OPINION

By Matt Hayes

updated 8:17 p.m. ET April 14, 2008

Matt Hayes

I never thought this day would come. Never thought in the wonderfully poetic symphony that is college football, this utterly humbling event would arrive.

Steve Spurrier is just another ball coach.

It all changed last week for the best college football coach since Bear Bryant: Spurrier gave up calling plays. Which is sort of like you or me giving up the Internet. From here on out, his son, Steve Jr., will control the South Carolina offense.

I can't believe I just wrote that. This has nothing to do with Steve Jr., who should have been calling plays long ago at another university but instead chose to stay with his father and build something out of nothing at South Carolina.

This, ladies and gentlemen, has everything to do with the most competitive guy I know.
I mean, at everything.

Play a round of golf with Spurrier. He's a single-digit handicap and you're lucky if you break 100 — you better damn well believe you're finishing every putt. God help you if you hit one out of bounds off the tee because if you can't find it, you're walking all the way back and hitting off the tee again.

He's 62 years young and about to turn 63. He can outrun 90 percent of the folks in the sportswriting profession, which admittedly, isn't breaking news. A couple of years ago, he challenged the poor saps covering the Gamecocks to a test of endurance: run some, sit-ups, push-ups, run some more.

None of them took the bait.

What does this have to do with calling plays, you ask? Everything. Nothing gets Spurrier more juiced than finding a weakness and exploiting it with his play-calling. It's him against the other guy; someone is winning, someone is losing.

"What separates Steve from everyone else," longtime Tennessee defensive coordinator John Chavis once told me, "is he calls every play like he has something to prove."

Now he's giving up. More disconcerting: Spurrier did the same thing in the final year of his disastrous move to the NFL. Six games into the season, he handed over the play-calling to Hue Jackson. Four games later, Spurrier took the keys back — and two months after that, he walked away from the Redskins and his failed two-year experiment.

Spurrier says Steve Jr. is ready to take control of the offense, that his time has come. Other coaches have given up play-calling in recent years and have had success. Even Charlie Weis has decided to give it up at Notre Dame.

In that sense, Spurrier is like everyone else. Just another ball coach.

And that's a damn shame.

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