Steve Spurrier

Steve Spurrier is a former American football player and coach. Spurrier served as the head coach of three college and two professional teams. He was also a standout college football player, and spent a decade playing professionally in the NFL. Spurrier retired from coaching in 2015 and now serves as an ambassador and consultant for the University of Florida's athletic department.

Spurrier is a graduate of the University of Florida, where he won the Heisman Trophy in his senior season of 1966 and was a consensus All-American in both 1965 and 1966. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1986. Spurrier was drafted in 1967 by the San Francisco 49ers, and played mainly as a backup quarterback and punter from 1967 to 1975. In 1976, the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers traded for Spurrier, and he was the team's starting quarterback for most of their inaugural season.

After retiring as a player, Spurrier returned to the college game in 1978 as an offensive assistant at Florida. Spurrier then served as the quarterbacks coach at Georgia Tech in 1979. In 1980, Duke University head coach Red Wilson hired Spurrier as his offensive coordinator. Spurrier created an innovative offensive system that broke several school and conference records over his three seasons at the school.

In 1983, Spurrier accepted his first head coaching position with the Tampa Bay Bandits of the United States Football League, making him the youngest head coach in professional football at 37 years old. Spurrier returned to Duke University as the Blue Devils' head coach in 1987, and his "Fast Break" offense broke many of the records set during his tenure as offensive coordinator.

In 1990, Spurrier returned to the University of Florida to become the Gators' head coach. For the next twelve seasons, he led Florida's program to unprecedented success, including Florida's first six Southeastern Conference (SEC) championships and first consensus national championship in 1996. Spurrier left Florida immediately after the 2001 season to try coaching in the NFL, but had a largely disappointing tenure as the head coach of the Washington Redskins and resigned after two seasons.

In 2005, he returned to the college game as the head coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks. Spurrier led the Gamecocks to three of the four 10-win seasons in program history, as well as the school's only 11-win seasons, top-10 poll finishes, and its only SEC Championship Game appearance. On October 12, 2015, Spurrier announced that he was resigning as South Carolina's head coach.

In July 2016, Spurrier returned to the University of Florida as an ambassador and consultant to the athletic department. In September 2016, UF officially changed the name of the Gators' home field to Steve Spurrier-Florida Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 2017, making him one of four members to be inducted as both a player and a coach.