Spurrier Drives The Gators Coach’s Determination Has Florida On Verge Of National Championship

The coach was leaving Athens, Ga., which is about as uncomfortable a place as any true Gator could imagine. If Steve Spurrier is anything, he is a true Gator, even if the playing experience that led to a Heisman Trophy started in a Tennessee high school and some of his most important lessons as a head coach took place at Duke University.

The passion surrounding the University of Florida’s unprecedented perfect season has begun to create the illusion that the two decades between Spurrier’s 1966 Heisman year at Florida and his return as its coach was really only a brief, mostly unpleasant, interlude.

As all the Gators look ahead to the biggest game in the history of the school, the meeting with Nebraska in Tempe, Ariz., to decide a national championship in the Fiesta Bowl on the evening of Jan. 2, that misleading impression might be right.

There was a radio on as Spurrier left Athens after the latest meeting between Florida and Georgia last October, a rivalry that has often left the Gators in anger or despair. This time, a post-game talk show host was dissecting a 52-17 Florida victory.

“One of their Bulldog people called and said, ‘I want to ask something,’ ” Spurrier said. “He said, ‘How come when our receivers run down the field and go out for a pass, the Florida guys are all over ‘em? And when the Florida receivers run down the field, they’re wide open.’ “

The coach of the Gators nodded and smiled. “That’s a good compliment,” he said.

There have been good compliments, and grudging ones, in a league that is unaccustomed to consistent success from most anyone other than Paul Bryant. Florida’s fourth outright Southeastern Conference championship in Spurrier’s six seasons has continued the elevation of the coach, and the program, to the highest level of the college game.

One by one, Florida has eliminated the loud complaints that have followed Spurrier’s teams: They couldn’t win big games on the road. They struggled on artificial turf. His lack of defensive knowledge was a decisive liability. He couldn’t beat a Bowden. He couldn’t tolerate imperfection.

The Gators have answered all of those questions in this 12-0 season. For the first time in Spurrier’s six seasons as the Florida coach, the Gators ended the regular campaign hearing about the possibilities, and the accomplishments that have made them possible, rather than their failures.

More than any other factor, the Gators have come to represent the relentless resourcefulness of their coach.

“That inimitable ability to move the football,” said Tom Butters, the Duke athletic director who hired Spurrier before the 1987 season, after the demise of the Tampa Bay Bandits and the U.S. Football League had put the coach out of work. “He moves it about as well as anybody in the country, at any level.”

Long before his ideas could take the shape of a “system,” even before Spurrier disappointed his hometown of Johnson City, Tenn., by choosing to enroll at Florida rather than Tennessee, the drive came from within.

“He says every time he had a game, I would say that he could do better,” his father, the Rev. J. Graham Spurrier, said. “I don’t remember that too much. I guess a strong competitive spirit is something you’re pretty much born with, rather than develop. He had a determination, or desire, to be as perfect as he could be. If he didn’t find somebody to practice with, he’d practice by himself.”

Spurrier’s mother, Marge, agreed. “Most of his life, he has had that determination,” she said. “He was willing to pay just about any price.”

Now he has persuaded others to do the same. “I just think he’s got a really good knack of mixing specific details with a lot of common sense,” said junior quarterback Danny Wuerffel.