ATHENS, Ga. — The visor will be missed.
I’m not a fan of the look, but I am a fan of the man who made it famous for wearing it on the sidelines on Saturdays.
Steve Spurrier told his South Carolina football team late Monday that he is stepping away. He said the “R” word on Tuesday, but it’s not what everyone expected.
"First of all, I'm resigning and not retiring," Spurrier said. "I doubt if I'll ever be a head coach again, but don't say I've retired completely. Who knows what will come in the future?”
No farewell tour or friendly goodbye digs at other coaches or programs, just a simple resignation.
“He was fun to compete against because you just never knew what was going to happen, or you never knew what he might say,” Georgia Bulldogs head coach Mark Richt said.
Like in 1995, when after his Florida Gators won 52-17 in Athens, he said, “We knew coming in that nobody had scored 50 against them here, so that’s what we wanted to do.”
As the head coach of the Gamecocks in 2012, he said, "I sort of always liked playing them (Georgia) that second game because you could always count on them having two or three key players suspended."
If there was one game that Spurrier wanted to win every year, it was against Georgia. He won 16 of his 23 meetings with the Bulldogs. “I think we’ve just been fortunate to get some breaks here and there, and win some close games, lose some close games with them, too,” Spurrier said before his final game against Georgia on Sept. 19.
While his 16 wins are the most by any coach against the Bulldogs, Spurrier finished with a losing record vs. Georgia as the head coach at South Carolina. His Gamecocks record against the Bulldogs was 5-6.
“Some of my memories of Coach (Spurrier) is just watching his offenses play. They were running the fun-and-gun as everybody knows over there at Florida, and we were competing against that year after year (at FSU),” Richt said. “As a young coach, you watch offensive football and you learn, and you steal ideas. I can't tell you how many times we would watch film of what we were doing and decided to put it in there at Florida State over the years.
“He blessed college football for many years in a lot of ways. He will be missed.”
WSBTV
