Spurrier cooks up concept to display memorabilia
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Steve Spurrier stashed six decades worth of memorabilia in closets and cabinets, scattered between his office, his home and his nearby beach house.
Jerseys and cleats. Helmets and visors. Trophies and trinkets. Rings and pictures. Spurrier’s collection was robust.
He stored another assortment of keepsakes in his head: “ball plays,” some of them as famous as his notable one-liners.
He has gathered all those treasures — even the plays he jotted down from memory — and proudly put them on display at Spurrier’s Gridiron Grille. The one-of-a-kind restaurant opened last week in Gainesville and doubles as the Head Ball Coach’s personal museum.
Spurrier and his investment team spared no expense in putting together a “polished casual” eatery that serves farm-to-table food. They visited nearly 60 celebrity restaurants across the world, stopping at places owned by Troy Aikman, John Elway, Gloria Estefan, Pele, Mike Shanahan and Tiger Woods. They also studied what caused others to falter.
“We believe we got a plan that’s in place to be very successful,” Spurrier said. “Location, food, service, we got all that. Hopefully we got all that. We believe we do.”
Spurrier gave The Associated Press a tour of the 18,600-square-foot restaurant that cost more than $12 million to build weeks before the grand opening, and the details and decor stood out.
Spurrier has his Heisman Trophy on display along with 14 championship rings, including Duke’s 1989 Atlantic Coast Conference title and South Carolina’s 2010 SEC Eastern Division championship.
The cleats he wore while kicking a 40-yard field goal to beat Auburn 30-27 in 1966 and clinch the Heisman Trophy are on display and so is the game ball from that one, both on loan from the Florida Sports Hall of Fame.
He has glass cabinets filled with trophies awarded to former players. There’s a wall-sized mosaic of Spurrier from his quarterback days adorning the main entryway, plaques recognizing Spurrier’s “Gator Greats” — the inaugural class featured Spurrier, Carlos Alvarez, Emmitt Smith, Errict Rhett, Danny Wuerffel and Percy Harvin — and hundreds of other items spread throughout.
A hole-in-one display from the par-3 course at Augusta National. Congratulatory letters from Hall of Fame coaches Pat Summitt and John Wooden. Fifteen keys to cities. An array of bowl watches. Photos of Spurrier from every decade of his coaching career, beginning before he switched from hats to his trademark visors.
Speaking of Visors — that’s the name of Spurrier’s rooftop bar where, of course, he has a collection of about 250 of them on display. He also had two specific bar stools reserved for the “HBC” and his wife, Jerri.
“It’s all me? Yeah, it’s a little weird, I guess,” Spurrier said. “But a lot of team pictures, too, which is very important.”
There are five private dining rooms, which make Spurrier’s a hot spot for meetings and parties. ESPN has placed a rental deposit on part of the restaurant for the weekend of the Alabama-Florida game, scheduled to be played Sept. 18.
“This is built for Gator Nation,” said Freddie Wehbe, who collaborated with Frankel Media to handle most of the heavy lifting in getting Spurrier’s from conception to completion. “How would you not? UF is the program that Coach created.”
Spurrier was Florida’s first Heisman winner and coached the Gators to their first national championship 30 years later. He has a statue outside the stadium and is a member of the program’s exclusive ring of honor.
Spurrier also nicknamed the stadium “The Swamp.” The Gators went 122-27-1 in 12 seasons under Spurrier, including a staggering 68-5 at home, and won six SEC titles.
Spurrier’s daughter, Amy Moody, urged him to build a restaurant just to get all his memorabilia organized and on display. Spurrier didn’t do much else to get the place up and running other than sit in meetings and tweak ideas from countless consultants.
One thing he did provide: those plays.
Spurrier re-created dozens of his most famous and successful plays on paper and had them turned into wallpaper that now covers both upstairs bathrooms.