Skip to main content
College Football HQ

Steve Spurrier Predicts Stunning Upset in College Football Week 4

The former thorn in the side of the Tennessee Volunteers made a surprising prediction.
Joe Cox|
The legendary former Florida head coach might surprise with his Week 4 upset pick.
The legendary former Florida head coach might surprise with his Week 4 upset pick. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

In this story:

Tennessee VolunteersTexas LonghornsFlorida Gators

Upsets make college football lively, and former Florida star and coach Steve Spurrier has an interesting Week 4 upset pick to spring on the nation. Speaking with ESPN journalist Chris Lowe, Spurrier dropped an upset choice that might surprise the long-time followers of the Florida and South Carolina coach.

Spurrier's Surprise Pick

No, he didn't pick the Gamecocks to take down Alabama or the Rebels of Ole Miss to upset his beloved Gators. Spurrier went in a direction that will shock anybody with a long memory.

"I think Tennessee is ready to pull the upset over Texas," he told Low. "The Vols can beat them in Knoxville. Hell, we beat them down here last year, and we went 4-8."

Tennessee's Chances

Texas has certainly not been immune to stumbles despite a lofty national reputation. Spurrier is right that a struggling Florida program that fired Billy Napier still found a way to best Texas 29-21 off a rare big game from QB DJ Lagway. Now Tennessee, like the Longhorns at 3-0 on the young season, will be a relatively mild home underdog in a battle to gain early control of the SEC race.

Spurrier has never had a problem bucking conventional wisdom and picking the home Vols to upset No. 1 Texas is just another example, albeit a stunning one.

Spurrier's History with Tennessee

As a Heisman Trophy winning player and championship winning coach at the University of Florida, Steve Spurrier often made life miserable for the University of Tennessee. Famous for cracking that you couldn't spell Citrus Bowl (when it was a not-quite-exclusive SEC bowl berth) without UT, Spurrier bested UT in 14 of 24 meetings with the Vols as a head coach.

To steal the SEC's trademark slogan, it just meant more for Spurrier, who great up in Johnson City, Tennesseee, and was somewhat under-recruited by his home state school. Instead, he became a star quarterback at Florida, winning the Heisman Trophy there in 1966. After an NFL career, Spurrier became a brilliant coach, winning at Duke before getting the nod at Florida.

He was 8-4 against Tennessee at Florida, with many of those wins settling the SEC regular-season crown In a dozen seasons at Florida, Spurrier brought passing to the SEC and won six SEC championships, as well as reaching two national title games and winning one. And he did much of his winning at the cost of the Volunteers, who almost certainly came to rue the day they failed to recruit the home-state kid at quarterback.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Loading recommendations... Please wait while we load personalized content recommendations

Published
Joe Cox
JOE COX

Joe is a journalist and writer who covers college and professional sports. He has written or co-written over a dozen sports books, including several regional best sellers. His last book, A Fine Team Man, is about Jackie Robinson and the lives he changed. Joe has been a guest on MLB Network, the Paul Finebaum show and numerous other television and radio shows. He has been inside MLB dugouts, covered bowl games and conference tournaments with Saturday Down South and still loves telling the stories of sports past and present.

Home/Picks