The Anti-Bear : Florida Football Coach Steve Spurrier Is Disliked North of Florida, South of Ohio

Steve Spurrier, the University of Florida football coach, is a Southern boy of some swagger whose fire in the belly is revealed when, sleepy-eyed and with a drawl, he explains why his’n beat your’un by five touchdowns. Throughout the South north of Florida, Spurrier’s explanations have caused listeners to press their hands against their ears while calling for the coach’s arrest on the charge of premeditated immodesty.

Immodesty is a crime against the memory of Bear Bryant. The Alabama god invented the mush-mouth way of congratulating losers while deflecting praise from himself so it would land on his players and their good mommas and daddies. Bear also created in Alabama football the virtue of bedrock fundamentals. His football was a simple game, just a matter of “puttin’ your nose where it don’t want to go.”

What we have in Steve Spurrier, near the end of a millennium, is the coming of the anti-Bear. He has confessed to charges of letting you know he is darned good. He has done what not even the Bear did: won three Southeastern Conference championships his first five seasons. And Spurrier’s team won this year by beating Alabama with football plays so far removed from bedrock fundamentals that they looked like . . . well, the plays looked like . . .

“I grew up with Steve in east Tennessee when he was scratching those plays in the dirt,” said Joe Biddle, a Nashville sportswriter.

Florida beat Alabama, 24-23, on a touchdown scored with just less than six minutes to play. To say that touchdown came on the 10th play of an 80-yard drive is to say nothing. Florida’s work on that drive was bolder by a multiple of three than anything done on a football field anywhere at any time since . . . well, any time since . . . well, when did Emory & Henry College touch Steve Spurrier’s life?

“The 1950s,” said Joe Biddle.

What Florida did on a Saturday afternoon in 1994 was done on Saturdays when Annette Funicello wore Mickey Mouse ears. On that winning drive:

Florida faked an injury--as Notre Dame faked an injury in 1953 and so preserved an undefeated season.

Florida went into an unorthodox spread formation with a wide receiver set far out on each side directly behind two other receivers--as a little Virginia college did so well it became known as “the Emory & Henry shift.”

Florida threw a long lateral followed by a pass downfield--a “double pass” done by everyone from Pop Warner to the Stanford band and yet a risk seldom taken 22 yards from a touchdown on what might be your last possession.

Florida ran the ball only twice--once a scramble by quarterback Danny Wuerffel and later on fourth-and-one at Alabama’s 33 when a field goal might have been prudent. Even at the 2-yard line, Florida threw because the quarterback decided he couldn’t score on the sneak ordered by Spurrier.

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Amazing: Every play a gamble, every play built on the one preceding it, and every one worked. Put your nose where it don’t want to go? Spurrier’s guys won by puttin’ their noses where nobody could find ‘em, such as on the faked-injury play on first down 67 yards from a touchdown, the third play of the winning drive.

Florida practiced the charade all week. Wuerffel would limp off the field. Third-stringer Eric Kresser would rush in. The defense would expect a frenzied backup to hand off. Instead, because his arm is stronger than Wuerffel’s, Kresser’s role in the shadow show was to throw deep. Which he did, for 25 yards, moving Florida into Alabama territory.

Wuerffel promptly sprinted back in and said later, “It was all acting.” He had, in fact, gone down and might have been hurt. At that sight, Spurrier immediately said, “Kresser!” Kresser was rushing onto the field, snapping his chin strap, when Wuerffel saw him. That’s when he began to limp.

“Hobbled off,” Wuerffel said to reporters, smiling.

“Hobble, hobble,” he said, smiling.

“A fake hobble,” he said. (You can’t be too clear with reporters.) Then one more smile: “Look good?”

Nothing much looks as good as college football when it means something. More than 74,000 people saw Florida-Alabama, all but three or four of those happy folks with elephant noses and gator jaws attached to their bodies. The bowl games are next, full of sound and fury but, alas, and the time is long past to change this, signifying no undisputed national champion.

Even in dramatic victory, Spurrier offered no tortured logic that would move his 10-1-1 team to the top of the voters’ polls. He just said, “I can’t see why college football is the only sport in the world that doesn’t have a tournament to determine a champion. It’s just the fairest way to do things.”

We spoke of Notre Dame faking injury. At South Bend, Ind., on Nov. 21, 1953, a Fighting Irish team undefeated in six games was losing to Iowa, 7-0, with time running out in the first half. Coach Frank Leahy’s team needed 12 yards for a touchdown but had no timeouts. So Leahy signaled tackle Frank Varrichione, who screamed, clutched his back and fell to the turf in pain clearly excruciating.

A referee rushed to Varrichione’s side and stopped the clock. The poor guy was helped off the field. No doubt he hobbled.

During the timeout, Leahy conferred with quarterback Ralph Guglielmi, who returned to throw a touchdown pass. The game ended 14-all. Notre Dame went 9-0-1 that season, Leahy’s last. He would be remembered as a brilliant coach who gave college football both the Fighting Irish and the Fainting Irish.

As to the identity of the Emory & Henry College coach who drew up that odd spread formation, the sportswriter Joe Biddle said, “I have no idea.” He did remember one thing, though. The mention of the school reminded Biddle of his boyhood days with Spurrier when, for a while, both dated the same girl.

“Then she went off to school,” Biddle said. “She brushed us off and she married a football player--at Emory & Henry.”