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Steve Spurrier started his collegiate football career 50 years ago and has been involved with the game as a player or coach in almost every single year since then. As such, he has as much or more experience with the dynamics of a football locker room than anyone in the game.
As tired as the national debate about Richie Incognito has become, getting Steve Spurrier's opinion on such topics is at least going to produce an amusing quote. Fortunately, someone at Tuesday's press conference asked the Head Ball Coach for his thoughts on the culture of hazing.
No, I never experienced anything the 10 years I was in the NFL. Nothing even close to even hazing. We didn't have any of that.
When I became a head coach at the schools that I went to, we eliminated all of that. We didn't have any problems at Duke. They didn't do much of that. But at Florida they made the freshmen shave their heads -- you know, go around with the crew cut -- and some other little, stupid things, you know--carry a guy's helmet out. I don't believe in any of that crap, none of it.
Everybody's on the same team, especially with freshmen eligible now and so forth. We're all on the same team. That's what we try to do here... We don't have any players now that were ever hazed. So it's a non-issue for us here. If you allow it at the beginning, it can continue. But we don't have to talk about it much here.
Steve Spurrier is at his best when he is delivering progressive pearls of wisdom in his artless Appalachian tongue. There are academic papers written on the scenarios in which it is advantageous to go for it on 4th down, but Spurrier takes care of it by saying, "Seven is more than two threes. Y'all know that?" Here, too, Spurrier's "I don't believe in any of that crap" covers a topic that has been debated on sports talk radio for weeks with remarkable efficiency.