AUTHOR’S NOTE

Choosing to Do It Differently

I once read that to be successful in life you must do it like everyone else and outwork the competition, or you must do it differently.

If I had talked, dressed, acted, and coached like the other coaches, my record would have been like all the other coaches’.

I’m not that much smarter than anyone else and I don’t work that much harder than the other guys. But somehow or another good fortune seemed to smile on our teams for whatever reason.

Sometimes I’ve had to learn by trial and error, but thankfully when I have failed it has been on me; and when I have succeeded it’s not because I have tried to imitate somebody else.

The joy and satisfaction I’ve had in turning losing programs into winning programs has given deeper meaning to my job as a coach. I have found that throughout my life what really intrigues me and fires me up is achieving new accomplishments at places like Duke, Florida, and South Carolina, where they have never won consistently.

A lot of coaches win wherever they go. Some are blessed to go to the big schools. However, when you go to a big, successful school that already has a winning tradition and attracts the best talent every season, naturally a coach is going to have a better record. And it’s far easier to turn the program around if it has slipped.

That’s the only thing I can tell people: Here’s how it happened. I don’t know why it all happened, but here’s how it happened for me.

My life story has been a combination of being at the right place at the right time, trying to use common sense in all decisions, doing things the right way for the right reasons, and receiving help from others. Was it a lot of good fortune or God smiling on us and our teams?

Those of us who are Christians believe that all things happen for a reason. We don’t always know where our paths are leading, but as Coach John Wooden said, we know they are directed. You could say that maybe God smiles on some people more than others. And I believe that our paths were, indeed, directed. And that’s why my life and career have been punctuated with a lot of Thank You, Lords.

—Steve Spurrier