COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’91 : Coming Home : Florida Called Back a Local Legend to Cure a Program That Needed Help

Presenting the conversation Steve Spurrier will never forget.

It is late 1989. The Florida head coaching job is open. His Florida, the place where he won a Heisman Trophy 25 seasons ago. The place that launched a strangely uneventful NFL career, which launched an even stranger coaching career. That Florida.

Friend to Spurrier: “Steve, you don’t want to come down here and get messed up with all these problems.”

Spurrier to friend: “Well, tell me about all those problems.”

And so he did, leaving out not a single detail. He told Spurrier about an ongoing NCAA investigation, about rumors of the death penalty. He told him about the low morale among alumni and the high apathy among students. He told him about Florida’s losing battle with Florida State and Miami. He told him to stay put at Duke, that his alma mater wasn’t worth the trouble.

After considering the Florida offer, speaking with university officials and assessing the risks, Spurrier politely told his friend to get lost.

He was coming home.

“About a month or two after I got here, I had to kick one player off the team, but he deserved it,” Spurrier said. “He punched a kid a lot smaller than him at a frat party. He sucker-punched a kid and went off running. I called the kid that he hit and told him that I’d handle it. The frat, they felt pretty good about that. It was, ‘The Coach is handling it,’ instead of, ‘The Coach is doing nothing.’ That may have helped set the tone that things were going to be different around here.”

That was one season and nine victories ago, a total that tied a Gator record. Sure enough, Florida received two years of NCAA probation, but only one year of postseason sanctions. The probation continues through 1991, but at last Florida is free to pursue the Southeastern Conference championship that has eluded the program since the league’s birth in 1933.

Spurrier and his Gators claim they won the SEC title last year by finishing 6-1, compared to Tennessee’s 5-1-1. But because the SEC presidents decided no team on NCAA probation should own a conference championship, the Gators were ruled null and void in the race for first.

Folk hero Spurrier would have none of that. A championship of sorts was celebrated, even if it did have an asterisk next to it, just like the ones the Gators earned in 1984 and 1985. Charley Pell and his corrupt program were responsible for the vacated titles in those years. His successor, Galen Hall, helped account for the latest NCAA penalties.

Nowadays, Spurrier usually becomes a diplomat when asked about the events of 1990. He reminds anyone who asks that the Gators, whose only conference loss came against Tennessee, had the SEC’s best record. He casually mentions that the Volunteers now are under NCAA investigation for alleged wrongdoing, “but I hope Tennessee has a chance to compete for the championship this year.”

Still, Spurrier can’t hide his real feelings for long. In his heart, the Gators were robbed of what he insists was rightfully theirs.

“If we’re fortunate enough to finish first this year, to me it will feel just like last year,” he said. “You can’t convince me that team last year didn’t deserve to be called champions.”

Spurrier waves his hand in the air, as if flicking away the past.

“Tennessee, they’re bragging about their championship last year,” he said. “But that’s last year.”

The differences between then and now are as evident as the state’s stifling August humidity. In the 1990 preseason SEC writers’ poll, only one person picked Florida to finish atop the conference. This time, 60 of 81 writers chose the Gators.

“I guess the attitude about Flordia has changed,” Spurrier said.

At the center of the change is Spurrier, 46, who has energized a program sorely lacking in self esteem. He has said one of his first duties at Florida is to win a championship without an asterisk attached to it. If preseason polls are any indication of what lies ahead--the Gators are No. 5 in the Associated Press rankings--Florida could be on its way.

Already there is an actual Steve Spurrier Sportswear Collection, endorsed, of course, by Spurrier, who kicks back a percentage of the profits to the university. Sweaters, shirts, his signature Gator visor . . . they are all for sale in the Ben Hill Griffin Stadium souvenir shop.

Now then, would his players be caught dead in the attire?

“Probably not,” said reserve quarterback Terry Dean, a 4.0 student who was the first player to accept a Florida scholarship offer from Spurrier. “But my dad buys a lot of that stuff.”

The players buy everything else Spurrier has to offer, including a pass-happy offensive system nicknamed the “Fun and Gun.” In the spring of 1990, sophomore quarterback Shane Matthews was fourth on the Gator depth chart and apparently going nowhere. Spurrier promoted him to starter and placed at his disposal the secrets of a passing offense second to none.

Matthews responded by setting nine Florida single-season records and was selected the SEC Player of the Year. All this from a guy who had taken only two varsity snaps the previous season.

Linebacker Monty Grow recalls those early practices. The defense, schooled in only a few basic coverages, would break from the huddle only to find Spurrier’s offense set in some strange formation.

“Coach Spurrier likes to do that,” Grow said. “There’d be three wide receivers to the left, two to the right and we’d be looking at each other going, ‘Uh, where do we line up?’ People come out and see our practices and say the defense is struggling. But they don’t realize how difficult that offense is.” ’

The offense, which is designed to create mismatches and spread the field, didn’t simply pop into Spurrier’s head one day. After his pro career fizzled, he returned to Florida in 1978 as the quarterbacks coach, spent the 1979 season at Georgia Tech, where he got fired along with the rest of Pepper Rodgers’ staff, and then accepted an offer to become an assistant at Duke.

“About the only place I had a chance to coach was Duke University, which certainly wasn’t on my list on how to become a head coach,” Spurrier said.

The Blue Devils hadn’t won more than six games since 1962 and hadn’t had back-to-back winning seasons in 20 years. But by the time he left the school (as offensive coordinator) in 1982, Duke had gone 2-9, 6-5 and 6-5. The modest finishes were considered nothing short of amazing at a program where losing had become commonplace.

“I had more freedom as an assistant there than probably any coach in America,” Spurrier said.

Spurrier tried everything at Duke, enough to attract the attention of the USFL’s Tampa Bay Bandits, who were looking for an innovative offense to put people in the stands. Spurrier delivered on the innovation part, but the league folded under the weight of general disinterest.

Spurrier wanted the vacant Tampa Bay Buccaneers job, but owner Hugh Culverhouse gave him the cold shoulder. Instead, Culverhouse hired Ray Perkins from Alabama, which set into a motion a domino effect that saw Duke Coach Steve Sloan move to Tuscaloosa as athletic director and Spurrier return to Durham, N.C., as head coach of his old pals, the Blue Devils.

Three years later, Spurrier led Duke to its first bowl appearance since 1960. The 8-4 season confirmed what Florida Athletic Director Bill Arnsparger had suspected in 1988, when the Gators were considering making a coaching change: Spurrier belonged at Florida, the sooner the better.

Just to be absolutely, positively sure, Arnsparger decided he needed one more look at Spurrier’s offense. The Gators were scheduled to play Auburn that night, so Arnsparger, a former NFL head coach and defensive coordinator, took a late-morning flight to Winston-Salem, N.C., where Duke and Wake Forest had an afternoon kickoff. He bought a ticket at the stadium, turned up his shirt collar, adjusted his sunglasses and sneaked inside in time to see the Blue Devils beat the Deacons. Not long after that, Arnsparger offered Spurrier the Florida job.

“The things Steve does offensively, it’s evident he tries to stay a jump ahead of you,” Arnsparger said. “He presents problems to college defenses that are very difficult.’

So advanced was Spurrier’s offense that Florida State Coach Bobby Bowden called him one time in 1989, asking about a touchdown play Duke had used to beat powerful Clemson. Bowden had seen a highlight of the play on television, but couldn’t diagram the action fast enough.

“What was that?” Bowden asked.

“Bobby, (Clemson) screwed up the play before, and I was hoping they’d screw up again,” said Spurrier of the bungled Tiger pass coverages.

“Oh,” a disappointed Bowden said.

Spurrier’s return wasn’t entirely triumphant. Despite having his Heisman perched in the middle of the stadium lobby, not all of Spurrier’s new players were aware of his legacy.

“All I knew was that he was a coach coming from Duke,” said Willie McClendon, a senior running back.

And the Heisman?

“You know, I had never stopped and looked at it,” McClendon said.

Not everyone was so oblivious. Defensive tackle Brad Culpepper, whose father was a Gator football captain in the early ‘60s, offered an interesting explanation of the Spurrier effect.

“His name’s been sketched in Florida history,” Culpepper announced.

Sketched, etched . . . who cares? The important thing is Spurrier is there. “I’ve told people that I’ve got the best coaching job in America,” he said.

To prove it, he starts listing the school’s many advantages--facilities, academics, weather and, oh, yes, the school song.

“We’ve got a beautiful alma mater,” he said.

And then, quite unexpectedly, Spurrier can’t help himself. He starts singing, softly at first, but he doesn’t end that way.

“We are the boys of old Florida. . . . In all kinds of weather . . . we all stick together . . . for F-l-o-r-i-d-a.”

Once a Gator man, always a Gator man.