Saturday Blitz
Fansided

Steve Spurrier retirement announcement no surprise, and overdue

By Michael Collins

facebooktwitterreddit

Steve Spurrier is reportedly retiring as head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks, and nobody should be surprised because it is an announcement that was long overdue.

Leave it to the Head Ball Coach. He wasn’t going to be upstaged by his former Florida Gators program or that other USC program out west. The news of a Gator quarterback being suspended and a Trojans head coach being fired just got trumped by the coach who has made a career of being better than anyone else.

More from SEC

According to multiple reports, Spurrier is set to retire as head coach at South Carolina effective immediately, amid a 2-4 season that is currently in a tailspin 4-game SEC losing streak. The Gamecocks have played four conference opponents this season — Kentucky, Georgia, Missouri and LSU — and have lost all four games by an average of 17.75 points, the worst of them being the 52-20 beating by the now unranked Georgia Bulldogs.

The only two wins this season came against North Carolina and winless UCF – hardly what South Carolina fans were expecting.

South Carolina is set to name an interim coach by Wednesday of this week.

The 70-year-old former Heisman Trophy winner leaves as the winningest coach at both Florida and South Carolina, with seven conference championships (one ACC and six SEC) and one national championship to his credit as head coach.

Despite Spurrier’s preseason contention that he had “two to three years” left before he wanted to hang up the visor, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has watched the Gamecocks and listened to Spurrier this season that he’s decided to call it.

The Gamecocks have flatlined, and the usually engaging Spurrier seemed completely disinterested and unaffected during interviews and press conferences. The guy who had a reputation has being one of the nastiest hornets in the nest when it came to dealing with the media had completely lost his sting.

As painful as it is to lose one of the most interesting characters in college football, this is something that is long overdue. It wasn’t fun anymore…not for Spurrier, not for his players, and not for fans.

He had some success at Duke; he turned around a languishing Florida program and made them into perennial contenders; he lifted a South Carolina program which had never even sniffed SEC success into an Eastern Division champion. But after three straight 11-win seasons in Columbia, the last two years have been unbearable to watch.

Live Feed

Deion Sanders a 'ball coach,' says SEC legend
Deion Sanders a 'ball coach,' says SEC legend /

Glory Colorado

  • Florida football: Assembling the all-time Steve Spurrier teamHail Florida Hail
  • Georgia Football: An old Enemy makes a Returns in Steve SpurrierDawn of the Dawg
  • SEC Media Days: The best of Steve Spurrier in front of a microphoneGarnet and Cocky
  • SEC football: 15 instances where it just meant moreFanSided
  • Eight Florida football players the rivals loved to hate the mostHail Florida Hail

    • This couldn’t have been an easy decision, coming from Spurrier or the university (whichever side initiated the discussion). The guy is a legend, but his hemming and hawing about whether he’d be done in as many as six more years or as few as two more wasn’t helping recruiting.

    Nor were the losses piling up in the last two years.

    South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner, who took over in 2012, now has the unfortunate task of being the man to find a replacement for a living legend, and while Spurrier is definitely leaving the program in much better shape than he found it, this is still not considered one of the premier jobs in the SEC and there is a lot of recruiting work to be done.

    But everything ends, even the careers of the greatest. Spurrier’s sideline grimaces and tantrums will be missed. There will be a gaping hole during the SEC Media Days that typically contained his yearly quips and humorous anecdotes.

    But it was time…way past time.

    The media? Many members of the media will sleep better at night knowing they don’t have to brave asking the Head Ball Coach a question at a press conference. Either way, they are losing a great source of material for their columns and podcasts.

    The fans? Some fans will rejoice; some fans will sob; all fans will miss him in one way or another. He was easy to love if he was your coach, and even easier to hate if he was on the opposite sideline. Georgia fans — who he tortured more than any fan base in the conference — certainly won’t miss him at all.

    The players? While you can say that his players loved and respected him, and that he brought out the best in many of them, this current crop of Gamecocks may be a bit relieved, as completely evidenced by this past weekend’s tweet from freshman defensive end Shameik Blackshear:

    It’s been a fun ride, having Spurrier around college football. The game is better because of him, and he won’t be easy to replace in any capacity – as a coach, as a member of the SEC family, or as a antagonist for the rest of the nation.

    How about a visor toss for old time’s sake…

    That’s the Steve Spurrier we all know and love.

    We’ll miss you, Ol’-evil-genius-head-ball-coach. But it was time. I think we’ve all known it for a while, but just didn’t want to admit it. Just do us all a favor and stay out of the NFL coaching searches…that dog won’t hunt.

    Next: 10 Successful CFB Coaches Who Would Flop in the NFL

    More from Saturday Blitz

    Home/SEC