Spurrier

In basketball, Spurrier averaged almost two-thirds of the points scored by his high-school team, led them to their local championship twice, and was selected to the All-State team in 1963, his senior year. That same year, he also played shortstop and pitched his team to a second state baseball championship, an accomplishment that Spurrier says is “the most fun I ever had as a player in any sport.” As quarterback, he gave his football team a comeback victory in their final game - the Exchange Bowl - overcoming a 21 - 0 halftime deficit with four touchdown passes.

from Attila’s Headset: Steve Spurrier Takes on the Pros
The New Yorker, November 11, 2002

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Spurrier serves notice he’s for real
After one week of pro football, it’s Ball Coach 1 - NFL 0. The Washington Redskins’ “ball coach,” Steve Spurrier, upped his record in coaching debuts to 4-0 with a 31-23 victory over the Arizona Cardinals that highlighted a bizarre first weekend in the NFL.

Of all the wins and losses, none was more anticipated than Spurrier’s because it made two things clear. First, maybe The Ball Coach, as he calls himself, knows more about coaching than his critics want to believe. Second, maybe his Fun ‘N Gun offense is a bit more than his critics around the league want to think it is.

Certainly the latter was true Sunday as the Redskins piled up 442 total yards with oft-criticized quarterback Shane Matthews passing for 327 and three touchdowns, wide receiver Rod Gardner hauling in seven passes for 131 yards and a score and running back Stephen Davis bulling for 150 yards rushing.

CARLISLE, Pa. (AP) — It took only one NFL exhibition game for Steve Spurrier to get quizzed about running up the score. The Redskins never quit throwing in the 38-7 victory against the San Francisco 49ers in the American Bowl, including a fourth-and-1 post pattern to the end zone for a 31-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter.

Tons of spring practice photos can be found at My Gatorworld

If you saw new Washington coach Steve Spurrier hold court … you’d be watching a master at work. If he’s half as good on Sundays as he is handling people and deflecting the tough questions, it won’t take the Redskins long to win the NFC East.

Here’s what’s going to be very interesting about Spurrier: He’s not going to change one bit from being the iconoclast he was at Florida. He will enjoy being an outsider, and nothing will change that. In many ways, he’s so much like Jimmy Johnson — his own guy who no one, not even a rich owner used to getting his own way at everything, will be able to change.

Steve Spurrier is getting the band back together.

The Washington Redskins’ schedule should be renamed the UF All-Star Reunion Tour 2002.

In his debut season, the former UF coach has brought a couple of old friends - quarterback Danny Wuerffel and wide receiver Chris Doering - to the nation’s capital for the Redskins tour bus.

Steve Spurrier leaves Gainesville.

A nice summary of the situation:

Ok, so Spurrier leaves and is replaced by Zook who was once demoted by Spurrier in favor of Bobby Pruett who left to coach Marshall (in exchange for Billy Donovan) only to lose off coord Ed Zaunbrecher to Zook, in order to fill the offensive hole left by Spurrier who accepted a job with the Redskins, ousting Marty Shottenheimer whose son Brian played QB at Florida under Spurrier. Everybody got that?

This is such a great essay that I just had to blog the entire thing so I can have my own copy.
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more on espn.com today: Stoops offered the job and Shanahan interested.

as of 5:40pm EST, the Gainesville Sun (GatorSports.com) is up and running with a low-graphic/high-traffic format and a half-dozen new articles — including some post-resignation quotes from Steve.

Kirk Herbstreit has an article up on ESPN now that’s really an obit of Spurrier’s college coaching career.

You can read ESPN analyst Beano Cook’s comments on Spurrier’s resignation in a “special edition” ESPN.com Chat Show.

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