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A beautiful, warm fall day in Columbia, South Carolina. A great day for hitting golf balls. Or, for that matter, announcing your resignation. So I did both on Tuesday, October 13, 2015, a day that began like most any other.
I awoke early at my house in Elgin, about a twenty-five-minute drive from the South Carolina campus. I grabbed my two newspapers, mixed some blueberries with my Raisin Bran, ate breakfast, and said goodbye to my wife, Jerri. Then I jumped in my car, plugged George Strait’s Greatest Hits into my CD player, and off I went to work for the final time as Head Ball Coach at the University of South Carolina.
Arriving a little later than usual, I parked and walked over to our training facility for a quick workout.
I did my usual twenty-five minutes on the treadmill.
Fifteen minutes on the stationary bike.
Got up a good sweat.
Showered, shaved, and prepared for the press conference.
Put on an open-collar shirt with a sport coat.
And went upstairs to formally resign.
On my last official day, I wasn’t pondering any great philosophical thoughts, because to me this really wasn’t that big a deal. It wasn’t like, “Oh, gee! I’m resigning today.” I had been preparing for this day for a long, long time. After thirty years, I was completely at peace that my head-coaching career was finished. There was one final official act—the press conference.
This was how it was going to end after more than 400 games as a Head Ball Coach, a position that I had aspired to since breaking into the profession in 1978 at age thirty-three. I knew I would still want to be around football doing something, maybe even at the high school level, so I didn’t retire. I resigned.
I had hit a tipping point early in the 2015 season when I felt I wasn’t doing a very good job anymore, for whatever reasons. And that became stressful because it bothered me more than anybody else. The stress was beginning to affect me mentally and physically. When you’re the oldest coach in the Southeastern Conference ever at seventy and you’ve had a bellyful, it’s time to step aside and give somebody else a chance.
I was aware that I’d be criticized for resigning at South Carolina in mid-season. No matter what, some people were going to say I bailed out on the team. But that’s okay. I’d always told Athletic Director Ray Tanner and President Harris Pastides that if and when things started going south, nobody would have to worry about firing me. I’d do it myself. So I guess I fired myself when I began to realize our players weren’t getting my message anymore and needed a fresh voice.
—
I HAD TOLD the players and coaches the night before, after practice on October 12: “I know there’s been some rumors and speculation that I may resign pretty soon. And to tell you the truth I’m thinking about it. And I think you guys might be better off without me. But you guys don’t need to worry about that. Let’s go beat Vanderbilt! That’s the only thing you guys need to worry about.”
Brandon Shell, the big six-foot-six, 328-pound senior offensive tackle from Goose Creek, South Carolina, came over and said, “Coach, you’re not too old to keep coaching!”
“I may have done it long enough, Brandon,” I said. “It’s not only that. I think you guys would be better off with a new coach here.”
The news spread immediately. The players got on their Twitter accounts, Facebook, Instagram, whatever: “Coach Stepping Down.” Word got out. I knew it would. That was okay. It wasn’t any big secret.
I came home and told Jerri, “By the way, I’m resigning tomorrow. You want to come to the press conference?” She said no, that she didn’t plan to go, because she had a class to attend and she was on track to graduate. And I don’t think she really wanted to be there, anyway. In fact, she really didn’t want me to resign. I kidded her that she wanted me to coach until they put me in the grave.
Jerri just loved going to practice and hugging all the players. Since she was a young girl she had been a true football fan, passionately rooting for her uncle Rip Engle and his Penn State team. She had been my copilot all these years, faithfully attending almost every practice. She was so much a part of our players’ lives that some of them called her Mom. She baked cookies on their birthdays. When they were homesick or had problems, she would be there. Believe me, she put way more effort into the job than was required. So she knew all of this was going to be over for her. But in the end, there really wasn’t a lot of discussion between us about it.
I’d been a part of a team since I was seven. And even though I knew I’d miss that, I was ready to move on to whatever was next. Quite frankly, at that moment, I had no earthly idea of what “next” was going to be. I just knew this was over.
I had already spoken with “Coach” Tanner, as we referred to our athletic director, and told him several weeks before that this was near the end for me. He had encouraged me to coach through the season, but I felt the time was now.
LSU was going to be my final game. It was an odd place to finish my coaching career—a “home game” in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The venue had to be changed because of the floods that had hit South Carolina the week before. We played in Tiger Stadium and drew a little over 42,000, but South Carolina got most of the proceeds.
Jerri went jogging the morning of the game, came back, and said, “The people out here are so nice. They had signs, GEAUX GAMECOCKS , and billboards that said WELCOME SOUTH CAROLINA .”
The fans were extremely hospitable. Before the game, I always walk around for a couple hours. I said hello to my friend Joe Alleva, LSU’s AD. Head coach Les Miles’s wife, Kathy, was also out walking. Les and some of his assistant coaches came over. They were just very nice to us. And then the East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff, Sid Gautreaux, came by and gave me an honorary deputy’s badge. He said, “Coach, if you ever come back here and need some help, maybe this will help you a little bit.” So I said thanks.
I came back to the locker room and told our assistant coaches, “Man, times have changed. And I really like the old times better. When I was coaching at Florida and we came to LSU every other year, they would be shooting birds at us, throwing stuff at the bus, and yelling, ‘Arrogant, cocky Spurrier, run up the score!’ And now they are really nice to us because they know they are going to kick our ass today. We’re going to try and give them a ball game today, but I don’t know how we match up.” We didn’t match up very well. They were extremely confident that they were going to beat us good. And they did, 45–24.
So I made up my mind after my final game in Baton Rouge that it was best for everybody concerned if I stepped down.
Back in Columbia, as the time drew near to make the announcement of my resignation, I had asked the coaches to come upstairs for a quick meeting because “I want to go over some stuff.” A few of them might have already had an inkling, but I wanted to break it to my staff gently, including my sons Steve Jr. and Scotty, two of our assistant coaches. We were all in the meeting room with Coach Tanner and Deputy Athletic Director Charles Waddell when I said:
“I’m resigning tomorrow. I’ve had it, I’m finished. One of you guys is going to be Head Ball Coach tomorrow. And Coach Tanner is scheduled to interview four of you. We have co-coordinators on offense and defense. If anybody else wants to be interviewed, raise your hand and he’ll interview you, too, if that’s what you want to do. Anybody who wants to be Head Ball Coach.”
I didn’t recommend anyone over anybody else, but I did suggest that our special teams coordinator, Joe Robinson, be added to the interview list. Later, Coach Tanner actually spoke to the four captains as well. That night he called Co-Offensive Coordinator / Line Coach Shawn Elliott and told him he was the interim head coach.
Shawn really looked forward to this opportunity and embraced it. When I hired Shawn from Appalachian State, I thought he was an excellent choice for offensive line coach. He’s from Camden, about thirty miles from Columbia, where he grew up a Gamecock fan. He, his parents, and pretty much everybody in that community love the Gamecocks and have a lot of ties to our state and the University of South Carolina. I was truly hoping he would win enough games to become the head coach and keep a lot of our assistant coaches. This was another reason to step down in mid-season.
Shawn is a very good line coach, an excellent recruiter, and a good person. Even though I thought he would be the logical candidate for Coach Tanner to select, I didn’t suggest him or have any input. Jon Hoke, my former D-coordinator at Florida, had been at South Carolina only one year. Lorenzo Ward was the co-coordinator. But the defense was struggling. Steve Spurrier Jr., our co-offensive coordinator, had the wrong last name. So it really added up that Coach Elliott was the best choice and most deserving.
It had been suggested that I stay on another week and “go out a winner” because we thought we could beat Vandy, but I felt that was unfair to the interim coach. I hoped Shawn could turn things around.
—
A FEW MINUTES before the Tuesday press conference, I met with President Pastides and his wife, Patricia; Coach Tanner; Deputy Athletic Director Charles Waddell; and Steve Fink, our sports information director. The men all had on dark suits and ties. I had on a blue blazer and an open shirt, sort of sporty. It was about 80 degrees that day.
“You guys look like you’re going to a funeral!” I joked. “This is not a funeral. Let’s just go do this thing!”
We headed upstairs for the press conference, which was being broadcast live at noon on ESPN. I hadn’t really taken any notes because I had already thought out what I was going to say. I didn’t feel nervous or have any trepidation about the announcement. It was time to move on and let everybody know how blessed I had been to be a head coach for thirty years, and especially the last ten-plus at South Carolina.
President Pastides and Coach Tanner said a few words. And then I told the media: “First of all, I’m resigning and not retiring. I don’t have plans to ever be a head coach again ... but don’t say I’ve retired completely. Who knows what will come in the future?”
Somebody said, “Coach, you’re not very emotional.” And I said: “I knew this day was coming and I now know I’m finished as a head coach.”
I did a few one-on-one interviews right there, including talking with Rece Davis, host of ESPN’s College GameDay , explaining all the reasons behind it. And away we went.
—
HINDSIGHT IS ALWAYS 20/20. The best time to walk away would have been after beating Miami 24–21 in the Independence Bowl at the end of the 2014 season. We had won four straight bowl games against Nebraska, Michigan, Wisconsin, and then Miami. I just wasn’t smart enough at that time to believe we would really struggle in 2015. As head coach, I took full blame for that losing season.
There wasn’t time for me to explain everything at the press conference, so later, in December 2015, I wrote the Gamecock fans an open letter:
“In the last few years when asked how much longer I plan to coach, I have said often that if our team is going in the wrong direction I need to resign and allow someone else to take over as head coach here. After six games, we were 2-4 with two blow-outs by Georgia and LSU. We were behind at halftime against UCF (a team that went 0-12 in 2015). We were definitely going in the wrong direction. I felt that I was doing a lousy job as head coach and a change would help our team become more competitive. I told our team after I resigned that they needed new leadership, new enthusiasm and a new plan.” I said that by resigning I would save the University of South Carolina several million dollars, as I forfeited the buyout clause. And I said that I might coach again, possibly as a volunteer coach at a high school.
What I didn’t explain was how the losing began to cause more stress for me than normal. I loved coaching at South Carolina, felt blessed to have so many excellent players, and appreciated all the support of the boosters, fans, and administration. But I’d begun giving thought to resigning for more than a year after experiencing symptoms of acute stress syndrome.
During 2014 when our team lost four out of five in the middle of the season, the stress level started to wear on me. In three of those games, we had 13-, 14-, and 14-point leads with six or fewer minutes left in the games. One of the most difficult losses for me to take was to Tennessee, where we were up 14 with four minutes left. They scored quickly, and we got the onside kick but failed to make a first down. I blamed myself for one bad call in the last possession. They scored again and the game went into overtime. We held Tennessee to a field goal, and I thought we had a chance to win it. On first down, we allowed their right defensive end to come in untouched for a sack. On second down, their left defensive end came in clean for another sack. We lost 45–42. After the game, I addressed the media and gave a few comments and then said, “I can’t take any questions. I hope you understand.”
We had an open date the next week. I couldn’t sleep much at all for a week. I saw our team psychologist, Dr. Tim Malone, for a prescription for some strong sleeping pills. He told me I had “acute stress disorder.” I was forgetting things like the code to my locker in the stadium and also some common phone numbers that I used all the time. I eventually got over this as we won three of our last four, including the bowl victory over Miami.
I thought we were headed back in the right direction in 2015, but we weren’t. My friend Malcolm MacLeod, who I have known and played golf with for more than twenty-five years, said, “Steve, how do you take all that stress on the sideline?”
I began to realize that I had done this coaching gig long enough. I had a team that was really struggling, and I knew that our team needed new leadership, new direction, and new passion. That is when I stepped down.
I decided not to announce that I was retiring at the end of the season, as some other coaches have done. If I had done that, I would have been a distraction throughout the remainder of the season, with all of the attention on my last game everywhere I went. I did not want a “Spurrier Farewell Tour.” The players deserve to be the story of each game. Also, it would have prevented Shawn Elliott, a coach who has loved the South Carolina Gamecocks his whole life, from getting a shot to be the interim head coach, with the possibility of becoming the head coach.
—
LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE in my coaching career, I wanted to handle my resignation differently. When it’s time, it’s time. Nobody knows better than the coach himself. You get to a certain age and people start asking, “Are you about through?” And if you are through, you might as well move on, then. No sense waiting around.
After my resignation press conference, I went out and hit some golf balls at the golf range at Woodcreek Farms. Then I went home and had dinner with Jerri. That night after dinner at home, I enjoyed a decent night’s sleep, convinced that this was the right time to move on.
Little did I know that the floodgates for departing coaches were about to open up in 2015. I just happened to be the second of fifteen Power Five head coaches who would resign, change jobs, or get fired that season. Seems like it had become open season on Head Ball Coaches.
When a coach gets fired, however, the change is often good and helpful to the team. Miami was 4-3 when Al Golden was fired, and the interim head coach, Larry Scott, went 4-1 in the regular season and Miami got to the Sun Bowl before Mark Richt came over to the Hurricanes from Georgia after being fired. Randy Edsall was 2-4 at Maryland when he was fired, and his replacement, Mike Locksley, got the team playing better, handing it off to D. J. Durkin from Michigan.
When Steve Sarkisian was fired by Southern Cal, Clay Helton was picked as the interim, and after the Trojans went 5-2 under his watch, Clay wound up being hired as head coach. Before the dust had settled there was a slew of other changes—among them Kirby Smart being hired by Georgia and Gary Pinkel of Missouri resigning and Missouri promoting his defensive coordinator, Barry Odom. For a while, it also looked like LSU was going to fire Les Miles after eleven years, but the administration pulled back at the last minute, maybe because he had a $15 million buyout.
Head-coaching spans seem to have shrunk. Why? The money has gotten huge. The pressure to win has mounted. Fans and alumni expect more success, and quicker. The fact that I’d lasted thirty years as a head coach sometimes amazed even me.
Losing takes its toll on you. For so long I had just refused to grind year-round like some coaches. I chose to go about it from a different angle. If I hadn’t mixed beach, golf, and family time in with my job, I most likely wouldn’t have survived those three decades. Even with that, in the end the stress began to impact me in several ways, including off the field. And after I made my decision, I felt a load was off my shoulders.
As my youngest daughter, Amy, says, there really is no exit strategy for coaches: “You either get fired or you have a heart attack.” Luckily, after thirty years I read my expiration date and got to pick my time and place, although it wasn’t what I had envisioned for my final game.
Storybook endings for coaches are hard to come by anymore. All coaches dream of riding off triumphantly on the shoulders of their players after their final game. One guy who did was Frank Beamer of Virginia Tech, whose team beat Tulsa in the Independence Bowl, 55–52, for his 238th win in twenty-nine years. Coach Beamer was replaced by the young up-and-comer from Memphis, Justin Fuente.
It turns out my last win was against the University of Central Florida, 31–14, on September 26, 2015. We went into halftime trailing 14–8 against a team that would eventually go 0-12. We needed a twenty-seven-yard field goal from Elliott Fry just to make it that close. I’ll never forget that game because it was such a wakeup call for me that we were headed in the wrong direction. And if you like symmetry, then how about this? UCF was also the first team I beat at South Carolina, 24–15, at Williams-Brice Stadium on a Thursday night, September 1, 2005.
My farewell at South Carolina was simple, direct, and nonceremonial, without any tearful goodbyes or regrets—and, unfortunately, following a loss to LSU. But I was fine with all that.
As my son Steve Jr. said, “Eleven years! We had a heckuva run.”
—
I RECEIVED LOTS of texts and calls in the next few days after my resignation. Current players. Former players. “Coach, thanks for everything—I am what I am today because I got a chance to play under you,” “Appreciate all you have done for me,” et cetera. Those kinds of messages are really nice.
John Wooden said, “If you’re a good coach, twenty years after you’ve coached, some of your players will want to hang around you and say nice things about you.” It’s always rewarding when that happens.
I also received calls from a few fellow coaches—Urban Meyer, Bobby Stoops, and Nick Saban among them. And that meant a lot to me. There may have been a tweet or two. I’m not big on goodbyes, but I really appreciated hearing from those people.
—
SOUTH CAROLINA ANNOUNCED a new head coach, Will Muschamp, on December 7, 2015. Will was an excellent choice. He got a running start on recruiting and began to shore up some of our prospects right away. I wish Will the best of luck in getting the Gamecock program back to where it was just a couple years ago, and beyond. Retained by Will from my former staff were Shawn Elliott and Jamie Speronis, associate athletics director / football operations, and my son Scotty for quality control.
Someone once said, “To be successful in life you must either do it like everybody else and outwork your competition or do it differently.” I’m not smarter than most coaches and I don’t work harder than the other guys. But somehow or another good fortune has seemed to smile on me. Sometimes I had to learn by trial and error. When I failed it was on me; and when I succeeded, it wasn’t because I tried to imitate somebody else.
—
EVEN THOUGH I wasn’t fired as a head coach, all coaches know the odds are not in their favor. I was not retained in my first two assistant coaching jobs. Kim Helton—my former Gator teammate and father of new Southern Cal coach Clay Helton—and I were the first to be let go when Charley Pell took over at Florida. The headline in The Gainesville Sun said “Spurrier, Helton Fired.” I clipped it and put it on my bulletin board as a reminder of how quickly coaches can become dispensable. And I kept it for many years, even after I was hired by Florida as head coach. Maybe it was my inspiration for keeping one step ahead.
From the very start, when I landed back in Gainesville at the end of my NFL playing days and hoped to try coaching, I would learn from others but then attempt to always be myself as a coach. Of course, to become a football coach, first you have to get somebody to hire you.