Georgia Bulldogs Wave Farewell to Steve Spurrier: Slip out the Back, Jack

Steve Spurrier finally drops off the key, receiving the exit from college football he so richly deserves.

I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free, There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.

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Steve Spurrier rides out sight of the Georgia Nation the way he road in.

Not with a bang but a whimper.

So I repeat myself at the risk of being crude, There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.

Forty-nine years ago, eventual Heisman winner Steve Spurrier paraded onto the turf of the rusty and rickety Gator Bowl to face an underdog Georgia Bulldog squad and suffered what is still likely the greatest public humiliation of his life. No doubt one of the greatest athletes ever to play in the Southeastern Conference as a baseball and football superstar at Florida, and one of the greatest coaches college football will ever know, Spurrier spent the rest of his life proving he deserved every bit of it.

Hop on the bus, Gus, don’t need to discuss much, Just drop off the key, Lee, get yourself free.

Georgia fans hate Steve Spurrier not because he once was and then was again a Gator, although that is surely reason enough, but because when he could position himself as a bully, he bullied the Bulldogs with on and off field antics that anyone other than Vladamir Putin would have found embarrassing.

This boy from Tennessee and Florida was a match made and heaven for the Gators.

Slip out the back, Jack, make a new plan, Stan, don’t need to be coy, Roy, just listen to me

Everyone hated Spurrier

I guess you could say the joke is on the Bulldogs, though. Everyone hated Spurrier because he treated everyone the same:

Ungraciously.

I wish there was somethin’ I could do to make you smile again” I said, “I appreciate that – would you please explain about the fifty ways.”

To his credit, Spurrier lost graciously on many occasions, almost – seriously, not quite. His well rehearsed opening line after Georgia handed him his head this year was typical. “Hard to imagine we beat these guys four out of the last six years.”

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However, when he had the advantage, he was a middle school brat who knew he could throw rocks and run home to momma before you could beat his butt.

And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right, There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.

Spurrier got the best of Georgia, but the Dawgs, we . . . I, have the ultimate satisfaction. Not because the last memory of Spurrier is a beaten coach leading a battered team with a program in shambles scattered behind. The ultimate satisfaction is that Spurrier never exorcised his 1966 Gator Bowl humiliation and disappointment.

Asked about his record against Georgia as a player, Spurrier told Chip Towers of Dawgnation.com. “When I was quarterbacking I lost two out of three. But we won our freshman year. Put that in there. We were keeping score that freshman game, so tell my buddy Lynn Hughes we kicked their butts my freshman year, OK?”

Yea coach, and I was a rebounding demon on my Clarke Junior High intramural team, too. Almost made JV at Clarke Central. But I don’t talk a lot about it now.

And so half a century later, I wish the Head Ball Coach, perhaps the greatest football coach I have ever observed, a long and happy retirement . . . and many more years or torment.

Just leave, Steve, but you will never be free . . .

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