下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
R everend J. Graham Spurrier Jr. didn’t believe we should be playing ball on Sundays. He got a little mad at us boys one time and felt compelled to point out, “Sunday is a day of rest!”
My dad was a really committed, sincere Presbyterian minister who believed the Bible from the front to the back. He also loved all sports, especially baseball and tennis. He would shoot basketball with us and toss the ball around. But he had some strong feelings about when we played or practiced. My brother, Graham, and I would go to church and Sunday school and then head down to the park to play ball.
Church was important to us. But us kids didn’t go around preaching to other kids, or begging them to come to church. We were not religious zealots, but ours was a family of strong faith. I was proud to be awarded my thirteen-year perfect attendance Sunday School pin. The whole family went to Sunday School, church service Sunday morning and Sunday night—and prayer meeting every Wednesday night.
I can still hear my brother, Graham, saying, “Mom, we go to Sunday school and we go to church ... we go to Sunday-night church ... we go to prayer meeting. We go to all those. Don’t you think maybe we could go down to the park Sunday afternoon and play ball?” Mom said, “I’ll talk to your dad about that.” And she did. She said to him, “Graham, I don’t think the Lord will mind if those boys go and play ball Sunday afternoon as long as they’re going to church three times every Sunday.”
So Mom got us the free pass to play ball on Sunday afternoon.
—
MOM AND DAD met in youth group in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was as wonderful a mother as any young man could have, but Marjorie Orr Spurrier did not have an athletic background. She and her whole family loved music and played the piano. Mom also played the organ in church. She did the bulletins. She did it all. Sometimes Mom, along with Graham and me, even had to clean up the church when the janitors didn’t show up.
Mom made my brother, sister, and me take piano lessons. I would rather have been down at the park playing ball, and my dissatisfaction soon became apparent. After three or four lessons, Mom finally said: “Stevie, you’re not musically inclined. You don’t like this, do you?” I said, “No, Mom, I really have no desire to play the piano.” She said, “I can tell that. You can go on down to the park and start playing ball.” And I didn’t have to take piano anymore.
While my father was a huge influence, providing structure in my life and fostering passion for sports, it was also my mother’s tender, compassionate touch and common sense that kept us balanced. She had a unique ability to make a nice home for us wherever we lived. And we lived quite a few places. Presbyterian ministers seem to move about, so in the early years we changed locations a lot as my dad changed churches. He was always pastor of a small church.
My mother was one of the most calm, passionate, helping-others individuals I’ve ever known. I never saw her mad. She would get her point across without raising her voice. But the thing I remember most is that every Friday, about four hours before a football and basketball game, she would cook me a baked potato and green peas. Back then they thought eating steak was good. So I had a little $2 steak. Maybe it was a dollar. Usually at four o’clock, my brother and sister were out doing whatever they were doing and Dad was out preaching somewhere. So it was just Mom and me. We would have conversations. I was a little overconfident and cocky, like a lot of high school athletes, and would say stuff like, “Mom, how many points you think I’ll score tonight?” And she’d say, “Steve, just do your best—that’s all we can ask for.” I’d say, “How bad you think we’ll beat these guys?” She’d say, “Steve, just do your best and the score will take care of itself.” It was never about results, unlike Dad’s zest for winning. Just, “Do your best.”
Back then we would never even hug after games. She would stand in the background. Nowadays, everybody hugs after victories. But we weren’t a real hugging family, for some reason. I guess because a lot of people didn’t do that in those days. But we should have. I probably hugged her more in her latter days after I was fifty or so. She lived to the age of eighty-seven, had a wonderful life, and she was ready to go to heaven and be with my dad.
—
MOM GAVE BIRTH to three children, three years apart, in three different places. My brother, Graham, was born in Eudora, Arkansas, three years before I arrived. My sister, Sara, a year older than me, was born in St. Albans, West Virginia. During World War II, Dad was hired by a church in Miami Beach, Florida, which is where I was born—at St. Francis Hospital on April 20, 1945. The previous pastor had gone off to be a chaplain in the Army, and when the war was over he returned.
You might wonder: Three years apart, three different birthplaces—how in the world did this occur? Why did he leave some of these churches? I’m not sure. Some people said maybe he was a little overbearing. He had a tendency to go overtime when he preached on Sunday morning. Maybe the congregation didn’t want a minister that was as passionate and as gung-ho as my dad.
I’ve said many times that my father was the most passionate Christian man that I have ever known or met. And he believed that he was on this earth to spread the gospel and to win as many people for Jesus as he possibly could. He would introduce himself to somebody on the street and ask them if they were a Christian. And if not, he would explain to them how they could accept Jesus Christ as their savior and gain their path to heaven. Very seldom did he ever meet someone without an attempt to witness to them. I guess that’s what they call an evangelical, but that was just his way. So maybe some of the congregations thought his evangelical approach was a little aggressive—I’m not sure. Or maybe it was just time to move on.
—
SOMETIMES DAD HELPED coach our teams. And he let everybody know right away that in organized sports, the purpose was to win the game. Effort alone in organized sports wasn’t enough. We needed to achieve a result. Of course, winning was part of the fun. So playing football, basketball, and baseball and trying to do my best to help our teams win every time was very important to me.
From Florida, our family moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, to live with my grandmama, Willie Austin Spurrier. She actually had two duplexes around downtown. She rented out one side. Mom, Dad, and we three children lived with her in the other side. It was a two-bedroom. I was still an infant and I’m told my crib was in the living room. So we had tight quarters, but we didn’t stay there very long.
It was when we got to Athens, Tennessee, that my interest in sports began. Dad became pastor at Mars Hill Presbyterian for about five years. Just two blocks away from the church was Tennessee Wesleyan College, where, ironically, quite a few years prior to that, my college coach, Ray Graves, had played for the Bulldogs before transferring to the University of Tennessee.
I really didn’t have any kids to play with in my neighborhood. At Tennessee Wesleyan, Graham and I would sort of throw or kick the ball around with some of the players. And I still have some photos of myself with one of the players, Doak Willett. They sort of adopted me as a team mascot.
Later when I was coaching at Duke, I met one of my all-time favorite players, Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice. He was an All-American running back at North Carolina. My dad and mom, both being from Charlotte, were big fans, and Choo Choo was a big hero in that part of the country. When I was six years old, I got my first football uniform for Christmas, Choo Choo’s number 22. Choo Choo went on to play for the Washington Redskins.
While living in Athens, Tennessee, my dad was very involved in youth sports. As a youngster, he’d played baseball and tennis. He won the Independence Park tennis championship in Charlotte as a teenager. His brother Bob Spurrier played at Presbyterian College and was a well-known amateur tennis player in North Carolina back in the forties and fifties. Uncle Bob won several tournaments and was the best athlete in the Spurrier clan at the time. And Uncle Bob was the athlete all us young Spurriers who loved sports looked up to.
Athens was a fun place and we have fond memories, but once again it was time to move on. My dad was hired by the First Presbyterian Church in Newport, Tennessee, in what could be characterized as a better job.
Newport was a neat little town on the Pigeon River in East Tennessee, approximately forty miles from Knoxville. My dad would get tickets sometimes to see the Tennessee Vols play football at what was then Shields-Watkins Field. So we got a chance maybe once a year to go over there. I was ten when I saw my first game, on November 5, 1955. Tennessee played Georgia Tech to a 7–7 tie. Johnny Majors was a triple-threat tailback at Tennessee, one of the last schools to use the single wing. Buddy Cruze was the tight end. John Gordy the tackle. Bill Anderson was the wingback. Bowden Wyatt was the head coach. That 1955 Tennessee team posted a 6-3-1 record.
The 1956 Vols squad won an SEC Championship, going 10-1 and finishing the season ranked No. 2, but lost to Baylor in the Sugar Bowl. That year, UT achieved one of its greatest victories, a 6–0 win over Georgia Tech in Atlanta. The Yellow Jackets were ranked No. 2 nationally and the Vols were No. 3. Majors was an All-American and runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in 1956.
Little did I know I would later coach in Neyland Stadium numerous times while at Duke, Florida, and South Carolina—including twice when Majors was head coach of the Vols. In fact, our team at Duke beat the Vols 25–24 in the opening game of the 1982 season at Neyland Stadium and later, when I was head coach in 1988, we won 31–26. Before both games, I had goose bumps. I really got fired up when the announcer said before the game, “It’s football time in Tennessee!”
Or little did I know that I would one day be named the winner of the General Robert Neyland Award, which would be given by the Knoxville Quarterback Club in April 2016.
I attended elementary school in Newport through the fifth grade, so we went to school with the same kids all the time. We loved Newport. Loved the sports. Loved the school and the teachers. My fifth-grade teacher was Miss Reba Williams. Everybody wanted to be in Miss Williams’s class because she was so positive. Miss Williams always said, “If any of you ever grow up to be a millionaire, remember your old fifth-grade teacher.” I never forgot her. And sent her a $100 bill one day with a note, “I remember what you said!”
My athletic skills started to develop as we began to play a lot of pickup basketball. And it appeared basketball was going to be my game. We played a ton of three-on-three, four-on-four, and a game where after eleven buckets the winner got to keep playing, or else you’d have to sit over there and watch the other guys for fifteen minutes or so. I did not like to sit. That’s where I learned the importance of competing constantly.
I was beginning to realize I had been blessed with good eye-hand coordination, and around fifth grade I began to separate from others. I could dribble around most kids at the time. I could never run fast, but I had a quick step and could find myself an open shot, layup, or reverse layup.
My dad knew a preacher from nearby Morristown who also had a son in the fifth grade who played basketball. My dad said: “Why don’t we get eight or ten of your kids in the fifth grade and put together a team and we’ll put together a team over in Newport and play each other home and away, and have a little game? These kids have no team to play on.”
The Morristown preacher brought his basketball team over to Newport. They played man-to-man defense. We beat them 44–28, or something like that. I scored 40 of the 44 points in my first competitive game. And, I shot almost every time I got the ball.
The next week we traveled to Morristown and they had those short goals, eight feet high. I’d never played on those. Morristown went with a zone defense. And it was a little more difficult the second time around, but we still managed to beat them. I think I scored about twenty-five. I did most of the shooting and had probably earned my nickname of “Gunner” after only two games of organized basketball.
In Athens and Newport, we had an outdoor goal at the house. I’d shoot out there, even if it was freezing outside. I’d play one-on-one with Graham, or I’d just go shoot by myself.
Graham was a starting guard on the eighth-and-ninth-grade basketball team. They didn’t have many girls’ sports then, so all my sister, Sara, had was church league basketball. About all the girls could go out for in those days was cheerleading. She was a pretty good athlete who didn’t get a chance to participate.
During my time in Newport, my dad had a friend who gave him an autographed Mickey Mantle baseball. We put it up on the mantel in the living room. It stayed there for maybe two or three weeks. And then one day Graham and I needed a baseball to throw around. “All right, now, it can’t hit the ground,” we declared. We played catch with it. No grounders, just catch. And then we started firing it harder. And the Mickey Mantle baseball hit the ground. Then it began to get dirty, so we started playing with it regularly—even hitting it. Pretty soon the Mickey Mantle baseball was in the woods. We knew it was a good baseball and we didn’t have many. When a preacher makes about $4,000 a year he doesn’t go buy a sack full of baseballs. We had to use what we could. The Mickey Mantle baseball served us better as a tool than a trophy, I guess.
My dad teamed up with a couple other men in town to organize a Little League baseball. Dr. Hobart Ford, our dentist, applied to Little League headquarters and got it started in Newport. There were only four teams: the Yankees, the Cardinals, the Giants, and the Indians. I was on the Giants. With only four teams, we didn’t get to compete in tournaments or anything like that. But I loved getting ready for the games.
Then one day came the news: We were moving to Johnson City. It was the summer of 1957. We all cried. Little did we know what a good move it was going to be for our family. I’d asked Dad again why we had to keep moving and he would just say, “It’s an opportunity for another church.” Or maybe it was time to find a new congregation that hadn’t heard his sermons.
—
WE WOULD REALLY be blessed in moving to Johnson City. It was one of the Tri-Cities—at the time the sixth-largest city in Tennessee with a population of about 25,000, near the North Carolina and Virginia borders. (The other two Tri-Cities were Kingsport and Bristol.)
Moving to Johnson City in 1957 was like hitting the jackpot for youth sports, because it was a higher level of competition and it came at a perfect time for a young boy who would eventually make a lifetime of playing or coaching competitive sports.
We had a beautiful baseball diamond at the Veterans Administration facility in Johnson City. In my teen years, baseball would get even more competitive. Dad would get more involved in coaching Babe Ruth.
I had big dreams and, in Johnson City, the opportunity was there for a young boy to achieve just about all of them.