Steve Spurrier is an ass.
Whether he’s a laugh-riot smart ass or a loose-lipped jackass depends, of course, on whether or not he’s coaching your favorite team. The same South Carolina fans who love him now — and will rage against this site “for hatin’ him” — once despised his same barbs n’ bully routine when he was at Florida.
One thing about Carolina’s coach is that his level of assdom directly corellates with his team’s win total. At the 2010 SEC Media Days, for example, Spurrier was lower than the proverbial snake’s belly. The Cocks were coming off a 7-6 campaign and had lost 20-7 to UConn in a miserable Papajohns.com Bowl performance. With the SEC media on hand, the coach failed to crack wise. He had no insults for rival schools or coaches. Frankly he seemed down, like a man on the verge of tossing in the towel if his team didn’t perform in 2010.
Ah, but his team did perform in 2010. The Gamecocks whipped Georgia, Florida and Tennessee in the same season for the first time. They won their first-ever SEC division title. By Media Days 2011 Spurrier was feeling good enough to poke a little fun. Asked about Mike Slive’s idea — which has now become a reality — that schools award multi-year scholarships to players, Spurrier was the only coach willing to shoot down the proposal with both guns blazing. “No, that’s a terrible idea, Commissioner,” he said to big laughs.
The coach himself has even admitted during his mediocre and quiet years in Columbia — while he was building up his program — that he didn’t have much to talk about with his team losing. In other words, once USC got good enough, then he’d feel like taking shots at others again.
In many ways Spurrier — who we don’t hate, by the way, and who we’ve said has done an A-1 job at Carolina — is still like a teenager. He gets mad and pouty when he loses. He gets brash and braggadocious when he wins.
And he’s winning again.
In an interview with ESPN.com’s Chris Low posted yesterday afternoon, the Ol’ Ball Coach let fly with some gibes:
* On not playing Georgia early in the season this year: “I don’t know. I sort of always like playing them that second game because you could always count on them having two or three key players suspended.”
(Mark Richt, being the class act he is, simply responded: “How ’bout that; I think that that’s funny. That sounds like Steve.” Richt could have easily said, “That’s because we don’t give guys five and six chances that way he did with Stephen Garcia.”)
* On Nick Saban and his success at Alabama: “He’s got a nice little gig going, a little bit like (John) Calipari. He tells guys, ‘Hey, three years from now, you’re going to be a first-round pick and go.’ If he wants to be the greatest coach or one of the greatest coaches in college football, to me, he has to go somewhere besides Alabama and win, because they’ve always won there at Alabama.”
(Spurrier did go one to say that he believes Saban is the best coach in conference. “You are whatever your record is,” he said.)
Funny little tweaks to be taken with a grain of salt? Then you must be a Gamecock fan who’s in love with your coach now that’s he’s delivering wins.
Smart aleck remarks that make you hope Spurrier takes it on the chin this fall? Then you must be a fan of one of the other 13 SEC institutions.
As for this writer, I enjoy Spurrier on the rise. When he’s losing it’s sad to watch. But when he’s winning big — for two years in a row — he gets a little too mean-spirited. Somewhere in between is just about right. Like Media Days 2011.
Judging from his comments to ESPN this week, some of Spurrier’s Media Days 2012 quotes could be downright nasty.
