Nick Saban has mentioned several times over the course of his Alabama career how losing football games sticks with him more than winning them.
Steve Spurrier is all about the wins.
At SEC Media Days last week, the former South Carolina coach was asked about his last victory over the Crimson Tide in 2010. Spurrier didn’t miss a beat.
“(We won) 35-21. (Quarterback) Stephen Garcia had the best game of his life — 17 of 20,” Spurrier said. “(Receiver) Alshon Jeffery caught a couple of touchdowns, and Marcus Lattimore ran for about 90-something yards.”
It was 93 yards, but nobody’s perfect.
In typical Spurrier fashion, he managed to get in a dig at Alabama.
“They tried a fake field goal that day, and that wasn’t very smart,” Spurrier said.
Spurrier, who coached for 12 seasons at Florida and 11 at South Carolina, was in Hoover last week, joined by fellow college football legends Herschel Walker and Archie Manning. The trio was in town to promote the 150th anniversary of college football and the SEC.
The three college greats certainly established themselves as ambassadors to the game and are household names around the country, particularly in the South.
“When you talk about the SEC, you are talking about the top conference,” said Walker, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Georgia. “When you play a team from the SEC, I don’t care who it is, you better bring more than your lunch because it’s going to be a tough game.”
The first college game was Nov. 6, 1869, between Rutgers and neighboring Princeton and was played in front of about 100 people. The game has evolved a few times since then. Manning, Spurrier and Walker have seen some of those changes.
“These kids now can flat throw the football,” said Manning, father of New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning (Ole Miss) and former NFL QB Peyton Manning (Tennessee). “The quarterback position has changed so much. In high school, they are throwing the ball more and more and are learning how to read defenses.”
It’s not unusual today to see quarterbacks with 300- or 400-yard passing games. Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa had six games with 300-plus yards last season and 3,966 total years. Manning, in three seasons at Ole Miss, had 4,753 total yards.
“Eli got up to Ole Miss and was looking at the media guide and he said, ‘You know, dad, your numbers weren’t very good,” Archie said. “But back in those days if you threw for 180 or 190 yards, you had a pretty good day.”
Today’s game also has more fanfare than when Walker, Manning and Spurrier played. Alabama football games are broadcast every week, available through cable or pay-per-view. It’s a sport with multimillion-dollar TV contracts, lucrative coaching deals, and a big revenue generator for universities and cities of those schools.
A story in The Tuscaloosa News last year reported Tuscaloosa had almost a $130 million impact from Alabama football home games, roughly $18.5 million per home game, for for the 2013-14 year. In 2015-16, that number jumped to $175.5 million, or $25.1 million per home game.
“The fan interest is so much stronger,” Spurrier said of college football. “And we only play each other once a year. Rivalries are so important. There is just something about football. You only have that one game every year in college football, and if you win, you get bragging rights for the whole year.”
