Chapter 6
JOHNSON CITY DREAMS

K iwanis Park was a block away from our house in Johnson City, right across the street from Calvary Presbyterian Church. We won lots of imaginary championships in that park. It was near a Little League baseball diamond with an outfield where we could also play pickup football. Close by there was also a nice open-air basketball court, concrete, full length. It was the scene of so many of my wonderful youth sports experiences.

“Let’s go down to the park and see who’s there,” we’d say. And the games were on, whatever season it may have been.

Sometimes I would just go down to the park and kick the football by myself or dribble and shoot the basketball. Those days in Kiwanis Park laid the foundation for us in organized sports. Having friends and the ample space of the park gave us freedom. It was an ideal place to hone our athletic skills. No doubt that led to me becoming a decent athlete, and I was fortunate enough to make all-state in football, basketball, and baseball.

Early on I played with my brother, Graham, and some of his buddies, or just some guys in the neighborhood—whoever showed up. Most of my pals I went to school with were in another part of town. We were in West Johnson City, not the high-income part of town.

My first year in Johnson City, Dad drove me out to a Little League baseball park where tryouts were being held. They’d hit you a few grounders to pick up and fire to first. Aspiring pitchers threw from a mound. Then we had batting practice. I did pretty well and it was helpful to be able to measure my abilities against those of others. So it was a nice tryout. Must have been twenty to thirty kids out there that day.

The next day, the team’s head managers bid on the players who had tried out. The coaches of twelve teams had a set amount of points. My dad was asked to become an assistant coach for the Steinway Bears. I wasn’t there that day, but as the story goes, somebody said, “Okay, we’ve got this kid named Steve Spurrier and we’ll start the bidding at five hundred points,” which was the minimum. When a couple coaches started bidding on me, J. Ross Edgeman, owner of the Steinway plant and sponsor of the Steinway Bears, allegedly said: “Wait a minute! Just to let you guys know, Steve’s dad, Reverend Spurrier, is one of my assistant coaches. So I get him for the minimum five hundred points.”

Everybody looked around and they said, “He’s right! His dad’s a coach—they get him for five hundred.” Hearing about that, I guess that was the first time I understood the importance of “recruiting.”

So I went to the Steinway Bears, Mr. Edgeman’s team. His son Jimmy was on the team. We proceeded to win nineteen of our twenty games. We lost one game, 5–4, to General Finance, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. The umpire missed a call on a key play. Our guy slid into second and they tagged him out, but the ball was kicked out of the second baseman’s glove. The ump had seen the base runner get tagged. But he turned his back to the play and didn’t see the ball pop out. And of course we were all yelling, “He dropped the ball!” The ump wouldn’t change his call. We still lost. But we won the Little League championship. I pitched and played shortstop. I never lost a game pitching in Little League that year.

When I wasn’t playing ball, I made a little spending money keeping score. When I was thirteen years old, I had a lot of responsibility as the scorekeeper. People would holler up, “Steve, was that a hit or an error?” I’d get to choose which, but I was always fair. Did that for two years. I was paid a dollar a game for keeping the books on two games each night. So Monday through Thursday I could make $8 a week. And every night I’d ride my bike about ten blocks downtown to the Johnson City Press-Chronicle , where I’d drop the box score in a little slot, and then ride home. One of my sportswriter friends later suggested that since I reported on the games, perhaps I was an official member of the media at age thirteen! But I wouldn’t go that far.

—

AFTER LITTLE LEAGUE, I played Babe Ruth baseball. My dad became the head manager of Thomas Products and I was on his team. Before our first game, Dad gathered the team down the right field line and asked the thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds, “How many of you boys believe in that saying, ‘It’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game’?” All the kids raised their hands—except me. I’d heard him ask this before. And l knew what response my dad would have, which was:

“I believe you are supposed to do everything you can within the rules to win the game. We’re going to be keeping score. And anytime you keep score, you’re supposed to try your best to win. So that’s what we’re going to do. If we’re fortunate enough to get ahead, maybe everybody will get to play. But if it’s a real close game, some of you guys might not get in. Hopefully we can get way ahead and everybody plays.”

The importance of winning was ingrained in me my whole life, and in all those boys on that team. Even as a college coach, I kept Dad’s words in my heart and mind. And so did many of my teammates.

Dad’s dedication to teaching that winning was important had an impact on more people than just me. My real good friend Ralph Cross, who was on that Thomas Products team and attended a lot of our South Carolina football games, talked about it. My high school teammate Joe Cowell did as well. Joe would come to South Carolina every spring game, and a few in the regular season.

When we’d win it was a huge sense of accomplishment. Dad didn’t celebrate by hugging or anything like that. It was just, “Hey, we did a good job today, and enjoy it a little bit, but get ready for the next game.” Dad did not like losing, however—especially if you’d goofed around. He believed strongly in playing the game to win. As the Bible says, “Run your race to win.”

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THERE WAS a nice, orderly fashion to the sports seasons back in those days. When one ended, the other started. Nothing like today when seasons overlap and some kids play only one sport. I loved playing many sports and I always suggest young boys and girls try playing several—then maybe pick out one or two they enjoy most by the time they get to college.

In Johnson City, my interest in sports was at an all-time high, but football wasn’t my best game until later. Basketball and baseball came more naturally for me. I was simply a lot better at them.

When we played sandlot ball down at Kiwanis Park, we’d choose sides for football and tried to make them as even as we could. We were twelve to fifteen years old and we’d always play tackle without pads. Later in high school we quit playing those tackle games for obvious reasons—we were bigger.

Sometimes I played quarterback and sometimes I played receiver. If an older kid was there he played quarterback. I had just as much fun playing either. I loved trying to get open and catch the ball. I never could run very fast, but I could sort of give a little juke and get a step on a guy. To me back then, it was more fun making a diving catch or catching a touchdown pass than throwing one.

Basketball had been my best sport. There was a basketball team at Henry Johnson Elementary. We won the elementary school championship there. I was the most valuable player in the sixth grade and got a trophy from the superintendent of public schools, Howard McCorkle.

I also played sixth-grade football, but we were just sort of so-so as a team. My buddies would say, “You’re no good in football, but you’re pretty dadgum good in basketball and baseball.” I was just another guy out there on the field, but I was slightly bigger and taller than most. Back then I wasn’t a quarterback. I played linebacker or fullback or running back. And I just never quit football. I could have been shooting hoops and getting ready for basketball season but, no, it was football season.

One of my most memorable basketball games occurred my sophomore year. We were down two points against Bristol. They were shooting a free throw with five seconds left. It looked like it was over. I told our center, Red Miller, who was about six-four—tall back then—“If he misses, I’ll be out there at half court. Fire it to me and I’ll throw it up at the basket.” The guy missed. Red didn’t get the rebound. One of their guys got it, shot it, and missed. Now there’s about three seconds left. Red got the rebound, fired it to me at half court; I took one dribble and threw it up. Swish! Nothing but net. It was scary! I’m sure it was the longest shot I ever made in my life. In 1961 it was good for only two points! But we went on to win the game in overtime.

After my sophomore year I started taking snaps at quarterback. Had it not been bred in me to always do my best and hang in there, I might have quit. Clearly I had a long way to go because of my lack of speed, but I made it a point to begin working on my agility and strength. Luckily, I started to grow as well. And I got better.

We had an outstanding football coach at Science Hill High School in Kermit Tipton, and I was fortunate to play for him all three years. The football stadium at Science Hill is now named after him. Coach Tipton taught me a lot—including how to think big. He was a tremendous influence on me and on my style of coaching later on.

After my sophomore season in football, there was something called the Preaching Mission at East Tennessee State, which was located in Johnson City. They’d bring in ministers, preachers, and athletes, and invite all the area high school and junior high kids and so forth. Chicago Bear quarterback Bill Wade was one of the speakers. Someone invited him to come by and watch Science Hill spring football practice. Wade pointed me out to Coach Tipton: “You see that tall kid over there”—I was one of the taller kids at Science Hill High School; most of my teammates were five-seven to five-ten. “He can throw the ball pretty well. You’ve got a few good receivers. I’ll give you a few passing ideas and see what you can do.” And so he gave Coach Tipton some passing routes that we added to the offense.

I wasn’t really a decent quarterback until that fall, but Coach Tipton saw something in me. He would allow me to call the plays. In our passing attack, we’d mostly do a half rollout, with some dropback. And eventually my decision to stick with football began to pay off. This goes to show you how one coach can change everything, and Coach Tipton was about to help me prepare myself for big-time college football.

Originally at Science Hill, we played the full-house backfield or Dead T: two tight ends and three running backs. But Coach Tipton opened it up some. Our tight end was Ronnie Pelfrey, a good player who caught a lot of passes. Sometime we would throw out of the backfield to our backs. But for the most part it was not a pass-oriented offense. Jimmy Sanders was our best wideout. Later we added a couple more receivers.

We won the Big Seven Conference one year, but we lost a lot of close games. My senior year we were actually 2-4 at one point—lost back-to-back 20–19 games. But Coach Tipton kept us hanging in there and we managed to win four in a row. I was being recruited by a number of schools. Because I fought back and we won a bowl in my final game, it helped draw more interest. The folks in Kingsport hosted a postseason game called the Exchange Bowl and invited Science Hill to come play against Church Hill, a school in the area about thirty miles away.

The game was put together late in the year and we probably weren’t as prepared as we should have been. A couple of us had already started practicing basketball. Anyway, we got off to a bad start. Church Hill was kicking our tails. I went back to punt and it was a low snap. I tried to sort of kick the ball off the ground and instead I kicked it right into one of their guys and they picked it up and scored. We were down 21–0 with about three minutes left in the first half.

So Coach Tipton said, “Steve, you can throw every down!” I said, “Okay, let’s do it!” We started throwing and throwing and throwing. I ended up passing for four touchdown passes and close to 300 yards. And we beat them, 28–21. In the sixties, that was unheard of for a high school quarterback.

They say in sports you’re only as good as your last game. That was my last one in high school. More college recruiters started calling after that.

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IN BASKETBALL, we won our Big Seven Conference championship my junior and senior years. Our biggest conference rival was Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport. We seemed to win the district every year. And then Kingsport would come back and beat us in the region. So we never got to the state tournament. But we won a lot.

Elvin Little was a wonderful basketball coach. He arrived at Science Hill before my sophomore year. He was very enthusiastic and energetic on the sidelines. He yelled and screamed, but he was also always patting us on the back. He was just into it—a tremendous competitor. I thoroughly enjoyed playing for Coach Little. He got the most out of his players. Tough man-to-man defense most all the time. We dove for loose balls. He did not allow loafing by anyone. And our guys were always ready to play. I think the best thing he did was get the most out of his talent. I held the career scoring record at Science Hill for a while, but I think I’m down to about number 15 on that list now.

As far as state championships go, baseball was our sport, because we won back-to-back state titles in open classification. Our baseball coach was John Broyles, known to us as Mr. Broyles because he was also our history teacher. Mr. Broyles was a gentle person. I don’t ever remember him raising his voice. We didn’t do a lot of fancy bunting or sacrificing or anything like that. But for some reason—none of us knows why—it was hard for us to lose. We simply could not lose. And I really mean that when I say it.

My sophomore year I didn’t play much. I wasn’t quite good enough, but we had an excellent team and we went to the state tournament. You have to win your district and then region and then go to state. And in the 1960s in Tennessee all high schools were in one classification. There was one champion in basketball and baseball. There were no football playoffs back then. My sophomore season we won the district and the region and went to Chattanooga, but we did not win the state baseball title. My brother, Graham, played on one of the baseball teams that also went to the state tournament, and they did not win it.

My junior year we lost only two regular-season baseball games—to the same team, Kingsport. And amazingly, they beat us by the identical scores of 13–1, home and away. They were by far the best team in the state. Their team batting average was almost .400. They were not in our district, but we’d meet them in Knoxville for the region.

Our ace pitcher was Lonnie Lowe. I’d pitched a little in high school but never started a high school game before. Because I played basketball and started a little later with the team, I didn’t rotate pitching with Lonnie until midseason. When the regional tournament came, Mr. Broyles told Lonnie, “You pitch in the first game, and if we win, Steve’s gonna pitch against Kingsport.” Lonnie had struggled against them the first two times. So, sure enough, we beat Knox East. Kingsport, of course, clobbered its opponent. So the next night we’re playing Kingsport and the winner of that game would go to the state tournament in Nashville. Mr. Broyles gave me the ball to pitch against Kingsport in one of the most memorable games of my life.

In the fourth inning, tied 2–2, they had the bases loaded when their batter hit a fly ball down the left field line.

Our left fielder, Tommy Hager, ran over and—thinking it was going to land about a foot foul—let the ball hit the ground instead of catching it. Catching a foul ball would have allowed their runner to tag up and score. When the ball hit, the ump apparently never saw it because he was still watching for the tag and the catch. Since it wasn’t ruled foul, the two Kingsport runners scored and put their team ahead 4–2. And they had guys on second and third—getting ready to blow this thing wide open. I walked the next hitter unintentionally. The next batter hit a one-hopper right to me and I threw home, our catcher, Choo Tipton, threw to first, and we got the double play. Then I struck out the next guy to end the inning.

We put a little rally together to tie the game 4–4 going into the seventh and last inning. Our leadoff man, Tony Bowman, got on with two outs. I was batting fourth that night and hit one of my patented little squibblers right over the first baseman’s head down the right field line in fair territory—it had a little slice spin and rolled toward the light pole out there. The first baseman and right fielder almost collided. It was the perfect distance between the two of them and Tony was able to score from first base.

So now we were up 5–4 and we needed three outs to win. A Kingsport runner reached third base in the last inning, but I got the last batter to fly out to center field. We beat Kingsport 5–4, and we won the region—and we were going to the state tournament!

It was a wonderful bus ride home from Knoxville to Johnson City, about 100 miles.

Next up was Nashville and the state. I pitched the first game and we won. Lonnie Lowe pitched the second one and we beat Memphis Messick 1–0, and we won the state championship my junior year.

My senior year, Bud Oxendine and I would rotate pitching. It was almost identical to the year before: We won the district and beat Bristol in the region finals, which was played in Kingsport. We returned to the state tournament in Memphis again and won the first game 7–6. In baseball we always seemed to win the one-run games. In the other sports we’d lose the close ones, but on the baseball diamond, the Lord would smile on us and we would win. The first game was extra innings and I pitched all the way. Since it was double elimination, I would have one day off before we played again.

Then we had the challenge of playing the favorite, Memphis Christian Brothers, where Tim McCarver went to high school. McCarver went on to become a two-time All-Star major league catcher. Later in 1978, the minor league stadium there was named after him. And he became a Hall of Fame broadcaster on CBS and Fox. Memphis Christian sent a lot of players to the major leagues.

Bud Oxendine pitched the first game and we got beat 12–3. I actually had a sore arm, which I very seldom ever had—maybe pitching into extra innings two days prior had something to do with it. Before the finals, our team manager, Lennie Fortner, rubbed my arm with some hot liniment. I started warming up and I said, “Yeah, I can pitch! I can pitch, let’s go!”

The only way we could get the hitters from Christian Brothers out was to get them to pop up, which is what I tried to do. I believe our guys made eight errors behind me that afternoon. Christian Brothers would leave two men on base about every inning, and we rocked back and forth. They had guys on second and third when I finally got a guy to pop up to right center again in the final inning. We finally beat Christian Brothers 7–5 in the last inning and won the state championship! They left twelve runners on base in the seven innings. I’ve still got baseballs from those games.

Johnson City threw us a big parade. We rode in an open-air bus down Main Street. Looking back now, it’s just flat amazing. I don’t know how it happened that we could win back-to-back state high school championships in open classification. And to think I never lost a game pitching in high school. If you were never going to play baseball again—and I did not—what a good way to go out! Pitch your last game and win the state championship! The Lord continued to smile on our baseball teams and we were all thankful.

Years later, at our fiftieth reunion, I remember talking with the baseball guys and saying, “Can you guys ever remember us losing a one- or two-run game?” Nobody could. I don’t think we ever did, especially our last two years. It was something ... just amazing.

My dad always thought I should have been a baseball player, even after I became a head coach at Florida. Sometimes I would visit him in nearby Green Cove Springs. One day while we were watching a baseball game on TV, he asked: “Steve, do you think maybe you’d have done better playing baseball?” And of course I told him no.

I loved baseball, and in the back of my mind, I thought I might want to play baseball in college. But I decided if I was going to be a quarterback, I needed to participate in spring football and work on getting better.

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IT WAS TIME to officially pick my college. Recruiting was going on and there were a lot of people who wondered why I didn’t attend the big state school, Tennessee. I had seen the Vols play several times when my dad would get tickets, but they were still committed to running the single wing, which was not a good fit for me. Nobody threw the football around much back then.

I was fortunate to have a number of offers, but had been a late bloomer in football, and I had a tough time deciding where I wanted to go to school. All during the spring I had been taking visits to various other colleges, trying to sort out where my future was going to be. Finally, it came to me, but it wasn’t exactly what my parents and some of my friends had in mind.

Before Florida came into the picture that January, I thought Ole Miss was where I wanted to go. However, for some reason I decided to hold off on my decision. I also visited Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Alabama, Clemson, Duke, and North Carolina. There was no limit to the number of “official” visits back then. So I took my time and took full advantage of seeing the college football world outside the state of Tennessee.

My dad wanted me to go to Alabama to play for Coach Bear Bryant, who had told me he thought I was a good enough athlete to play safety if it didn’t work out at quarterback. Joe Namath was Alabama’s quarterback then. Steve Sloan was his backup. And Kenny Stabler would be along the next season. My mom wanted me to go to Georgia Tech because of academics. Bobby Dodd was just winding down as coach and Tech would eventually leave the SEC after the 1963 season. Quite a few other schools were calling us regularly, I think—among them Ohio State. I was in no big hurry to make my decision, because I was taking trips everywhere. Quite a few other schools were calling regularly.

Sometimes the coaches would visit Johnson City. Coach Johnny Vaught of Ole Miss showed an early interest and came up to watch me play basketball against Elizabethton. So my first visit was to Ole Miss. The first plane ride of my life was from the Tri-Cities to Memphis on the now-defunct Southern Airways, and then on to Oxford, Mississippi. Ole Miss sent a pilot and airplane to fly me to the campus about seventy miles away. Traveling in that single-engine airplane for the first time ever was an experience I will never forget. It was like being a copilot, sitting right up there in the seat next to the pilot. He let me steer it a little bit. “Just aim for that water right over there,” he said. So on my second flight ever I got to fly the airplane.

If there had been a National Signing Day like today, I would have been an Ole Miss Rebel. In 1962–63, Ole Miss had the best passing attack of any SEC school. The quarterbacks—Glynn Griffing and Jim Weatherly—were the best in the SEC. And Coach Vaught was right up there with Coach Bryant as a winner, having won six SEC titles at Ole Miss, three of them in the previous four years. He was also coming off a 10-0 record in 1962.

I had a wonderful trip to Nashville. One of my teammates, Jimmy Sanders, was also was being recruited by Vanderbilt. We got to visit Governor Frank Clement at the governor’s mansion. There was a helicopter in his yard. Governor Clement asked, “You boys want to go up for a little ride?” We said, “Sure!” We went straight up and flew over the city of Nashville, so that was breathtaking. Jimmy loved it and he wound up accepting a scholarship to play for the Commodores. He went on to become a very successful attorney in Nashville and a senior member of Neal & Harwell. In fact, he’s noted for being instrumental in the Exxon Valdez oil spill case in Alaska.

When I visited the University of Tennessee I was also able to bring some teammates with me to Knoxville. Of course, there was pressure for me to sign with Tennessee, then considered an SEC powerhouse. If they had run the T-formation and had been throwing the ball around, it would have been different, because where I grew up most of us pulled for Tennessee. These were the final days before Coach Bowden Wyatt was replaced by his staff member, Ohio State grad Jim McDonald, for just the 1963 season, and Coach McDonald would then step aside to become assistant athletic director at UT. Ironically, the person they hired next was the person who gave me my first coaching job: Doug Dickey. But by then I was already enrolled at Florida. At the time, Tennessee wasn’t getting a lot of the top players in the state. Between that and their run-oriented offense, it was not the best place for me to go. But Coach Dickey quickly turned that around in Knoxville, where his Vols teams won two SEC titles and he was recognized as SEC Coach of the Year twice.

Tennessee basketball coach Ray Mears also offered me a scholarship at our basketball banquet. He said, “Steve, if you want to come up I’ll give you a basketball scholarship.” I said, “Coach, I really appreciate it, but I think my best sport is football.”

I also went down to Tuscaloosa and watched Alabama beat the University of Miami during that 1962 season. Alabama was down 3–0 at the half and won 36–3. They won two national titles over the next six seasons and lost only six times. The only loss by the ’62 Crimson Tide team was to Georgia Tech, 7–6, one year after Coach Bryant and Coach Dodd had gotten into a feud. It was about a forearm used by Alabama’s Darwin Holt on Yellow Jacket running back Chick Graning, who suffered a broken jaw, a broken nose, a concussion, and multiple facial fractures. Eventually the two schools stopped playing each other and it wasn’t long before Tech—for whatever reason—dropped out of the SEC.

I visited with Coach Bryant that Sunday morning, but Alabama seemed a bit crowded at the quarterback position. Later, Coach Bryant said a lot of wonderful things about me as the quarterback at Florida. But when Coach Bryant was recruiting me, he said he felt maybe he probably “cussed” too much for me to go to school there, since my dad was a preacher.

On my visit to Clemson, I went to a game in Memorial Stadium—talked to Coach Frank Howard. Then I traveled to Georgia Tech in Atlanta to meet Coach Dodd and watch LSU beat the Yellow Jackets 10–7. I also visited the University of North Carolina. You talk about a strange coincidence! I visited Chapel Hill in 1962 when Duke beat Carolina 16–14 in Kenan Stadium to clinch the ACC title. Bill Murray was the coach at Duke at that time. Twenty-seven years later I was the head coach at Duke. We beat North Carolina in Chapel Hill at Kenan Stadium Hill for Duke’s next ACC title—and only one in the last fifty-four years. So I was at Kenan Stadium for the last two ACC championships (through 2015) for Duke University!

Then I visited Duke later on when North Carolina played the Blue Devils in basketball. We had played high school basketball on a Friday. I drove over there on a Saturday night and I got to see one of the most famous Duke players in history—Art Heyman. He was a six-foot-five guy who would lead the Blue Devils to their first Final Four that March. Heyman had a reputation for brawling. In 1961, he was involved in a fight with Larry Brown of Carolina that lasted about ten minutes. Brown later played in the NBA and became the first and only person to win both an NBA title (with the Detroit Pistons) and NCAA title (with Kansas). Heyman wound up becoming the national player of the year and was drafted No. 1 overall in the NBA by the Knicks. Even though Duke finished third, Heyman was also MVP of the 1963 NCAA tournament.

Florida started calling me that January. Coach Ray Graves telephoned to ask if I was interested in Florida. I had just watched the Gators beat Penn State in the Gator Bowl, 17–7. Quarterback Tommy Shannon was the game’s MVP. So Florida was an up-and-coming program.

Coach Graves had gotten a note from his brother Edwin, a postmaster in Knoxville, after we beat his old school, Knoxville Central, that year. “You ought to get this tall kid,” Edwin said in his note. Coach Graves came up to see me play a basketball game in Greenville, Tennessee.

The next week I enjoyed a wonderful visit to Gainesville. It was beautiful down there—temperature in the seventies. And it was about 32 degrees back home.

—

THE NEXT DAY I was sick as a dog. I came down with mononucleosis and had to spend some time in the doctor’s office. Coach Graves was very attentive and checked on me regularly, which I appreciated. His kindness and consideration were among the things that attracted me to Florida—along with the wonderful climate. He came into the picture late, but one thing I always appreciated about Coach Graves was that he didn’t promise me anything except that Florida wanted to pass the ball more and I’d have a chance to earn the job. Other coaches talked about me being the starter as a sophomore.

David Bludworth of Palm Beach, then a current Gator player who would go on to become a lawyer and state’s attorney, took me out to the University of Florida golf course. “We play all the time down here, and it’s free,” Bludworth said. Of course what he didn’t say was that they snuck on the course most of the time instead of waiting for a tee time.

Coach Graves always liked to tell the story that as soon as I found out there was a golf course on campus I wanted to become a Gator. (It didn’t hurt!) He had come up to Johnson City two or three times and sometimes would bring his wife, Opal. Back in those days a coach could take a recruit out to dinner. We’ve got an outstanding restaurant in Johnson City, one of the best in all of Tennessee—The Peerless Steakhouse, now known as The Peerless Restaurant—and it has been around since 1938.

To this day when I visit Johnson City I make it a point to go to The Peerless and see owner Jim Kalogeros. Coach Graves set up a sort of a signing party for me and my family at The Peerless. So I managed to get the coaches to take me and my parents to The Peerless several times.

One of the stories Coach Graves told later was about us all sitting down to the table to eat when he heard my father note that we hadn’t yet blessed the food. Years later, looking back, Coach Graves told a writer that he feared, “I’ve come all the way up here and I’m going to lose him because we didn’t say a blessing?” He apologized that night. After all, he was the son of a Presbyterian minister, too.

It became entirely clear one fine spring day, March 28, 1962, in Gainesville when the temperature was about 75 degrees: I wanted to become a Florida Gator.

One of my buddies said, “Why are you going to Florida? You don’t even know anybody down there.” And I said, “I know one guy—and he’s the Head Ball Coach.”

In the end, I just felt like Florida was the best place and the best opportunity for me. It was also a school that had not accomplished much. And I thought perhaps we could achieve some things that had never happened there before. vqhnjHHcJyRxmkt0+1///p/4QO460khb+M+z+KL6FKRGeAzoaE/I+KiPSGb20K2K