BY Mark Inabinett
20 August 2013
GULF SHORES, Alabama - During SEC BeachFest over the weekend, the 22 former coaches and players had a lot to say about their former coaches and their coaching rivals. Here are some excerpts:
CHRIS DOERING ON STEVE SPURRIER
Chris Doering set the SEC record for career touchdown receptions while playing for coach Steve Spurrier at Florida from 1992 through 1995. Now Spurrier is coaching South Carolina:
"Some people referred to him as the Evil Genius. He wanted us to refer to him as the Head Ball Coach. ... The biggest insult you could ever have when you came off the field after making a mistake: 'That's all right. Not your fault. My fault for putting you in there.' Not a more demeaning feeling than to have him tell you that. He didn't have to yell or throw the visor. ... The job he's done at South Carolina: They had no history of success there, with all due respect to George Rogers. They have no facilities. They haven't been able to recruit every well. Now all of a sudden, they've turned the tide. They've gotten every player they wanted out of the state of South Carolina now. And he's done it a little differently than he did it at Florida. He did it without the big passing game. He's done it by playing defense and running the football, which I know drives him crazy. But I think that shows the discipline that he has and his desire to win that he'd give up what he loves doing the most to get those W's on Saturday."
BEN LEARD ON TERRY BOWDEN
Ben Leard played for Auburn from 1997 through 2000. He started his career on the Plains under coach Terry Bowden:
"From Sunday to Friday, he was quite quirky. He just didn't connect with you. He kind of stayed off on the sidelines and monitored from a distance. But ... coach Bowden was an in-game genius. He could do things and make plays and draw question marks around certain defensive strategies and things that really made Dameyune (Craig), who I backed up for two years, understand what they were trying to accomplish. Now Dameyune was a tremendous athlete who could make plays on his own, but coach Bowden just had a knack. He had a knack to be able to do things on Saturdays that not many football coaches could do, and he had a way to deliver that to the football team so they could accomplish whatever goal it was he had in mind."
BEN LEARD ON TOMMY TUBERVILLE
Ben Leard was the starting quarterback on coach Tommy Tuberville's first two teams at Auburn:
"Coach Tubs was a blue-collar guy. Coach Tubs would basically tell us, 'Guys, if you score 17 points a game, I expect to win,' because he was so defensive-minded. ... He felt like his defensive football team should be able to hold an opposing offense to 16 or less. And that's the way we operated. I got threatened to be benched at least a dozen times a game because I'd check from a run to a pass. Third-and-long, first-and-10 or whatever, he wanted to run the clock down, play ball-control offense, and not to mention we had a guy behind me that could run the football pretty well, too. So he felt like he was hedging his bets giving the ball to Rudi (Johnson) more so than me putting the ball up in the air threatening an interception."
BEN LEARD ON GUS MALZAHN
The former Auburn quarterback is full of confidence about the job that former Tigers offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn will do now that he's the head coach on the Plains:
"He obviously had a tremendous amount of success in 2009 and 2010 and that was obviously expedited quite a bit by a kid who wore No. 2 in Cam Newton. But we'll take it any way we can get it. I am really, really excited not only about coach Malzahn coming back, but I'm excited about the staff he brought with him. ... They're tremendous recruiters, but the biggest thing is they're great football coaches. On top of that, they're going to coach those kids hard. Auburn will be a disciplined football team from the word 'go.' But the best thing about it is they'll coach them hard, but they'll love them, too. At the end of the day, these are kids that are 17, 18 years old that are away from their parents, away from their families, and as soon as they get on a college campus they don't know which end is up. They're going to treat them that way. I'm extremely, extremely excited and looking forward to this football season. I don't know if it's relative to the lack of success from 2012, but I'm really looking forward to what they have coming in the years to come in trying to compete with the other side of the state."
DAVID GREENE ON MARK RICHT
Quarterback David Greene became the SEC's career leader in passing yards while playing for coach Mark Richt's first four teams at Georgia:
"There's a misconception of coach Richt. Everybody just thinks he's just laid-back and never gets fired up. But it's really just the opposite, I'd say, during the week. Coach Richt has actually got plenty of fire in his belly, but he always made this comment that if he gets too worked up on game day, he doesn't think clearly. So he actually forces himself on game day to just stay calm no matter what's going on because he feels like, 'If I get too fired up, I'm not going to make clear decisions.'"
PHILLIP FULMER ON FRIENDLY RIVALS
Phillip Fulmer served as Tennessee's head coach for 16 seasons and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. He said any hatchets from his coaching days are long buried and he enjoys coming to events such as SEC BeachFest and visiting with his former rivals:
"We probably were fierce competitors, but we were also very respectful of each other in most cases. Everybody in the SEC, and to some degree even in coaching period, is intertwined. Coach (Pat) Dye had the great Auburn run, but before that he was at Alabama. He recruited me when he was (as assistant coach) at Alabama and I was a high school kid. We were laughing last night about all that. I have unbelievable great respect for coach (Gene) Stallings and all that he's accomplished. R.C. (Slocum) and I just went into the Hall of Fame together. We've been friends for 20 years. Coach (Jerry) Stovall and the list goes on and on with people that you enjoy and respect. I kid them that I'm younger than most of them, and I have some fun with that occasionally."
MATT JONES ON BRET BIELEMA
Matt Jones played quarterback at Arkansas from 2001 through 2004. He said there are precedents indicating Razorbacks new coach Bret Bielema will do well after leaving Wisconsin for the SEC:
"You look at the Big Ten success. Nick Saban, right? Les Miles. And the way they go about that -- that kind of road plan. Run the ball, be physical, control the clock, control the tempo. Here's a stat: Last three years, coach Bielema's teams only had one double-digit loss. They had nine losses in the last three years, they were all but one single-digit losses. That tells you they're disciplined, they're smart, they're going to be able to stay in the game. We're excited at Arkansas. We definitely think we got one of the best coaches in the country."
R.C. SLOCUM ON RESPECT
R.C. Slocum has more victories than any coach in Texas A&M history. Now, he's in the College Football Hall of Fame. He said most coaches are not adversaries:
"I would say that there might be a few of those kinds of contentious relationships, but by and large, coaches respect each other. They compete hard against each other, but that's really what competition should be about. I tried to teach my players, I never taught hate. I thought the world has enough hate in it without coaches teaching kids how to hate. I talked in terms of respect - really doing your best and going out and giving your best effort to win the game and playing out of respect for your opponent. Those kids, a lot of times in Texas, the guys that would be on the other team were guys I knew their parents and I tried to recruit them and I had high school teammates of theirs, so there's no way I was going to have animosity toward them. No one knows how difficult coaching is better than coaches, so you look at your opponent a lot of times that he's going through the same challenges you are, so you develop a respect for them, especially the good guys, and most coaches I met during my career I would consider good guys."
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