The other day I get a call from the producer of something called The Huge Show. Don’t know where The Huge Show is, I just knew they were going to call me at a certain time and ask me some college football questions. The first one was, “What happened to make the SEC even more dominant over the last 20 years than they were for the four decades before that?” The answer? “Steve Spurrier happened.”
The host was correct. The SEC had been college football’s premier conference since it was formed in the 1930s. But old style, Southern football meant beating you up on the line of scrimmage and winning a game four yards at a time. Almost all of the SEC’s great teams were based around that, whether it was Bear Bryant’s grind-it-out wishbone in the 1970s or what Ole Miss had going in the early 60s when the Rebels were a national power or even the way Bobby Dodd set about winning conference titles in the early 50s when Georgia Tech was a conference member. But then Steve Spurrier happened.
When Spurrier replaced Galen Hall as Florida’s head coach beginning with the 1990 season, Florida had talent on the roster and even more there for the taking every recruiting season. But to truly maximize the kind of players Spurrier could get from Belle Glade, Ocala, Fort Meyers and elsewhere in the Sunshine State, he knew the Gators needed to play the game on the perimeter. And he didn’t mean the hash marks, but outside the numbers, as in, really on the perimeter. The result changed the conference and, eventually, the rest of the college football world.
There’s a saying in football that you win by getting the ball to “speed in space.” In other words, figure out a way to get the ball to a dude with serious jets and a little room to run and you’re suddenly creating huge opportunities for big plays. Spurrier tried to do that every single time the Gators snapped the football. Go back and look at how Bobby Bowden and FSU were playing offense in the late 70s and early 80s. It was pound, grind, grunt, sweat and a host of other borderline profane references I could continue to make. When did they really open it up? Once Spurrier raised the bar and changed the game in Gainesville. Vince Dooley was famous for his strategy of reducing a four-quarter, 60-minute game to the final five minutes or so and then trying to make something happen on defense or in the kicking game.
All around the country coaches would let the air out of the ball for three quarters and then look for a break in the final frame. When you look up at the scoreboard and you’re down 28 and it’s not even halftime yet, it’s hard to keep pounding that fullback dive between the center and guard – and Spurrier knew it.
There are those that will cite Lavell Edwards and BYU, the Arizona State Sun Devils of Danny White and Frank Kush and, going way back, the first version of Air Coryell at San Diego State in the late 60s as the true birth of the modern, aggressive passing game at the college level. All those are great examples, but none were major conference teams at the time (ASU hadn’t been invited to join the Pac-8 yet) and were viewed more as oddities than trendsetters. The truth is, you don’t get any more “major conference” than the SEC and it—and the rest of college football—is different because of Steve Spurrier.
Oliver can be heard on 790 The Zone’s “Afternoon Saloon” weekdays from 4-7 p.m. and can be reached at coliver@790thezone.com.
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