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Steve Spurrier on Kentucky Football, Mark Stoops, Billy Napier, SEC

Steve Spurrier on Kentucky Football, Mark Stoops, Billy Napier, SEC

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LEXINGTON – There’s a game every week of the fall in Florida football, Steve Spurrier is a tradition. He will visit the restaurant he owns – Spurrier’s Gridiron Grille – in Gainesville, Florida, and trivia fans will be in attendance. The topic: Florida’s opponent this week.

Earlier this week, when Kentucky came to town on Saturday night, his trivia question was about the Wildcats.

“And I said, ‘Back in 1993 when we played at Kentucky, we’ve already thrown seven interceptions in the game, but we’re only down by three points,'” Spurrier told the Courier Journal in a telephone interview Thursday night. “And Danny Wuerffel had already thrown three, and Terry Dean had thrown four.”

The Gators, who trailed 20-17 with 1:23 left, ended up winning by four points (24-20), thanks to Wuerffel’s go-ahead touchdown throw with three ticks left.

“They played like a Cover 2 defense, so we had a guy going out on both sides and a guy going up the middle. So Wuerffel goes back and sees a wide open receiver going up the middle and.” “We hit him for a touchdown,” Spurrier said. “(So I ask the crowd), ‘Who was that receiver?’ And a lady over there – she couldn’t have been 35 or 40 years old – yelled, “Chris Doering.” … And I said, ‘You’re exactly right.'”

Spurrier, Florida’s legendary former coach and Heisman Trophy winner as a player, said Doering’s TD reception – at the Wildcats’ expense at what was then Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington – was one of the most crucial plays in the program’s history.

“We won that game — got outplayed, but somehow we won that game — and then we won the SEC (championship) in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996,” he said. “If we don’t win (this game) in 1993, I don’t know what will happen in the other years. So about this one game – Wuerffel to Doering – I mean, we talk about it all the time, every time we see Doering. It’s something you remember throughout your life.

But Spurrier wasn’t done with the quizzes at his restaurant earlier this week.

“I said, ‘The next year, Kentucky came to The Swamp in Gainesville. Does anyone know the score of that game?’” Spurrier asked about a game in which the Gators beat the Wildcats 73-7. After remembering the score, he laughed. “And so within a year it went from ‘lucky to win’ to 73-7.”

Spurrier never lost to UK as Florida coach, going 12-0 from 1990 to 2001. He then went 8-3 against Kentucky in 11 seasons (2005-2015) at South Carolina. The iconic, visor-wearing Spurrier was part of a record-setting rivalry for the Gators: They defeated the Wildcats 31 times in a row, starting in 1987 and continuing through 2017, the longest winning streak in SEC history by any school over a league peer.

“Kentucky wasn’t quite up to SEC standards back then,” Spurrier said, referring to his illustrious 12-year tenure, “but they are now. They have athletes. Their athletes look just as good as anyone else.”

Good enough to enter Saturday looking for a fourth straight win against Florida.

“Kentucky, they can defend, they can run the ball. Their passing probably hasn’t been very good over the last two or three years,” Spurrier said. “They need to get Hal Mumme back to take over the passing offense and let the defensive players play the way they play because they definitely played well against Ole Miss. If you can beat Ole Miss, you’ve got a team that’s capable of doing it. “I would think it’s not beating anyone up.

Kentucky and Florida have the same overall record (3-3) through six games. The Gators are a half game better in SEC play, sitting at 1-2 compared to the Wildcats at 1-3.

“Well, it looks like they’re two pretty even teams,” Spurrier said. “Everyone says (coach Mark Stoops) did a great job there. So I think 3-3 might be pretty good for (Kentucky), I don’t know.”

Don’t be afraid to make jokes about other schools, they were in no shortage for Spurrier on Thursday night.

Especially when he was informed that UK was 2-9 in its last 11 SEC home games, including a streak of six straight games dating back to its last win (33-14 against Florida last season).

“Oh, man,” Spurrier said. “Man, these guys might sneak out on Friday night and go party somewhere. I don’t know what’s going on. Did they check what they were doing on Friday nights or what? I don’t know what they’re doing “home.”

Spurrier added: “It must be a relief for the Wildcats to be away this week, where they are 7-6 since the start of the 2021 season.” The “Head Ball Coach,” his nickname (and the title of his memoir) , can’t do anything with such topics.

During his highly successful 12-year tenure at Florida, he posted a 68-5 (.931) record at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium – which he dubbed “The Swamp” before the 1992 season.

“My goodness, of course we always loved playing at home. Our home record was pretty good I guess. … We’ve been very fortunate in the years I’ve coached here,” he said. “Our boys were always good at home – and they believed we should be good at home. I think that was the first thing. (They said, ‘We won’t lose in the swamp.’) Of course, we lost five in 12 years, but still they just had the idea: ‘We shouldn’t lose here at home, boys.'”

For Florida’s current coach Billy Napier, that’s easier said than done. He has already lost more home games (six) in two and a half seasons than Spurrier lost in twelve. And Napier will head to the sidelines on Saturday on a pitch so hot it could best be described as hot.

He is 14-17 with the Gators and has had two straight losing seasons. He’s widely believed to be training for his job in the second half of the 2024 campaign – unless his fate has already been decided by the powers that be (and well-heeled boosters) in Florida. Hot forums everywhere are speculating about who the next potential coach could be.

Spurrier said he was approaching the situation “low-key.” He will call Napier and leave voicemails. Napier sends him text messages from time to time. If Napier needs advice, he knows how to reach Spurrier.

“Of course I’m not negative,” Spurrier said. “Obviously we’re not as good as we hoped. We spent as much money as almost anyone else. We have hundreds of employees and we haven’t achieved much.”

“He has a losing record. And if you have a losing record in Florida after three years, you’re not doing very well, I wouldn’t imagine that. But we try to stay as positive as possible. I try to always say, ‘I think we’re ready to win.’ I picked us to win every game this year, but we’re 3-3. And I’m going to pick us again to beat Kentucky and we’ll see what happens.

Still, Spurrier couldn’t deny that on-field deficiencies have marked Napier’s tenure.

“There’s just something – that little it factor or something – that some teams know how to do,” he said. “The mindset of, ‘We’re supposed to win,’ and other teams just go into the game (thinking), ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ll do our best and move on from there.” But to me, all the really good teams we’ve had have had these leaders – even the quarterbacks and defensive players – who really inspired and excited the entire team. Great teams have that, and the ones that are mediocre don’t seem to have that.

Just look at Florida’s overtime loss at Tennessee last week.

“Should have beaten Tennessee,” Spurrier said. “We could have, could, would. Landing at the 1-yard line twice without scoring and not even making a field goal and so on. That was a heartbreaker.”

Spurrier has had a decades-long relationship with the Stoops family.

He hired Bob Stoops, Mark’s older brother, as Florida’s defensive coordinator and assistant head coach in 1996. That season, Bob helped Spurrier win his only national title with the Gators. Spurrier also knows another member of the Stoops clan: Mike Stoops, who is now Kentucky’s inside linebackers coach; Mike named Spurrier’s son Steve Spurrier Jr. as Arizona’s tight ends coach in 2004.

“Bobby has a place on the beach here in Florida that we all go to,” he said. “So they come four or five times a year, I guess. … We stay in touch here, there and there. But the others (Stoops brothers)? I just greet them when I see them.”

Despite his ties to the brothers, Spurrier is blunt in his assessment of Stoops’ time in Lexington, which saw him become the winningest coach in school history but failed to break into the SEC’s top tier of championships (the conference) take place And national varieties).

“I think he’s doing a good job – not a great job, but a good job,” Spurrier said. “A ‘great job’, you’re fighting for divisions (titles), this, that and the other. But maybe Kentucky and South Carolina and those schools if you can win more than you lose? That’s pretty good, pretty good.”

That’s all he asks of his beloved alma mater now. Even if that’s well below the dizzying heights the program once inhabited.

“How do we play this week? I don’t know it. Hopefully we can regroup,” he said. “I mean, we’re just trying to have a successful season, go to a bowl game and go from there. That would be a good year for us.”

Reach Kentucky men’s basketball and football reporter Ryan Black at [email protected] and follow him on X at @RyanABlack.