Success Won’t Be Going to Spurrier’s Head Soon

Steve Spurrier, his bright white visor still on his head, is bent over at the waist, as if he has eaten bad shrimp. The final seconds are ticking off and the San Francisco 49ers are going to beat his Washington Redskins, 20-10.

Spurrier very much wants to do an NFL strut, wants to beat somebody, 49-0, wants to prove on a new and higher level that he is the most brilliant, innovative, clever, dynamic, interesting and, yes, most hated coach at the pro level. Just as he had been at Florida in college football.

What Spurrier doesn’t want is to become another David Caruso.

Remember Caruso? He was a hot-shot TV star on “NYPD Blue” until his head got big, his ego got bigger, his contract demands got outrageous. So Caruso left to become a movie star. Except, he didn’t. And now, years later, Caruso is back on TV, in a new police drama, “CSI: Miami,” hoping very much to become big again.

Watching Spurrier biting his lower lip as he ran across the field at 3Com Park to give a limp handshake to 49er Coach Steve Mariucci, it is not hard to imagine Spurrier back in college again someday, taking the job at some wannabe big-time program, recreating Florida in some place like, oh, Westwood, hoping very much to become big again.

That’s what happens sometimes when you overreach. That’s what happens when you can’t be content with being great at one thing, when you can’t be happy doing one thing at a very high level for a very long time. It’s hard for the most talented among us to stay content.

And right now there is no sadder sight in football than seeing Spurrier still wearing his white visor at the end of a game, that visor free of dirt or fingerprints, having never left Spurrier’s head.

This means the ball coach had no reason to get angry, had no need to fire up the guys. This means the ball coach never reached a point where he knew, just knew that a botched play, a dropped ball, a missed tackle was the difference between winning and losing.

Spurrier is doing what he used to do at Florida. He is drawing up ball plays and trying to poke at the status-quo NFL. He is yanking quarterbacks (Shane Matthews for Danny Wuerffel), but it doesn’t matter now.

“I just thought I might change something up,” Spurrier said. “[Matthews] got sacked and made some mistakes. So I thought I’d give [Wuerffel] a chance.”

Wuerffel attempted two passes, completing one to the Redskins and one to the 49ers.

Spurrier could have given you and me a chance. But we aren’t NFL quarterbacks. And neither are Matthews and Wuerffel. Spurrier must know that. Spurrier didn’t have an NFL arm either. He tried to play in the NFL. He tried to be the kind of pro quarterback he was in college.

But Spurrier’s quarterback talents didn’t transfer well to the NFL. And there’s no guarantee his coaching talents will either, and no promise that Spurrier will be patient enough to find out.

“San Francisco beat us today,” Spurrier said. “They were a better team today, they really were.” He sounded sad. He sounded chastened.

Spurrier sounded surprised too, as if he had expected to beat the 49ers, 37-7, again, as he had in an exhibition game. It was that game, when Spurrier played his first-stringers longer and harder than Mariucci had used his, that might have made this game somehow interesting. Mariucci had said he was a little disgusted at Spurrier running up the score.

But in the NFL revenge isn’t a driving force.

Tennessee’s Phillip Fulmer could try every year to beat the uppity Spurrier because both coaches were going to be around for a while. They were winners. They had built programs.

Mariucci has more pressing problems than revenge on Spurrier. The 49er fans are grumbling. There hasn’t been a Super Bowl appearance in a while. The record before Sunday was only 1-1. There were even plenty of empty seats at 3Com.

Winning was important. Beating Spurrier was not important.

Spurrier was made for college. His intense belief in his mind, in his vision of a game, in his ability to create new plays, worked at Florida because Spurrier could bring in new players every year who were recruited specifically to fit his vision.

It is not like that now.

Free agents will come if they want to, if the money is good enough, if the facilities are nice enough, if the coach fits what the player wants and not if the player fits what the coach wants. In the draft, you take what is available, not always what you want or even what you need.

Watching Spurrier be unable to make Sunday’s game interesting in any way, unable to get a rise out of his team or the opponent, unable to create a ball play that his own team could carry out in any reliable way, it was as if Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint a church facade white. A big job, maybe, and lucrative, and important to do well, but what was the point of being the best at painting the outside white when you were already the best at painting masterpieces on the church ceiling?

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.