Spurrier Q&A

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Florida head coach Steve Spurrier is a hands-on boss who coaches his own quarterback, coordinates his own offense and calls his own plays, and does it as well, if not better, than anyone in football. In many ways, his coaching style is an extension of his playing career, when he played quarterback for the University of Florida and three NFL teams during a 10-year pro career.

During the week before a recent open date, Spurrier took the time to talk with American Football Monthly's Richard Scott and discuss his coaching philosophies and some of the valuable lessons he has learned during his coaching career. Spurrier doesn't follow a lot of the old coaching axioms, but his success offers proof that sometimes coaches need to think outside the box and forge their own path.

AFM: Florida has tremendous fan support and a strong recruiting base, but if winning at Florida is so easy, why is it no one sustained consistent success at Florida before you arrived in 1990?

SPURRIER: First of all, it's not that easy a job because not only do we play in the SEC, but we also play in the SEC East and we also play FSU every year. We're one of the few state universities that have to compete with two other major powers in the same state, with all three in different conferences but very few common opponents, if any. We don't have any common opponents with Miami or FSU this year. And of course until 1985 or '86, we used to play FSU and Miami every season, plus the conference games. I look back in year's past to figure out why the Gators haven't done very well, I think it's because the difficulty of the schedule usually added up.

AFM: When and why did you decide to go into coaching?

SPURRIER: I went into coaching when Coach Doug Dickey offered me the opportunity to be the quarterback coach here in 1978. I had been in the NFL 10 years and didn't play - I played about two of those 10 years and the other eight I was a backup - and after getting cut by two or three teams I sort of realized it was time to get a job because I wasn't good enough to play golf year-round. At the time I got cut for the last time, I was living in Gainesville at the time and watching the Gators play that fall (1977). I went to all the home games and the game against Georgia in Jacksonville and said. 'man, this is a pretty big deal. Maybe this is something I could do pretty well.' I just got an itch to try it and Coach Dickey gave me a chance, and then we all got fired after the 1978 season.

Luckily, Pepper Rodgers had an opening at Georgia Tech, so I went up there as the quarterback coach, but then we all got fired there. My luck wasn't too good the first couple of years. I finally got a chance to go to Duke in 1980 and their track record at the time wasn't real good, but it was the only opportunity I had. But the coach there, Red Wilson, gave me a chance to be the offensive coordinator and put in an offense I believed in, because he liked passing and trick plays. That gave me tremendous freedom to create an offense. The offense we use today was created back there at Duke in the 1980s.

AFM: You run the offense, call the plays and coach the quarterbacks, something that wasn't done very much in college football before you came to Florida. When did you realize you could be a head coach and still coach a position and call the plays?

SPURRIER: I do things a little differently since I coordinate the offense. For me to do that, I have to have a lot of confidence in the defensive and special teams coaches. To throw the ball as much as we do, I have to spend a lot of time with the quarterbacks and receivers. To do it the way I want it done, the other coaches have to be heavily involved and able to handle their own responsibilities.

That's just the way I've always done it. I'm not saying my way is the best way. Sometimes I lose a little contact with the other players on the team so I try to do a better job of spreading myself out and spending more time with the defense and special teams players, but I think that's been the only drawback for me being a head coach who coaches a position and calls the plays.

AFM: At the time, however, there weren't many coaches, if any, following that model. Why did you decide to do it?

SPURRIER: I got a chance to be a head coach (with the USFL Tampa Bay Bandits) because our offenses were doing well at Duke and I got hired at Florida because we were winning at Duke and our offenses were playing well. What I thought I could do best to help our team is coach the offense and I still feel that way. I feel like if we can score points and be pretty good on offense, that's the best thing I can do to help the team. That's why I'm still the offensive coordinator. If I thought somebody on this staff could do it better, I could sit here on the phone all week and talk to you guys and play more golf. Those coaches who don't coach a position must have a lot of free time.

AFM: How did the coaches you played and coached for influence you?

SPURRIER: I picked up a little something from each of them, but the main thing I learned is that all coaches have to be themselves and do what they feel comfortable doing. You can't really copy anyone. Sometimes you can learn what not to do as well as what to do. You can say, 'hey, I like this idea, and I like the way he handles this, but I'm not comfortable with that.' In the long run, coaching is a very individual profession in that what works for one person might not work for another. You can't be a phony. You've got to be yourself, have some good values, discipline, work ethic and the ability to get things done.

AFM: Florida had won either six or seven games in the four seasons before you got there, and the program was hit with NCAA sanctions before you arrived. What did you have to change when you got there?

SPURRIER: The first thing we needed to do was create a habit of winning, a habit of success. Fortunately, I inherited a wonderful team here in 1990. The defense had finished third in the nation in total defense the year before and retuned eight starters. The offense hadn't done much statistically, but that was because they had Emmitt Smith. Well, Emmitt went to the pros instead of staying for his senior year, and he made the right choice because he was ready, but losing Emmitt may have helped because we didn't have a real star anymore and we're all in it together. But we had good players and started winning right away and won the conference in '90 and '91 and got to the championship game in '92. That '92 team was probably the least talented team we've had here, because recruiting had slipped for a couple of years before we got here.

AFM: You've hired some outstanding coaches there and three of them have gone on to become head coaches. What do you look for in the hiring process?

SPURRIER: I always look for a good person, someone who can get along with everyone. Hopefully he's a coach with a good track record of being good at what he does, but first of all he needs to be a good person who gets along with everyone. For a defensive coordinator, you'd prefer someone who's had success running his own defense, but Jon Hoke wasn't a defensive coordinator when I hired him. His style was similar to what Bob Stoops had coached, though, so there was some carryover in terminology and style. Jon's done a good job here. We've been to the championship game every year he's been here - won one and lost one - and I think he does a better job each and every year.

AFM: If you're working on game plans and coaching your own position, how do you know your assistant coaches are doing what you want them to do?

SPURRIER: I guess you could just say I've got confidence they're getting the job done. Now, I usually go to the special teams meeting, but not all of them. Sometimes I might be meeting with the quarterbacks while they're doing punt returns or whatever. You've just got to have confidence that your assistants coaches are doing what you want them to do. Plus, I've been doing this for awhile now, as far as putting in game plans and preparing for games, so there's a lot of carryover.

AFM: A lot of coaches seem to work around the clock and some spend the night in their offices, yet you and your coaches don't do that. How do get the job done?

SPURRIER: If the most hours spent at the office by coaches was the key to winning, a lot of other programs would be winning. Obviously it helps to have good players and good coaches, but to me what's important is making the best use of the time you have with your players, not the time when the coaches are by themselves coming up with schemes and watching film on the other guy. It's what you can teach your players to do that counts. That's the most important part of coaching.

I've almost found that sometimes you just have to come to the ballpark and figure out how the other guy will defend you. He'll have a plan, and hopefully we'll recognize it and put in the plays we think are the best against that defense. We carry a lot of plays to the ballpark and sometimes we don't use a lot of them, but we try to have a bunch ready that have a good chance against what we think they might be doing.

In the first game of the season, we played Marshall and they had been a bump-and-run man-to-man team and we got all these plays ready for that and they never did it the whole game. At that point, you throw out all the tendencies and start over. I told our guys watching all that tape of the Marshall game was a waste of time when you think about it. It's been like that a lot this year. Teams that usually like to mix in man-to-man in other games must think our receivers are pretty good or something, but hardly anyone's played up bump-and-run man-to-man, except Mississippi State. We see a different game plan every week, so you just have to be able to adjust during the game.

We have a system in place and try to run a lot of similar plays out of different formations and hopefully create a little bit of a different look, like most offenses do. We just have to do a good job of helping our players know what they're doing.

AFM: In the spring, you turned some of the offensive responsibilities over to the offensive coaches and spent more time with the defense. Do you ever think about changing your role as the head coach?

SPURRIER: I doubt it. I hope to coach at least another four or five years and hopefully my mind will remember all the ball plays, but I don't know if I could be the kind of head coach who walks up and down the sideline and asks everybody 'what play did we call' or 'what defense are we in.' I would feel like I wasn't doing much to help the team if I did that. I doubt it will ever come to that point.

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