Spurrier with the zingers!

I could sit here and give you a long news article about Steve Spurrier and what he said about South Carolina football – “We’ve got a good team at South Carolina ready to go this year. We had a little bit of a struggle in the middle of last season” – but that’s not why we look out for what the Head Ball Coach says at SEC Media Days. It’s the zingers.

So here’s a collection of them:

INTRODUCTION SPEECH

“A lot of familiar faces out there after a lot of years coming to this event. I figured a bunch of you guys would have retired by now.”

“We believe we have a fighting chance to do that. I know the critics are out there, and that’s why they’re called critics. They criticize every chance they get….”

“Pharoh Cooper. We call him the South Carolina Pharoh, not the American Pharaoh, South Carolina Pharoh.”

ON HIS LONGEVITY

“I said, well, I forgot to get fired, and I’m not going to cheat. That’s about the way you lose your job. You get fired for losing or you cheat, and then they get somebody else. So I’ve not done any of those to any extent big time, I guess.”

“Nobody gives us a chance this year, which is good. Stranger things have happened.”

“Somebody told me the other day I’m the youngest coach in the SEC that’s won four straight Bowl games. Did you know that? Youngest coach to have done that right now. You all knew that, didn’t you? Okay. Just a little something.”

ON RETIREMENT

“I breezed right through age 60, breezed right through 65, and I’m going to try my best to breeze right on through 70. I can still remember just about everything. So mentally, I think I’m the same as I was. We got two people running for president, I think Hillary and Donald Trump are both 69, I believe. Coach K at Duke, he’s still doing pretty good at, I think 69 also. So the age really doesn’t mean a lot. The number on your years is not what’s important. It’s whether you can function physically, emotionally, mentally, get your team ready to play. That’s what’s important.”

“That retirement thing, I don’t think I’d be very good at it. I can go to the beach and stay four or five days, and, hey, let’s get on out of here. We’ve been here long enough.”

THE QUARTERBACK SITUATION

“There’s nothing in the rule book that says you have to have one.”

“We don’t have a starter going into preseason practice…..second part of the question, what is it?”

ON HIS DISCIPLINARY POLICY

“I’ve always had a rule as a coach that, if you ever hit a girl, you’re finished. We’ve lost two at South Carolina. Fortunately, they were not star players. If it they were star players, it would have gone all over the country. So we quietly got them to transfer or leave or what have you. So our players know, if they ever hit a girl, they’re not going to play at South Carolina. And we enforce that rule. Other than that, we’ve probably hadour share of little things here and there, but nothing too bad. Most of our problems have not been starters or star players. So it doesn’t hit the player too much.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE: He’s keeps on mentioning starters and star players: Is he having a dig at Georgia and Florida State? Probably.)

ON THE CONFEDERATE FLAG

“I applaud our Governor for setting the initiative to remove the flag, and obviously it was received very well by just about everyone in our state and around the country. Obviously, all of us in college sports, we know the importance of equality, race relations, everybody getting along. So certainly, I think all the coaches all over — I know all over South Carolina was happy and glad to see the flag come down.”

ON THE SEC AND THE NFL

“We’ve got some coaches in our league may go to the NFL someday. There’s no guarantee they’re going to be at this school the way some of those NFL teams can offer $15 million, $20 million a year to a coach. If one of them offered Coach Saban, it would make that $7.2 million look paltry to him probably, and they easily could. Those guys have a lot of money up there, as we all know. There’s no guarantee.”

ON BETTING ON HOW LONG COACHES WOULD BE AROUND

“[Sports handicapper] Danny Sheridan. Danny’s not here, is he? I wish he did the odds on every coach being there four years from now, set the odds on it. I don’t know if you’d bet on that, but it would be something fun to bet on, wouldn’t it? Who would be here four years from now? I don’t know. Just something to think about. What I’m trying to say is you don’t know what’s going to happen down the road.”

[EDITOR’S NOTE: 1) HEY, ISN’T GAMBLING ON SPORTS ILLEGAL? 2) STEVE SPURRIER GAVE US A LINE ON SOUTH CAROLINA’S SPRING GAME]

AFTER THE TENNESSEE DEFEAT, WHEN HIS PRESS CONFERENCE WAS NASCAR-QUICK

“I was watching Dustin Johnson interviewed on the Golf Channel the other day, and they said, Dustin, after you three-putted at Chambers Bay, you didn’t come to the trophy presentation. Why weren’t you there? Gee, the guy just three-putted from 12 feet. He just said, I needed to get away. But he’s back, and he feels good. I think he’s got a wonderful chance to win it. After we sort of blew a game, or you can say Tennessee beat us, but we couldn’t hold on to a 14-point lead with a little over four minutes, yeah, I felt like getting away a minute. I was quickly at the press conference and left.”

HIS GOLF GAME

“Golf game’s not near what it used to be. Haven’t played quite as much this year for some reason.”