The great thing about coaching is that, if you're lucky enough to spend an entire career doing it, you always have a reason to put your feet on the floor each morning. You spend your entire adult life battling an opponent. You need to hit the ground running each day because, somewhere out there, there are one, two, eight, 100 other coaches doing everything in their power to beat you.
Then, one day you retire and there's no opponent to beat, no tiger to flee, no dragon to slay.
Quite often, the opponent becomes a metaphysical one: boredom.
“Every now and then when you are watching games and watch everybody struggling on offense, it makes you think, ‘What the heck am I doing up here watching on TV?’ ” Steve Spurrier, one year out from announcing his resignation at South Carolina and admitting he's "a little bored," told The State. “Sometimes people will ask me, ‘What do you miss?’ Obviously, I miss the really good teams with players with wonderful attitudes like Marcus Lattimore and Connor Shaw and even D.J. Swearinger and those defensive guys who come to the ballpark ready to play. I miss all of those guys. And having a good team and calling plays.”
The HBC found himself with some extra time on Sunday. So he did what many red blooded Americans do, and what he spent a lifetime not doing: he went to a bar to watch his team play.
“I found me a little sports bar down the road. There was a crowd at a little place called Wings on A1A,” Spurrier told the paper. “The manager of the place sort of recognized me even though I had my hat and sunglasses on. My hat and sunglasses aren’t working as well as they used to. I found me some buddies there and watched the Gamecocks-Georgia game.”
The game ended in a 28-14 loss to the hated Bulldogs, but Spurrier made friends in the process.
“It was a lady and her husband, about the same age I was, that live down the road from me. They were in there, and then a couple of FSU sisters came in with their husbands so they wanted to talk a while,” Spurrier said. “The FSU people and I are buddies now. I told them since Jimbo Fisher is there I don’t have any ill will. Really, I’m OK with Bobby (Bowden). His defensive team bragged about hurting people and I thought that’s no part of college football. But that’s a long time ago.”
Spurrier will never play Florida State again, but he'll never stop getting in little digs at the 'Noles. It's good to have an opponent, even when you're no longer coaching.
And when he hasn't been making new friends, the HBC has passed the time by shooting commercials: