Sounds like SOS -- Same Old Spurrier -- will be at Swamp
Saturday, November 13, 2010 | Football, Soccer, Scott Carter
The Ol' Ballcoach was on his best behavior this week.
Steve Spurrier, king of The Swamp and the classic one-liner during his 12 seasons as head coach at Florida, didn't bite when reporters quizzed him at various times about the importance of tonight's game at his alma mater for the SEC East title.
The biggest bombshell Spurrier dropped came Wednesday when asked how different his offense at South Carolina is to the Fun 'N' Gun he made famous at Florida.
“We're not really built for passing,'' he said.
Somewhere, Shane Matthews, Danny Wuerffel and Rex Grossman probably assumed it was just a Spurrier impersonator doing the talking.
Has Spurrier mellowed that much since leaving Florida after the 2001 season?
To get to the bottom of this mystery, I checked in with Travis Haney, the South Carolina beat reporter for the Post and Courier newspaper in Charleston.
Haney grew up in Georgia and went to school at Tennessee, so is he well-bred in SEC football and Spurrier's legacy in its rich history. Haney has made his living since the spring of 2006 covering the Gamecocks, even playing off one of Spurrier's nicknames – Spur-Dog – as the title of his Spur of the Moment blog.
Shortly after coming onto the beat, Haney, a high school golfer, played in Spurrier's annual golf tournament. Somehow, he ended up in Spurrier's foursome for the day and sharing a golf cart with the famously competitive ballcoach.
“I was just sort of getting to know him,'' Haney said. “I had four of five hours around him that day. That was the most I had been around him.''
Not long after teeing off, Haney quickly gained a better perspective of Spurrier's intensity.
“He's a really good player, but he doesn't hit it that far,'' Haney said. “I can hit it a decent way, it's just that sometimes I don't know where it's really going. He was riding me pretty hard. I think a few holes in, he figured out me and him were probably the best players on the team, and if we were going to do anything, it was up to us.''
Their foursome started off slow, but after a string of birdies near the turn, Spurrier's competitiveness started to come out. As part of the tournament's setup, Spurrier was supposed to join a different foursome on the back nine.
However, that never happened.
“We were playing really well,'' Haney said, starting to break out his best Spurrier impersonation. “As soon as we birdied nine, he's like, 'Shoot, guys, we might win this thing.' You could just see that reflection in his eyes of wanting to win.''
As they pulled up to the clubhouse to make the switch, Spurrier had other ideas, telling tournament officials he planned to keep playing with Haney and the other members of their group.
“And of course, their mouths kind of dropped open because they were looking forward to playing with him,'' Haney said. “He's like, 'We're just going to play on.' Not only does he not switch with them, we wind up playing through their group. We just go straight to the tee box and play through. It's the only time in my life I've ever played through a group at a scramble.''
On the back nine, Spurrier and Haney cooled off. You can imagine who took most of the heat.
“I felt like I was almost one of his quarterbacks,'' Haney said. “He's like, 'I thought you were supposed to be good. You don't know where the ball is going, do you?'
“I'm like, 'Man, if this is what it's like to be on his team, what's it like to be on the other side?' I guess that's what [Gamecocks quarterback Stephen] Garcia and those guys feel like sometimes.''
For Gator fans who have known Spurrier for years, that probably sounds like SOS – Same Old Spurrier.
Haney is about the finish his fourth season covering the Gamecocks, and that day on the golf course remains one of his favorite memories. It provided him a glimpse into one of college football's most intriguing characters.
“His competitive streak in his own golf tournament was always something that kind of stuck with me,'' Haney said. “Here's this guy who has won a Heisman Trophy and a national championship, and he's out there trying to grind and win his own golf tournament, and the prize is like a Gamecocks T-shirt.''
