggestion to write down what you want to achieve and uh go after it thank you for your Insight coach I've really enjoyed our conversation and thank you our viewers for joining us until next time good night [Music] oh [Music]