Florida Gators Legend Steve Spurrier Opens up About His Life in Football

[Music] and so my daughter amy one day said dad you need a restaurant to put all this memorabilia in and i said you know what you're probably right [Music] so [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] it's been very successful thus far i've got to keep up the good work excellent service food is really good here our chef mark is one of the best i've ever been around so we plan on keeping keeping it going well as long as we certainly can well coach this is your heisman trophy back are out in front of us we have danny werfel's heisman trophy this has to be the only restaurant on earth with two heisman trophies so my question for you is what's the different feelings you have winning that award as a player and coaching a player to winning the heisman oh it's certainly a wonderful individual thrill but again it is an individual award if you said would you rather won the heisman or the national championship the national championship would be far ahead because it's uh football's a team sport and when you win a championship you get to share with the entire team guys that win the heisman we try to share it with our teammates and all this and the other but it is an individual award and i'm glad to go on the record books is having one but i'm more proud of these championship rings down here because it reflects a whole bunch of players and coaches that had a very successful year coach where amongst your career accomplishments does the acc title at duke rank and is it a unique thing for you when you look back on it this was a team that really i guess sort of made my coaching career and really made florida's coaching career the first seven or eight years of the 90s but the big game was the duke 21 clemson 17. that that's the game that turned it around and in fact the students stormed the field there at wallace wade stadium and at duke tore down the goal post uh you don't see that much anymore then uh we beat nc state 35-26 they were a real good team that year and that was crucial and then the tar heels were not a very good team that year so we beat them 41 to nothing and it should have been 60 to nothing we sort of fiddled around a little bit in the fourth quarter but anyway so i come to florida after that game and uh at the time florida had zero sec championships since 1933 but i inherited i call it a loaded team they were ball players on defense offensive line everywhere and we found a quarterback who was already here shane matthews and uh we started winning sec championships coach the 1990 sec title next to next to it is the 89 duke ball so you came straight over you win the sec uh of course the gators in 1984 were stripped of their first sec title some say unfairly by the presidents but you've always counted 1990. why is that important to you to do that mark in 1990 we started the season we weren't on any kind of probation but we were under investigation and we'd already beaten alabama and i think lsu or mississippi state and the violation occurred four years prior to any player or coach even arriving on campus but our university decided to accept the penalty which meant we couldn't go the sugar bowl as champion and the sugar bowl got the champion in their game they had to deal with them so now they said well you guys can't win sec well i said yeah we can win it and the players i mean they were heartbroken and we had a little talk and i said i guarantee all you guys right here today if we win the scc this year i will always say that's our first and i get my word today and i will to the day they put me under that team won the sec then i guarantee you all of us on that 1990 team it's in our record boat and it'll be in our record book forever so i'm looking at the 1994 florida georgia game ball 50 points in athens famously i was at the cocktail party game this year uh the georgia fans wanted more blood at the end of that game ugga famously in your 66 season ended your perfect campaign in your sec title hopes um some say there's a connection there that for you when you were coach at the gators the cocktail party was a little bit personal so why is this ball here and what makes that an important uh milestone for you or memento oh it really isn't all that important it really isn't uh we went to athens and played them in 95 actually the years wrong but at the end of the game i think one of our assistant coaches lawson holland said coach nobody's ever scored 50 here and i said well we're way ahead and we had our backup quarterback in eric crusher travis mcgriff was about our third team receiver that year he went on to be a first teamer and played very well here but we scored with a couple minutes left uh to go over 50. and uh it wasn't that big a deal trust me but uh if we could tag one on the bulldogs we we needed to they had beaten us so many times in the past they had owned us and if they can run it up on us they're free to go do it also when you come to coach's restaurant you're going to see a display over here from augusta national golf club and you're going to see a one on that score card coach what was the what's the context of that round and what's that hole-in-one like for a serious golfer like you yeah well people always ask have you ever played augusta national and i've said yes several times i was fortunate as coach of south carolina there was a member of augusta that invited me and a couple of coaches over every year so i tell people had a hole in one and uh they said what hole what hole and when i say number seven they say wait a minute that's a par four i said well not on the par three course so this ball uh was aced on the par three course number seven there i think i hit an eight iron from about one thirty eight up hill a little bit and uh i remember caddy said uh i think he went in coach and as you can see it was just like that it was in the shadows a bit so you couldn't really see the ball go in much and uh but it was in the jar and we got that's the ball we got it fixed up and put it in two hall of fame certificates coach what are these all about here yeah i guess uh i've been sort of fortunate and blessed to be the only guy to do a bunch of things this that and the other but at the time i'm only living person that has in the hall of fame on both sides the other three are amos alonso stag back in the 1900s bobby dodd who played at georgia tech and coach there and bald and white who was a tennessee coach for quite a while those three also went in as player and coach some good company huh well i'm the only one still alive so maybe someday there will be one i don't know not many uh college all-americans or high school guys like that go into coaching i was the only one dumb enough to do it i guess but it worked out pretty well so i told you i went to ucla coach wooden's an important part of my life had a big impact on me can you describe what appealed to you about coach wooden and why you've looked to him for some coaching ideas philosophy etc i think back in 1990 or 91 i just got to florida job and a good friend of mine had gone to hear coach wooden speak in nashville and he back then you know the little audio tapes he sent me the tape and i put it on and i wrote down about 36 principles of coaching that were on there and i said man these all make sense to me i'm going to try to really use these as head coach here in florida and when he was uh guys she was i'm not sure how old he was 94 9 early 90s maybe but one of his friends called me and said here's his number he'd love to hear from his birthday's today so i called coach wood and talked to him and told him that i read your articles and i try to coach as much like you as i possibly can and he said i can tell because i've seen your teams play so that was the best compliment as a coach i think i've ever had when john wooden said i like the way your guys play so uh his his philosophy was so simple and clean it was that his players were just mentally taught to play the best they can they didn't worry about who the opponent was they ain't worried about what score was just play the best you can the whole game that's all you have to think about and don't you know don't make stupid mistakes this that and the other and that's the way they played the game and uh to win 10 national championships in 12 years he had a lot of different players doing that but the way they played the game and uh was was the way all all sports should be played yeah these are just a whole bunch of ball plays that obviously hit a lot of them for touchdowns that were crucial in a lot of our victories here in florida uh i think a few from uh duke and maybe even one or two from south carolina the fans sort of get a kick out a lot of these because they remember a bunch of these plays did you draw these up is this your yeah i drew these up on our play sheet as you can see we got hash marks you always gotta draw your hash marks actually this game was 1991 1991 against san jose state and uh we had the largest crowd in the history of the state of florida at this game because our stadium just got enlarged prior to this season i think we had 85 000 for florida versus san jose state so that's how the gators love football back in the day and that was a play uh where would block everybody when we send two guys out uh san jose was a big blitz team and when we played those big blitz teams we just stack everybody up so they come on and rush one on one and away we go so that was what that play was right there what i wanted to ask coach when you were drawing plays were were you a were you a technical guy were you thinking technically was it more of a feel did you consider drawing plays a creative endeavor in certain ways we had plays that were really designed uh for the correct defense to throw against uh so sometimes you had the audible you don't get the right defense and we had a few adjustments but back when i coach the other team will pretty much show you what their coverage is 3d 2d blitz man man well just briefly i always believe throwing is similar to hitting a baseball so if a guy is looking at the pitcher he doesn't hold his bat right here he holds it he pulls it back a little bit off his right pec up in here something like holding a little higher danny liked it up here shane and rex and some of those guys were just more right here but not here but the guys that hold it here they have to they have to pull but from here you step and throw so anyway of course we did that every day all day ball positions steps head positions and all that which i don't know how many coaches teach that today very few i think hey coach do me a favor point this at me and just get me in the frame so one thing i noticed i found an old video of you teaching quarterbacks and ball here but i also noticed almost like ted williams there was a little bit further torque back and what i wanted to ask you is as a former quarterback that looked to me like not only is the ball in a position to throw but you're also a little coiled in the midsection so as you come through boom you can fire it up with a lot of upper body twist is that was that right to know what is that that's exactly right the more coal you got you know you don't have any coal here but here you do so just that little coil you're already you're ready to step in front exactly no question about it so coach you're known for your visors what do we got here i was you know fortunate enough that i played a lot of golf in the off season and uh i was fortunate we did some ireland golf trips up to new york and long island and i had an opportunity to play some of the really great golf courses in america and overseas and i've always tried to collect the visor from a really nice golf course and then of course we got all the schools i coached at duke south carolina and florida but so this is the collection and uh we decided to call the rooftop bar housers so this is the group of hazards it's named for right here how many are in here you have any idea ah [Music] 144 that's what 144 visors looks like [Music] you

Channel: 5th Down College Football

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Keywords: steve spurrier, college football, florida football, florida gators, college gameday, steve spurrier funny, steve spurrier mad, steve spurrier south carolina, steve spurrier florida, steve spurrier interview, steve spurrier highlights, Steve Spurrier Visor, University of Florida, Florida, Gainesville, SEC Football, South Carolina, University of South Carolina, Football, Coaching, college football highlights, Heisman Trophy, The Swamp, Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, College Football

Id: h_oSlQRFEDs

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 21 2022