Roy Exum
The Yella Fella, a fun-loving genius named Jimmy Rane who has made zillions selling pressure-treated pine lumber, absolutely adores the Southeastern Conference and its people, which is real easy to do. One summer he rented an entire fishing lodge in the North Woods and had as many football and basketball coaches come who possibly could.
As fate would have it, Ray Goff, who was the Georgia coach at the time, arrived after most of the others got there. In the way they joke and kid when the SEC family is together, they decided to play a trick on Ray.
So they primed the receptionist/owner just right and then, with drinks in hand because it was cocktail hour, stood quietly at one end of the banquet room that looked down on the open-air lobby.
Ray comes through the door, looking worn out from the trip with his garment bag over his shoulder, and introduces himself. “Oh, yes, Coach Goff, we are so happy to have you,” said the nice lady, adding as if on que, “You’ll be rooming with Steve Spurrier…”
With that, Ray whirled around like he’d been electrocuted, threw his bag across the room, and yelled, “I’ll be dad-gummed if that’s so! I’ll sleep on that couch over there rather than in a room with that guy!” You can only imagine how delighted his gallery was yet no one thought it was as funny as Spurrier because, lordy, back then he'd rather kid “Ray Goof” than eat.
Steve had a 6-0 record against Goff and some years later, a writer asked Spurrier if he thought his team could beat Georgia. “Is Ray Goff still the coach over there?”
I was as staggered as everybody else when Steve abruptly resigned at South Carolina last week. I’ve known “Steven Orr” really well during my life – I mean, real well – and quitting in the middle of a season, a game, or a round of golf is the last thing in the world I could imagine. To be frank, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop and have literally prayed that during the coming weeks we won’t hear that he is sick or suffering from some other calamity.
In the years I adored covering SEC football, Steve and I would talk a lot and, whenever I was in Gainesville, we would always sit with each other at lunch. If there was a golf outing, we were perpetual partners because he was the best and I was the worst. I played golf to have a good time and, because I never took it so seriously, I had more fun than anybody. If I shanked my tee ball, so what? Spurrier would step behind me and scald one straight and true, and farther than anybody else on the golf course.
You would have thought Steve would have gotten tired of us being paired together so often but I got more tips in that golf cart about who was cheating, was that quarterback worth his weight, and millions of things. Spurrier would catch up on my jokes, probe around for some “inside skinny” I might share, and we’d laugh the whole day.
So my memory bucket on “Orr” is almost overflowing. “Orr,” incidentally, is Steve’s middle name and what his teammates called him when he played at Science Hill High in Johnson City. Because I can’t say r’s like most people he made me call him “Steve Orr” so he’d know I was talking to him. And funny? His zingers were legendary.
My favorite came one Sunday night after Auburn had played the day before. I was in Auburn that day when the library caught on fire and it was surreal – 85,000 cheering the Tigers but look out the back of the press box and you could see the flames! The next night Steve called the house to help me with a Monday column and could hardly wait to say, “Ex, did you hear the library at Auburn burned?” I told him I was there. “Boy, that’s something. I heard 20 books burned and 14 of ‘em hadn’t been colored in yet!”
Oh, what a dazzler. He loved to pick on Phil Fulmer and Tennessee. “Can’t spell Citrus (at the time a lesser bowl game) with a ‘U’ and ‘T’, ain’t that right, Ex.” Another that thrilled the Big Orange Nation: “I know why Peyton Manning came back his senior year – he wanted to be a three-time MVP in the Citrus Bowl.” The best? “This will be the 14th time I’ve coached in Neyland Stadium … that’s more than some of their own coaches.”
After a store in Tallahassee was caught giving shoes to some Florida State athletes, FSU was “Free Shoes University” and, when Alabama was rumored to have given money to some athletes, “You know, I’ve never signed a guy from Alabama and now I know why … their scholarships are worth a whole lot more than ours.”
Steve loved to rip Georgia. “I sort of always liked playing them that second game because you could always count on them having two or three key players suspended." Another time he asked this: “Why is it that during recruiting season they sign all the great players, but when it comes time to play the game, we have all the great players? I don't understand that. What happens to them?"
Yet there was a wonderfully warm side to Steve, too. I remember it wasn’t long after Steve and his wife Jerri – their children grown – adopted a boy named Scotty. We had finished lunch and Steve swept that boy up on his lap and laughed and petted with him as few real fathers know how. I also met with him one day in Gainesville minutes after he “fired” a player and his eyes were still red from crying after the kid had left.
I have never known anybody as competitive as Steve Spurrier. I could call him right now and ask about the time he faced one of Red Etter’s great Central teams in Johnson City and not only could he tell me the score but some of what happened in that game. Football, golf, tidily-winks, you name it. Spurrier always came to win.
That’s what puzzles me like nothing else. Sure, his South Carolina team was 2-4 when he stepped down, but that’s not the end of the world, especially when you are the winningest coach in Carolina’s history with 86-49 in 11 seasons.
Right before this season started, he told folks, "I'm smart enough to know when it's time to let somebody else come in and do this, but I'm also smart enough to know that we've beaten Georgia four of the last five years, beaten Florida four of the last five years and beaten Clemson five of the last six years. We're only 3-2 against Tennessee the last five years, and they won a couple of close ones against us, but they've lost 10 in a row to Florida. So I'd say we've done OK and have a lot more we're going to do."
But then it was as if he lost his swagger. Last week Spurrier told reporters, "I think I was probably the best coach for this job 11 years ago, but I'm not today," Spurrier said. "It's time for me to move on…When something is inevitable, I think you do it right then," he added.
I disagree that he is no longer fit to coach at Carolina. But the middle of last week the rumors were hot that he might go from one USC to another but I can't envision him ever going to California. High school? That would be fun for him, minus the hassles, the pressure and the enormous amount of time a head coach in college has to expend. But Steve Spurrier has never been a quitter – I know him too well – and I am completely mystified by this, the last thing on earth that any of us would suspect he might do.
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Within just a few days after his startling announcement, the video crew at the University of Florida came up with one of the classiest tributes to Steve I have ever seen. If you want to know how adored he still is in Gainesville, click HERE
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