Steve Spurrier, current South Carolina Gamecock football coach, has spent his whole life around football in the south. Born to a Methodist minister in Florida, the family eventually settled in east Tennessee where he played high school football. Most teams (at both the high school and college levels) ran the football almost exclusively. Spurrier’s team liked to pass the football and colleges noticed. He enrolled at Florida because the head coach wanted to shake things up and throw the football in the run happy SEC. “He wanted to do something different. I liked the sound of that”, Spurrier remembered.
Florida upgraded their facilities and recruits noticed. They installed a pass happy offense and started winning. In 1966, Spurrier won the Heisman Trophy as the best player in college football and was two-time All-American. He continued his football career by playing in the NFL for a decade and then becoming a coach.
His college coaching career has taken him to teams that were not winning much when he arrived. Duke, Florida, South Carolina…it was the same story. He turned them into winners. His Florida teams won six SEC titles and one national championship. He helped change the culture of the SEC and was part of making the SEC the power house it is today, having won the last six national championships in college football.
In a recent ESPN The Magazine article Spurrier said: “Those were two big lessons I learned during college that I still live by, and I really think that they apply to how the SEC has become what it has become. First, if you don’t evolve, someone else is going to and you’re going to fall behind. Second, there’s something to be said for taking things in a new direction. Everyone else is running it, try throwing it. Everyone else is playing the same defense, try something their offense doesn’t ever see.”
Spurrier’s first lesson – “if you don’t evolve, someone else is going to and you’re going to fall behind” – is one that a majority of churches never learn. In the spiritual work of God’s kingdom, God will always have a people. If one church is satisfied with falling behind, God will simply raise up another one that is willing to move ahead. It is my prayer that FBC Rock Hill be a church that moves ahead and that I be a Pastor who continues to evolve.
Pastor Steve Hogg
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