If you were to compile a short list of the most painful losses Steve Spurrier has ever endured as a collegiate head coach, you would include a game he didn’t even lose, the 31-31 tie in 1994 against Florida State.
You would also include the 1996 Fiesta Bowl against Nebraska — not so much the loss itself, but the humiliating nature of a 38-point defeat, perfectly represented by the inability of 27 Florida defenders (unofficially) to tackle Tommie Frazier on one play.
After that 62-24 loss, Spurrier knew he needed a better defensive coordinator. He brought aboard a man named Bob Stoops. The very next season, Florida won its first national title in college football. Stoops, though, had earned the right to pursue a plum job of his own. He went to Norman, Oklahoma, to coach the Sooners, and a man named Jon Hoke took Stoops’s place in Gainesville.
The reality of Hoke’s tenure as Spurrier’s defensive coordinator is that he performed very well. In 1999, Florida suffered through the final year of the snake-bitten Doug Johnson era at quarterback. The Gators suffered that season because of their offense, not their defense (plus a few memorable special-teams gaffes, particularly against Alabama). In 2000, Florida won the SEC again, as Hoke helped Spurrier reassert his superiority over the rest of the conference one more time.
If any part of the first Hoke-Spurrier marriage truly disappointed, though, everyone near the Florida program can point to the moment: an early-December evening in 2001, in a game postponed three months by the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
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You know the story: Florida and Spurrier had ruled the roost against Tennessee and Philip Fulmer, winning every time but once from 1993 through 2000. As the Gators hosted Tennessee in 2001, they stood two wins away from a date with Miami in an NFL combine preview for the BCS national championship. With Rex Grossman — the Heisman Trophy runner-up — piloting the Gators’ offense at The Swamp, it seemed hard to believe that the Vols could find the firepower on offense that could thwart Florida and deny the Gators another division and conference championship.
Yet, after nearly four hours of remarkable theater, Tennessee had done the very thing which seemed so unlikely: Its offense dominated the game — its tempo, its tone, its progression, and the front seven wearing blue Florida jerseys.
The Vols were able to score on long marches, draining the clock and keeping Grossman off the field. Florida scored 32 points, but the Gators were scrambling to keep up in this game, as opposed to calling the shots. When a late 2-point conversion pass fell incomplete, Florida’s dreams of an SEC title and something much more than that in the 2002 Rose Bowl were shattered. Fulmer won a national title in 1998, his greatest achievement at Rocky Top, but this win rates as his greatest triumph over Spurrier… and accordingly, Spurrier’s worst loss to the Vols.
The image below tells you all you need to know about the game:
Tennessee quarterback Casey Clausen was untouched throughout this game. Florida edge rusher Alex Brown played his worst game of the 2001 season, as the Vols manhandled him from start to finish. Jon Hoke’s players got their butts whipped, but in the face of that reality, Hoke couldn’t make the adjustments needed to slow down Tennessee’s offense. This was easily Hoke’s worst game as Spurrier’s defensive coordinator, and in a fascinating little twist of history, the lack of a pass rush is what doomed Florida the most.
Now, here we are, 14 years later, and the irony couldn’t be more profound.
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As Student Section staff writer Kevin Causey notes in his preview of South Carolina, as part of our Bloguin Top 50 series, the Gamecocks’ pass rush was abysmal last season. The Gamecocks didn’t land a high-profile defensive coordinator to replace the ineffective Lorenzo Ward; other SEC programs were able to find new defensive coordinators (Texas A&M with John Chavis; Auburn with Will Muschamp). South Carolina’s solution was to give Ward help, with Hoke being an extra presence on the defensive staff. Hoke is here to do for Spurrier what he couldn’t on that December evening in 2001: Unlock a pass rush and enable a defense to give a talented offense what it needs.
Dylan Thompson was a luckless quarterback in 2014. He’s not part of the picture in 2015, but had he been given the kind of defense Connor Shaw benefited from in 2011, 2012 and 2013, South Carolina very easily could have won 10 games last season. The Gamecocks squandered several two-touchdown leads in second halves of games in 2014, so Hoke’s mandate is to get South Carolina to be sturdy and steady in the final 15 to 20 minutes of every fall Saturday.
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Florida fans might be surprised by the idea that Spurrier would reach out to Jon Hoke, mindful of what happened 14 years ago. Spurrier might very well have made up his mind to scratch his NFL itch and go to the Washington Redskins, no matter what happened in that contest against Tennessee. Spurrier might have left Florida even if the Gators had captured another SEC title and faced Miami in the 2002 Rose Bowl for the national title.
Yet, can anyone be entirely sure that Spurrier would have cut the cord and left his alma mater for a taste of the pros if Florida had beaten Tennessee in 2001? It’s one of the great what-ifs in recent SEC history, and now that Hoke and Spurrier are back together again, it’s going to be fascinating to see how this second marriage works out.
Clearly, Spurrier would not have reached out to Hoke had he not trusted the coordinator’s ability to cultivate a strong defense. Accordingly, Spurrier considered the whole of Hoke’s three-year tenure at Florida, looking beyond “Tennessee 34, Florida 32.” There’s a certain largeness of heart in the move, but in the SEC, largeness of heart only means so much. Alabama didn’t much care for Mike Shula’s Cotton Bowl season and subsequent victory. Under 14 months later, Nick Saban was brought aboard, and the Crimson Tide haven’t looked back since.
Steve Spurrier has given Jon Hoke another crack at coaching his defense. If Hoke can reward the faith of the Head Ball Coach, Spurrier’s career could encounter a surprisingly pleasant plot twist in South Carolina.
