Why did Steve Spurrier leave Florida? How Gators coach ended career at South Carolina
For all intents and purposes, Steve Spurrier is Florida football.
He played at the school in the 1960s, becoming its first-ever Heisman Trophy winner and earning a statue outside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. He returned to coach there in the '90s, transforming the Gators into an SEC and national powerhouse with flair and swagger. Two decades after he last roamed the sideline at The Swamp, Spurrier is still synonymous with the program.
When Florida faces South Carolina Saturday, it will be in what has become a familiar position. The Gators, after all, aren’t the only team to whom Spurrier is closely tied. The “Head Ball Coach” holds the unique distinction of being among the best — or at least most accomplished — coaches at both Florida and South Carolina.
Before the Gators and Gamecocks kick off, let’s look back at Spurrier’s career at the schools and, specifically, how he went from Florida to South Carolina:
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Why did Steve Spurrier leave Florida?
For all Spurrier achieved at Florida, his time there came to an abrupt end.
In January 2002, days after the Gators thumped Maryland in the Orange Bowl to cap off a 10-2 season, Spurrier resigned from Florida. He noted in a statement that "I simply believe that 12 years as head coach at a major university in the SEC is long enough."
"At one point when he was talking to me he asked me if I was still there because I was gasping," former Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley told the Gainesville Sun at the time. "I really thought he was kidding.”
Fewer than two weeks later, Spurrier was named the head coach of the Washington NFL franchise, which gave him a five-year, $25 million contract that made him the highest-paid coach in the league and more than doubled his salary at Florida. But the NFL represented a rare fumble for Spurrier.
His offenses in Washington didn’t have the same firepower as they did at Florida, and he went 12-20 in two seasons. He resigned in December 2003, four days after his second season ended with a 5-11 record.
"When I left Florida after 12 years, I thought I was going to coach NFL five or six years and retire to the beach, and play golf a bunch, and travel around, this, that and the other,” Spurrier said at SEC Media Days in 2014. “But that was a bad plan.”
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Why did Steve Spurrier coach South Carolina?
After taking a year off in 2004 following his departure from Washington, Spurrier actually had the opportunity to take back the beloved job he had left behind.
Spurrier’s successor at Florida, Ron Zook, was fired during the 2004 season. Spurrier, the most attractive free agent on the coaching market at the time, was immediately linked to the vacancy. He said that Foley had called him several times trying to set up a meeting, but ultimately, he removed his name from consideration.
"When I departed three years ago, there were several reasons why I believed it was time to move on," Spurrier said in a statement released by Florida's athletic department. "Other than simply wanting to coach in the NFL someday, I also believed that 12 years at Florida was probably long enough. Many people in football believe that around 10 [to] 12 years in the same job is about the maximum time a coach should stay."
About three weeks later, Spurrier was hired as South Carolina’s next coach, noting in a news release that he believed it was “the right place and the right time for me as a coach.”
Steve Spurrier coaching career
Florida
Years coached: 1990-2001
Coaching record: 122-27-1
When Florida was searching for a replacement for coach Galen Hall in 1989, it didn’t have to look far or think particularly hard.
Before he ever coached a game there, Spurrier was a legend at his alma mater. Spurrier was the quarterback for the Gators from 1964-66, throwing for 4,848 yards and 36 touchdowns and winning the Heisman in 1966. After a 10-year NFL career, he immediately excelled as a coach, first in the short-lived United States Football League and then at Duke, where he guided the basketball school to its greatest football success since the early 1960s.
It didn’t take him long to turn Florida around, either. By his second season, the Gators went 10-2 and won their first-ever SEC championship (their 1984 title had been vacated). In 1996, behind Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Danny Wuerffel, Florida won its first national championship.
Across 12 seasons at the school, Spurrier’s teams went 122-27-1, had 10 top-10 finishes, six top-five finishes, six SEC championships and a national title. His 122 wins are still the most by a coach in Florida history.
South Carolina
Years coached: 2005-15
Coaching record: 86-49
He turned a historically middling Gamecocks program into an SEC contender, going 86-49 across 11 seasons there.
His teams reached their apex from 2011-13, going 11-2 and winning a bowl game in each season. Prior to Spurrier’s hiring, South Carolina, which has fielded a football program since 1903, had only one season with at least 10 wins.
Spurrier retired six games into the 2015 season and was replaced by another, albeit much less successful, former Florida coach, Will Muschamp.
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Steve Spurrier record vs. Florida
Spurrier went 5-5 against Florida while at South Carolina, which had lost 14 straight games to the Gators dating back to 1964 before Spurrier was hired after the 2004 season.
The bond between Florida and Spurrier has remained close since he left in 2002.
Whether out of habit or affection (or both), Spurrier would occasionally say ‘we’ when referring to Florida in interviews. The field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium was renamed after Spurrier in 2016. Later that year, Spurrier was named an ambassador and consultant for the Florida athletic department.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why did Florida coach Steve Spurrier end career at South Carolina?
