College Football’s Greatest Supervillain Is a National Champion Coach, Says ESPN

ESPN has this championship winning coach as the sport's greatest villain of all time.

Florida head coach Steve Spurrier | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

When one looks back across the long and rich history of college football, they will find a long list of larger-than-life figures who have cemented themselves as legends in the ever-growing narrative of one of America's great pastimes.

Just like every story, there are heroes and villains, and one person can occupy both roles depending on a given fan's point of view.

There are some figures, however, who have grown to become utterly despised by just about everyone other than the people who root for the program they were a part of. Some are hated because of their antics, others because of how dominant they were, and some a bit of both.

These so-called "supervillains" occupy their own space in college football lore, but ESPN analyst Ryan McGee believes there is one man who stands above all others in this group.

The Old Ball Coach

Florida head coach Steve Spurrier expresses his displeasure at a Florida play in the first half against Tennessee | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Many fans nowadays might be too young to remember who Steve Spurrier was, but there are several generations that vividly remember watching the Heisman-winning quarterback-turned National Championship-winning head coach of the Florida Gators torment their favorite team on the field, then rub salt in the fresh wounds by talking trash at the press conference right after.

If you think Lane Kiffin is insufferable, McGee perfectly encapsulates why Spurrier was so much worse as an opposing fan:

"The Head Ball Coach walked so the Lane Train could run," McGee writes. "...back in the day, the HBC was The Visor. A hat-slinging, trash-talking, strut-walking winning machine who tossed the ball all over the yard as both a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback and a national championship-winning coach. And after humiliating you on the field, he would pour verbal salt into your wounds."

Spurrier was the perfect combination of utter dominance on the field and shameless trash talking off of it that made it impossible not to hate him if you were an opposing fan. Even in the twilight of his legendary career at South Carolina, McGee lays out why Spurrier was still "The Visor."

"Let's not sleep on his stint at South Carolina, where he routinely took photos with fans holding up five fingers because his Gamecocks once defeated archival Clemson five years in a row," McGee writes.

"Says former Spurrier-coached-QB-turned-TV-host Jesse Palmer: "There is no greater example in the history of college football of the guy that if he was your coach, you love him forever, but if he was not your coach, then you hate him forever."

There are certainly other players and coaches who are right up there with Spurrier in terms of their perceived villainy, but Spurrier's combination of success and the joy he got in rubbing everybody else's noses in that success earns him the title of college football's greatest supervillain.