Steve Spurrier weighs in on Jim McElwain: ‘You see us play Georgia? Yeah, it was a sad day’

Florida is searching for its next head coach, after parting ways with Jim McElwain Sunday after his two and a half seasons in Gainesville. One of the biggest reasons for his departure, aside from his claims of death threats earlier last week, was the lack of offensive improvement, which McElwain was hired to fix.

The man who made Florida football an offensive powerhouse in the 1990s and early 2000s, former Gator and South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier, weighed in. The Head Ball Coach, now an ambassador and consultant for Florida’s athletic department, wasn’t too pleased with the Gators’ 42-7 loss to Georgia.

“The offense has been so bad, everybody knows it,” Spurrier told The State, where he also ruled out a return to major college coaching and said he’s offered Florida OC Doug Nussmeier some tips on play calls. “Did you see us play Georgia? Yeah, it was a sad, sad day, but anyway…”

Spurrier not being happy with Florida not beating Georgia is par for the course for the HBC. In our 2007 package from last summer, Spurrier told SB Nation how proud he was of his 16-6 record against Georgia as a head coach:

To tell you the truth, I’m proud of the fact I have more wins over Georgia than any other coach in history. I think I got 16, but hey, we’ve lost seven. I’ve coached against them 23 times.

They beat us my senior year in college. They knocked us out; Florida had a chance to win its first-ever SEC title. We went over to Jacksonville, and they beat the crap out of us in the second half and ended up winning, 27-10, something like that. Now they completely outplayed us, wasn’t any flukes or anything like that.But as a coach, I thought maybe I could get even with them.

At Florida [from 1990 to 2001], we had better players than they did just about every game. We went 11-1 with them.

So maybe psychologically after a while, it may have helped against them, because we did beat them five times when I was there [at South Carolina]. But you treat ‘em all about the same, every game. We ended up 5-6; I was 5-6 against [Mark Richt] at South Carolina. We didn’t really have their number. But at one time, we’d beaten four out of five years, so hey, I guess that’s pretty neat.

It’s no secret that Florida’s offense has been abysmal since Urban Meyer left in 2009, and a majority of the candidates that make sense as potential hires are offensive guys, like Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen, and UCF’s Scott Frost. Spurrier added that he may “throw some names” at Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin during the coaching search.

One thing’s for sure — whoever is hired should probably make use of Spurrier having an office in the Florida athletic department’s building. It certainly can’t hurt.