re: Spurrier Unlocked: Saban is a Great Recruiter, Not a Great Coach

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Spurrier is no better than Stallings or Fulmer. 

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I wouldn't go that far, but only one championship may affect his legacy in the eyes of many.

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Why?

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10-10 bowl record

1-2 against Houston Nutt's Arkansas teams.

9 seasons at USC, has seen 1 conference championship game and got blown out. Not 1 BCS game appearance. A handful of these years it wasn't like UT, UF, and UGA were the dominant programs they could be.

As Florida's coach in the 90's he dominated, but Florida is the most talent rich state and at the time the SEC was SEC "light," not the powerhouse SEC we've seen the last decade. What he did in the 90's deserves respect and a place in history, but should be just one aspect of the coach Spurrier is.

He's a great coach, just not the "genius" or near the top of "greatest coaches" as some like to believe.

He's had 9 years to build USC, yet the results have yet to earn him anywhere near the reputation he built at Florida. While he has built the program and maintained it, he has proven himself to simply be a top coach in today's game, not the legendary genius. Last year he got beat by a depleted UT team under first year coach Butch Jones. He got taken to the woodshed in 2012 by second year head coach Will Muschamp. A "genius" like Spurrier in his 8th or 9th year at a program should not be beat by the likes of these coaches in their first or second year if he is the "genius" people like to believe he is.

In 2011, where USC finished 11-2 (which they seem to be doing every year), he beat up on a weak East but got smoked by a good Arkansas team and got beat at home by a mediocre Auburn team - showing that if he had been coaching in the West these years he wouldn't seen as many double digit win totals. Pretty sure he has a losing record against Arkansas since taking the USC job, and Arkansas is admittedly the definition of a middle of the pack SEC West team.

I get that USC is not a traditional powerhouse program, but after 4 years of being under one of the "greatest coaches ever," and while being located in a nice recruiting area, that "excuse" should not be given much weight.

Saban is a level or two above Spurrier in terms of overall head coaching ability, and it's not close.

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I get that USC is not a traditional powerhouse program, but after 4 years of being under one of the "greatest coaches ever," and while being located in a nice recruiting area, that "excuse" should not be given much weight.

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I don't think you do get it. Spurrier is by far the most successful coach in USC's history, a history that is littered with the remnants of coaches that did fine at other schools but fell into the abyss at USC (ask LSU fans about Dietzel, or, for that matter, ND fans about Holtz.) USC is like Vandy or Kentucky -- they literally had no hope of ever contending for a NC in the not-too-distant past (well, excepting the Bear's time at UK, of course.) Judging Spurrier as not being one of the greatest on the basis of his tenure at USC is flawed when there are likely only a handful of coaches that could have achieved the same level of success.

Also, the bit about SEC light earlier in your post cuts both ways...he's also managed to build up USC in a tougher SEC, no?

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Snyder has become overrated in his old age.

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So were Joe Pa and Bowden

I guess that's why Saban is always below Spurrier in all of the "Best Coaches" polls. Oh, wait..

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Also we lost those last two games last year because of defense.

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bullshite, AJ McCaron lost the OU game with his 5 turnovers. Bama should have blown them out but every time we got going INT city. Bama actually outgained OU in that game and while AJ had 350+ yds his INts negated those yards. The game plan was to feature AJs passing game ImO like an NFL audition. If we would have feed our RBs the ball more then Bama would have easily won that game. 5 TOs that lead to 35pts lost that game.

The AU game was a mix of both but the offense failed when we needed a yard to seal the game.

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Say hi to Bill Snyder for me. Division championships are a better scale probably.


No, not really. I'd much rather have Miles than Snyder. Snyder has become overrated in his old age. Great, likeable guy, but just a decent coach (see Mark Richt)

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lol ... snyder's record at ksu is 5 times as impressive as richt's at georgia ...

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I get that. But if Spurrier is as great as people make him out to be, he should have been able to overcome that and get closer to taking USC to a championship than getting his arse handed to him by Gene Chizik.

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Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Granted, we're talking largely in hypotheticals here, but I think you -- as most people do in certain situations, including me -- judge him by far too high a standard. He's not one of the greats because he failed to take a perennial loser like USC to the mountaintop? If that's the standard, then we'd be in very short supply of truly great coaches. It's like the LSU and Auburn fans deriding Saban because he hasn't been at the absolute pinnacle his entire career. That sort of thing simply reeks of irrational standards, usually in service of an agenda (not saying you have one, though the aforementioned LSU and Auburn fans certainly do.) Spurrier career accomplishments speak for themselves, including revolutionizing offense in the '90s, and dominating a conference that, while it might not have been as strong as it's been the last 8 years or so, certainly wasn't a pushover. The last 8 years have been a genuinely historic run, so comparing the two isn't quite fair. In the same vein, the SEC-E might have been the weaker of the two in the last 5 years or so, but it was still stronger than the stronger divisions of other conferences (to put it in perspective, Clemson, winner of 10+ games three years in a row, is also the loser of the USC/Clemson game three years in a row. More than that, actually, but I'm using their recent success to make my point.) And Spurrier also managed to take fricking Duke out of their doldrums better than any coach except Cutcliffe.

Look, I agree the game has passed Spurrier by to some extent, but we're talking overall quality, right? Saban is the only coach currently in the SEC who, imho, can legitimately claim to be clearly better than Spurrier in a historically-strong league. Nobody's arguing that Spurrier is the greatest of all time, but categorically omitting him from the discussion of a list of greats makes little sense to me in light of his career.

To me the argument is similar to the Tiger Phil argument. I know some knowledgeable PGA people that say Phil is more talented than Tiger (not that Tiger isn't talented but less than Phil) but the drop off from Phil to Tiger is minor compared to the difference in Tiger's work ethic, mental tenacity, and insanely intense focus.
From what I've seen of Spurrier, and as was mentioned earlier, he's insecure. His mind set seems to be: if I couldn't do it, it A) can't be done legally, or B) the person who did do it has their priorities messed up. He does coaches through the media better than anyone I've seen in a long long time - maybe ever, and people love it (outside of clemson that is) He wasn't paying Nick a compliment regarding recruiting. He's trying to play mind games. It works against Dabo. Dabo tries to fight SOS on SOS's terms. The whole "BAMA better than the Jaguars" thing...SOS knew it would get 2 weeks of media coverage if he talked about it. And SOS seems to only talk about people/teams that are of any consequence to him/ his legacy. Any thing to get a distraction. Is Nick a great coach, anyone that says other wise is silly. Just ask yourself, if you team's coach were let go and Nick were available - would you want him to be your next coach? Of course he's not perfect. He's like the chessmaster that loses to an unconventional street smart kind of player. Chessmaster wins most of the time but has his achilles heel also. SOS is a top 10 coach, some times though his insecurity show. I'm pretty sure also that Nick is about an hour+ from ending his day, and will start tomorrow morning at 6am and end it about 14 hrs later just to make sure that his team doesn't lose to KENTUCKY after one of - if not the- biggest wins ever his home stadium

Very much so. Spurrier never said he wasn't a great coach. Please let the season start now!!