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Steve Spurrier responds to how he would handle NIL, transfer portal as a coach

FaceProfileby:Thomas Goldkamp•04/10/25
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Steve Spurrier (CJ Driggers/GamecockCentral)

College football has changed a lot over the years, and Steve Spurrier has witnessed the sea change. Few changes have been as fundamental and as scene-shifting as the introduction of the transfer portal and NIL reform.

It’s a different world now than it was just five years ago. Coaches have had to adjust.

Speaking with former Florida and South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier on the Always College Football podcast, ESPN analyst Greg McElroy dove into what those changes look like for modern coaches. Surely there’s a huge adjustment.

“That’s true, you would have to consider all that,” Spurrier said. “I think you have to consider every guy on the team may leave. He may leave. But hopefully you can tell the entire team, ‘Hey, we’ve got a coach here who can coach you hard.'”

That would be Steve Spurrier’s approach to NIL and the transfer portal. It’s important to be up front with players, because the approach from Spurrier wouldn’t change much.

“I remember Pat Riley, former basketball coach, Miami Heat and Lakers and so forth, he one time said, ‘Great players want their coaches to be tough on them,'” Steve Spurrier told McElroy. “So I used to tell the team that all the time. Because they all think they’re great players, so they want the coach to be tough on them. So we tried to be tough on them and sort of yell at them a little bit and then pat them on the back when they deserve that.

“But with that NIL now, you might have to be nice to them a little bit more than you’re tough on them, I don’t know.”

McElroy took the opportunity to be a little more pointed with Steve Spurrier. Would he treat things differently if he were a coach now, in the NIL and transfer portal era?

“Not differently on the field, I don’t think,” Spurrier said. “We didn’t really yell at them on the field that much, just tried to correct mistakes and things like that. And really only if a player loafs is about the only time you would really criticize a guy some. And we didn’t have that very much at all.”