Spurrier part of a rare group

STEVE SPURRIER ALWAYS has been somewhat of a maverick, whether it be taking jabs at an opponent or having his team toss the ball around the stadium in his unconventional manner. So, it is only fitting that the veteran coach might someday be the lone head coach who calls his team’s plays on offense.

Spurrier would not have it any other way.

“Why in the world would I trust my future as a head coach to someone else calling my offense?” Spurrier responds when asked why he continues to get his hands dirty with South Carolina’s offense, while most other head coaches are turning over the duties to assistant coaches.

Part of the deal with Spurrier is he could never be happy as a CEO, the role most coaches assume these days. There is nothing he enjoys more in coaching than calling his beloved “ball plays.”

In fact, you take play-calling out of Spurrier’s job description and he likely would retire. At least that is what he claimed at the recent SEC Media Days.

“Any other head coaches calling the plays now, or am I the only dumb idiot still doing it?” Spurrier said. “I’ve always said that if I can’t call the plays, maybe it’s time to get out of it. That’s sort of what I do.”

There are eight other head coaches known to call their team’s plays on offense. Among that group is the ACC’s lone play-calling head coach, Ralph Friedgen of Maryland, and Charlie Weis of Notre Dame, although Weis might want to reconsider his role after the Fighting Irish lost 33-3 to Georgia Tech on Saturday.

Now that Georgia head coach Mark Richt has turned over the play-calling to offensive coordinator Mike Bobo, Spurrier is the only SEC coach to carry the dual titles of head coach and offensive coordinator.

For Richt, giving up play-calling was not an easy decision. He called plays during his final seven seasons as the offensive coordinator at Florida State and his first six seasons as head coach at Georgia.

“I did it because I felt like it was in the best interest of our team, felt it was in the best interest of myself, physically. It is a grind,” Richt said recently. “If you’re just the coordinator alone, it’s a grind. But if you’re the coordinator and the head coach, it’s more than that.”

No doubt, the biggest reason head coaches are letting the reins loose on their offenses is the increasing demand on their time. Daily meetings with the media, recruiting calls and alumni gatherings have made it more likely for a head coach to wear a coat and tie than sweatpants and a whistle.

“Sometimes there are coaches who don’t coach a dang thing,” Spurrier said. “We are so different than basketball coaches. When I’m around basketball coaches, I seem to jive more with them. Basketball coaches coach their teams.”

Texas coach Mack Brown, when he was the coach at North Carolina in the late 1980s, was one of the first to boast that he was more of a CEO than a coach. Florida State’s Bobby Bowden has not called a play in nearly two decades.

Early in his head coaching career, Spurrier was known to chide head coaches who did not call their own plays. Then his two-year fling in the NFL with the Washington Redskins made him realize there are many different ways to coach the game. Interestingly enough, a factor in why he left the Redskins was that he stopped calling plays.

It seems Spurrier has had his hand in the evolution of play-calling at the college level. When he arrived to play at Florida, most teams left most of the the decision-making to their quarterbacks.

By his Heisman-winning senior season of 1966, Spurrier had taken play-calling by a quarterback to another level. He was known to draw up a never-before-practiced play or two in the huddle.

As offenses became more sophisticated, head coaches began sending in plays from the sideline, using wide receivers to carry the message. One of the first head coaches to turn over play-calling to his assistants was Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech in the mid-1950s. At one point during his Georgia Tech tenure, Dodd had defensive coordinator Ray Graves on one side of him and offensive coordinator Frank Broyles on the other.

Another who believed in letting his assistants coach was Red Wilson at Duke, but that had more to do with him recognizing the talents of an up-and-coming offensive genius by the name of Steve Spurrier. Wilson hired Spurrier as Duke’s offensive coordinator in 1980.

“What’s your numbering system?” Spurrier recalls asking Wilson upon arriving at Duke.

“We don’t have one,” Spurrier recalls Wilson saying. “It’s whatever you want to call it.”

“This is going to be good,” Spurrier said. “I get to run my own offense.”

Spurrier fans often forget his offenses as an assistant coach helped Duke to back-to-back winning seasons, and that the team ranked fourth nationally in total offense in 1982. That led to his hiring as head coach of the Tampa Bay Bandits of the USFL, and ultimately to his lengthy college head coaching career.

What makes Spurrier a little different from many coaches is that he devised every aspect of his offense, compared to those who use an amalgamation of other coaches’ offenses and schemes.

So, really, why would Spurrier ever entrust his offense and its play-calling to anyone else?