Les Miles is now the last supplier of SEC football fun

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For a generation of rival SEC fans, Steve Spurrier was the bogeyman. He was brash and arrogant, and he completely upended the stablished order of the SEC. He changed the internal power dynamics of the conference, how we played football in the SEC, and the national perspective.

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When Spurrier arrived, the South's football was as conservative as its politics. Running backs were the stars of the conference, as were dictatorial head coaches trying to chase the ghost of the Bear. Pat Dye and Johnny Majors shared the conference title in 1989 with starting QB's of Reggie Slack and Andy Kelly, respectively. This was still the conference of Herschel and Bo.

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The worst thing for LSU fans was that in 1990, we were enduring the last year of the Mike Archer era and in 1991, the program would hire Curley Hallman, arguably the worst coach in the history of football. Making it even worse, legend has it that Spurrier wanted the LSU job back in 1987, but LSU hired Mike Archer instead. So every blowout win, every snide cutdown, every beautiful play call, every SEC title... there was a very real feeling in Baton Rouge that it could have been, no, should have been ours. While enduring the Dark Ages of LSU Football, we had to watch the Guy We Should Have Hired completely transform the SEC. It didn't help that Spurrier's Florida teams beat the ever-living hell out of LSU. Aside from 28-21 miracle in 1997, Florida beat LSU by the scores of 34-8, 16-0, 28-21, 58-3, 42-18, 28-10, 56-13, 22-10, 31-10, 41-9, and finally, 44-15.

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Still, he kept cracking wise and taking names right up until the end. He was no longer a fearsome presence like he had been in the 1990s, but he was still a talismanic figure for a generation of fans. He was the guy who made the SEC fun again. He won a lot, but he also never lost sight of the fact that football is a game, and games are supposed to be fun. College football is a little less fun today than it was yesterday. Spurrier may have been a villain to some, but he was always entertaining.

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