In case you didn’t know it, the University of Florida will be playing the University of South Carolina in a game of football this weekend. The current coach of the Gamecocks, Steven Orr Spurrier, came to the job via a long and mostly distinguished coaching career highlighted by a long, successful run at the University of Florida. The run peaked with a national championship in 1996, the only one the Gators have ever won. He departed the team at the end of the 2001 season to take a position with the Washington Redskins, where he endured a rocky two-year tenure before resigning and ultimately returning to the college game.

(It hurt…our…fingers to type that with such restraint. What we really wanted to say was this: Spurrier fucking rocks. Rocks rocks rocks. Rocks so hard he breaks six guitar strings a song…and he doesn’t even play guitar. Rocks like Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden would in a concert in hell. Rocks so fucking hard the Himalayas shudder when he farts and the oceans ripple when he sneezes. If life were Clash of the Titans, you’d be lameass loincloth-wearing Harry Hamlin and he’d be Lawrence Olivier as Zeus with the badass spectral laser aura surrounding his head…but less gay about the whole thing. He’s bad and you’re not and it sucks but that’s too bad unless you’re Steve Spurrier and then it doesn’t so there. )

Directions: repeat to self, “You suck! I don’t! Ha!” Apply to world.

Ahem. Back to the whole composure thing…oh, yeah. That guy–our former coach. The man who taught us that revenge, far from being at its peak in a chilled state, is best served flaming on the end of a pike flying ninety miles an hour at your opponent’s head. The man who generated the three comments on college football a year from Mike Lupica, jackasshole of jackassholes. The man who coined the term “Free Shoes University.” (Sounds of wistful tears should accompany this paragraph, along with wistful, Death Cab for Cutie soundtrack and a slightly rainy setting.)

We owe him much, but with that said, we’d like to make it clear that Saturday’s game will be very, very complicated for us. We should say that we hope Meyer drowns the kitty of unflattering comparison quickly with a 47-14 blasting of the ‘Cocks; but do we really want to hurt him like that? Do we really want to make him cry? Well, yes–there are no loyalties once you’re gone, and Spurrier took the money and ran when his midlife crisis finally got a death grip on him for good. Worse yet, he left us at the mercy of…that guy, the guy whose name won’t even show up on We Are The Boys‘ site.

(Really–you simply can’t enter the name on his site, and his name doesn’t appear after a certain date. Call it extreme, but large swaths of the fanbase behave that way without even trying, which may be scarier. Mention him in a crowded room and all you’ll hear are the sounds of breathing and eyelids flicking across corneas with blank expressions.)

But the heart is a troublesome, weak, and gelatinous object prone to clogs, malfunctions, and poor decision-making. Fortunately we’ve had ours removed and replaced with a more reliable Toyota 4-cylinder engine removed from a ‘78 Corolla station wagon. (Ask anyone–those things run forever.) But for those of you who still hold fond memories of the OBC, we’ll be brining you our rundown of our favorite moments from the Spurrier era throughout the week.

Spurrier Highlight No 1.: The Run It Up Arm Wheel, Sugar Bowl 1996. As if redemption against the FSU team who gave Danny Wuerffel a boot party sans officiating in their only loss of the season wasn’t enough…early in the fourth quarter, with Florida up by 18 points, Florida busts a huge hole on shotgun trap, springing Terry Jackson for a TD and extending the lead to a mind-boggling 25 against the vaunted jailhouse D of FSU. The camera goes to Football Lucifer on the sidelines, who is smiling and–we shit you not–pinwheeling his pointed hand in a Pete Townshendesque motion that on the spot determined the international gesture for “run it up.” The glee on his face as his team punched the opponent out of the ring and then went for the folding chair still keeps many a Gator fan warm on those brutal fifty degree nights in north Florida.

Kind of like that, but cooler.

Spurrier Moment No. 2: My field, not yours. A vintage piece from the Duke days. Spurrier brought his team back out onto North Carolina turf to take a picture of the score with his gloating Blue Devils. Mack Brown took it to the media–hmm, sound familiar?–and opined that Spurrier had shown a real lack of class by doing that on someone else’s home field. Spurrier’s response when asked why Brown was upset? “Why? I’ve got a better record on that field than he does.” Show us salt, a wound, and the OBC will take the shortest distance between the two.

More to come…