Over the past few hours, Ive seen Spurrier characterized as a class act. He wasnt. He was a great coach, but he wasnt a classy one. He ran up the score. He chortled at the losers expense. His press conferences were often described as hilarious. They werent. They were amusing, yes, but they werent fall-down-laughing funny in the way a Jim Valvano briefing could be. (That line about the Auburn library fire and the coloring books is older than Spurrier, whos 70.)
What was striking about a Spurrier session wasnt the quality of wit but the rarity of what we were seeing/hearing. For both better and worse, nobody else did what he did. I say again: What successful coach tweaks his vanquished opponents? Does Krzyzewski gig Wake Forest? And if your opponents were so dim-witted, doesnt that diminish the achievement of vanquishing them? Why couldnt a coach of such surpassing excellence be content with being surpassingly excellent?
It stood to reason that any coach not that there are any quite like Spurrier who flaunted winning would be hypersensitive to losing. Sure enough, the two times things didnt go Spurriers way, he did what coaches are forever urging their players never to do: He quit. He bailed after two losing seasons with the Washington Redskins. Now hes gone after six games, four of them losses. As long as he was winning and strutting, coaching was a gas. When it became clear he couldnt win/strut, hed head for the beach.