Spurrier built his reputation in Gainesville with a high-octane offense, a sharp wit and lopsided scores. He left after the 2001 season to coach the Washington Redskins. He was widely regarded as a failure as a pro coach, going 12-20.
Holtz also failed in his foray in the NFL going 3-10 with the Jets in 1976. He made his name in college, coaching William and Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas, Minnesota and Notre Dame before South Carolina. Holtz led the Irish to a 12-0 record and the 1988 national championship.
Holtz's final stop at South Carolina wasn't as glamorous but was ultimately successful. He lured better recruits, raised the program's profile with more nationally televised games and led the Gamecocks to back-to-back New Year's Day bowl games in 2001 and 2002.
Heading into Saturday's game against Clemson, Holtz is 33-36 in his six seasons at South Carolina. He hasgone 1-4 against the Tigers.
Holtz will be leaving the program in the hands of a friend. Spurrier helped Holtz's wife, Beth, get medical help at Florida in 1999 when she had throat cancer.
the game
When is the game still The Game, an event stubbornly clinging to an identity cultivated solely on institutional traditions and resistant even to the almighty corporate revenue stream? As Bud Selig and Major League Baseball did last summer, Bill Martin discovered recently that the fan's foul line doesn't often get in the way, but you'll know it when you cross it.
Martin is the athletic director at the University of Michigan, which last month announced it was entering a two-year agreement with Ohio State to rename their annual football game the SBC Michigan-Ohio State Classic. The universities were to receive US$260,000 from SBC Communications each year, beginning with Saturday's showdown in Columbus, the 101st renewal of what is arguably the most storied rivalry in the college game.
Then something decidedly uncommon in a sports culture of numbing sponsorship occurred: a deluge of e-mail messages and telephone calls complaining that the universities had gone too far.
"I didn't recognize the sensitivity to naming a rivalry like this one," Martin said in a telephone interview. "Last year, we celebrated the 100th anniversary, and selling it rubbed people the wrong way."
One of them happened to be Mary Sue Coleman, the Michigan president, who has reportedly embarked on a fund-raising campaign to raise billions in donations and possibly didn't fancy the football-crazed alumni grousing over a measly US$520,000. Coleman nixed the SBC deal, and Martin stood up accountably to say the miscommunication occurred because "Bill Martin screwed up."
Thus the game goes on today as The Game, hyped for its venerability and heightened by 9-1 Michigan's unanticipated (until Wisconsin was beaten last week) opportunity to win a berth in the Rose Bowl.
That's the Rose Bowl Game, presented by Citi, and one of the four Bowl Championship Series games that include the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the Nokia Sugar Bowl and this year's national championship game, the FedEx Orange Bowl.
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