Florida football coach Steve Spurrier has a hands-on approach to his job, and he believes many others don't share the same philosophy.

	I will prove 'Wilbun' wrong

"Most head coaches stand over there and listen in on a headset and they're not so animated," Spurrier told Gary Miller recently on Up Close. "They don't call any plays, they're just sort of the figurehead of their team. I'm sort of in the forefront, I'm out there calling plays, yelling at this guy and that guy."

Spurrier also talked about Saturday's upcoming showdown against top-ranked Florida State. Spurrier heaped high praise on Peter Warrick, the Seminoles' dangerous receiver. "You have got to get one or two guys and try and corner him up, he is a tremendous talent especially after he catches the ball," Spurrier said.

The following is an edited transcript of Spurrier's interview.

Miller: The last two years the games between Florida and Florida State have been real rumbles to open the game. These two teams don't like each other. What precautions have you taken? Last year you lost your captain, Tony George, during the fracas, how about this year?

Spurrier: Gary, I don't think there will be any kind of pushing and shoving and rumbling at midfield. That had occurred the prior two games at the Sugar Bowl in '96, when we were fortunate enough to win the national championship, and then it happened a little bit here in the Swamp in '97. So we sort of let them do it again because we won both games, but then we found out that you could actually get a player thrown out with the pushing and shoving. I didn't know that was possible, and we got our defensive captain Tony George thrown out of the game, and I think that FSU got a guy in blue jeans and a jersey top thrown out, so it wasn't a very good swap. So we are not going to take any chances, we're not going to midfield, if the Seminoles want to jump around that's fine, we're just going to do like we always do and get ready, hopefully, to play our best game of the year.

Miller: This game is huge for national championship considerations, not a game in which a coach would want to go into with an unstable quarterback situation. We know that Doug Johnson is going to start in his last game as a senior at home. How are you going to employ your quarterbacks on Saturday?

Spurrier: Gary, there are several ways we could do it, we haven't exactly divulged it. Two years ago we, you may remember, we rotated a couple of quarterbacks, Doug Johnson and Noah Brindice. Doug was sort of struggling back then and Noah was playing pretty good on-and-off, so we just rotated them each play. There is a chance we may do that, we may let one go four or five plays in a row or two or three together. I'm not sure exactly if that is the best way or just rotating them. So they'll both play and hopefully by doing that, then maybe we'll have a little bit better plan. You know, you have a chance to coach the quarterback in-between plays right before you send him out there. It was beneficial for us for quite a while and maybe that is what we've got to do now.

Miller: Two years ago when you did it, when Noah, who is now an assistant with you, did it with you when you were with Doug Johnson, you were able to beat Florida State. How much does that play into the decision?

Spurrier: They were No. 1 in the country, 10-0 coming in, just like they are now. So it is a very similar situation for them, I think we were 8-2 and we didn't have a chance for the SEC. Tennessee had already won the division and they were going to play for the championship, which they won. So we are in a little bit different situation; we're 9-1, gosh, if we could win the next two games maybe we would have a shot at the national championship again. But the game of the year for us is against FSU, it's the one this Saturday, and after that it will be the one in two weeks for the SEC championship.

Miller: How much is your decision to alternate the quarterbacks a reflection of trying to get the best out of your team and how much of it is to try and confuse the Seminole defense and Bobby Bowden?

Spurrier: Gary, you hit it on the first comment there, just trying to get the best out of our players, our quarterbacks, our wide receivers, our running backs, all of them. As coaches, that is all we are trying to do, is get the most out of the talent that we have and try to use it the best we can. Gosh, I wish we had one quarterback who was clearly the best and there would be no question, but I just don't feel like we are in that situation right now. We are sort of struggling a little bit, and maybe if we need to use two quarterbacks to take a little pressure off, then maybe that is the way to go. Our wide receivers need to play well this game also; we haven't played like we usually play around here, not real bad, but our guys need to catch everything, try to get open, fight for the ball a little bit better, things like that. So you're right, we're just trying to use the players we have and try to get the most out of them.

Miller: Is part of the reason your wide receivers are struggling because of the unstable quarterback situation?

Spurrier: No, no... Now Doug has played about the first nine games and Jessie Palmer's just played one, but when you watch these two guys in practice, they are both about the exact same size. They are both 6-2½, 215-220, they throw the ball very similarly. Statistically over the last couple of years they are very close, percentage of completion, touchdown passes, when they have played. They are very close, and to tell you the truth, I was hoping that Doug would really just have a fantastic year and go the distance. But we started struggling a bit about the middle of the year, and sometimes as we all know when a quarterback sits out a game he comes back a better player. You see it in pro football, sometimes in college that a day off really helps a quarterback, so we're hoping that's the case this week.

Miller: Peter Warrick, despite the controversy, is still one of the best players in college football. How much does he concern you, especially since Bobby Bowden always comes up with some kind of gimmick play at a crucial time in the game?

Spurrier: Well, certainly Peter Warrick is most likely going to be the first pick in the NFL Draft next year, he is a tremendous talent. Unfortunately he had that incident at the store, but from all I've read and heard about him, he is a pretty good young man and hopefully our fans will treat him like a college football player and treat him with some respect, because he is a fantastic player that is going to go on and be an outstanding pro. You have got to get one or two guys and try and corner him up, he is a tremendous talent especially after he catches the ball. And they'll put him in the shotgun, let him play quarterback and throw it around, run it around, we are expecting that to happen also.

Miller: Steve, you're playing FSU at home this weekend.. How much of a factor is the crowd in this rivalry?

Spurrier: Gary, we've been pretty good here at home. I think we have won 57 out of 60 games here, so certainly our fans are a big reason for our success. We have beaten FSU, I think, three of the four times we've played them here. We have beaten Tennessee 4-for-4 here in the Swamp, so those are the two big games that our fans get really extra-excited. The other games we act like normal college football fans, we're loud but we don't get overboard like our fans do for these two teams. But hopefully they'll be some good sportsmanship demonstrated between the Florida and the FSU fans and it can be handled in a first-class manner. But our fans, they do get extra-excited when Tennessee and FSU come to the Swamp.

Miller: 1996 - FSU vs. Florida regular season game, (Florida QB) Danny Wuerffel took a beating. On this show a year ago, Bobby Bowden reacted to your complaints that the Seminoles were playing "dirty football," trying to hurt Wuerffel.. Bowden said simply that what you called dirty football, he called simply "sacking the quarterback." What is your reaction to that?

Spurrier: Well, I never used that word "dirty football." One of their players came out after the game and said, "our plan was to knock Danny Wuerffel out of the game." That means their plan was to try to hurt him to get him out of the game, and sometimes they sort of brag about knocking quarterbacks out of the game and I just don't think that's a part of football. So I made my comments really in defense of Danny Wuerffel, certainly as a head coach and a quarterback coach, he is certainly one of my all-time favorite players. I didn't want to see guys on the other team try to hurt him to knock him out of the game. So I made those comments because that's the way I felt and I don't regret making them and well, the next game, you know what the score was, Gary, so it didn't hurt our team for sure.

Miller: Bobby has a tendency of saying things that come back to haunt him, do you ever wish you could take back certain things that you said?

Spurrier: Gary, when I say something corny it's usually at a Gator Club meeting in the summer, it's not during an interview with a sportswriter that's going to write it. But unfortunately nowadays when, you know, I have to do about 20, 22 Gator Clubs each summer, that's part of my job here at Florida, and some of these meetings we have a thousand, 1,200 people - Jacksonville, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale area, Orlando, Tampa and so forth, so they want to hear something half-way funny. That's just talk, it doesn't mean anything during the summer so sometimes people shouldn't take everything that everybody says so seriously, and I can assure you when they talk about me and whatever, "loud-mouth guy," it doesn't bother me at all. So if I throw out a little, what I call just "talk" and they want to throw it back at me that's fine with me.

Miller: Everybody loves Bobby Bowden even though he's beating people and you don't have that reputation, why is that?

Spurrier: Well, I'm a little different in that I actually coach our team. You know, most head coaches stand over there and listen in on a headset and they're not so animated; they don't call any plays, they're just sort of the figurehead of their team. I'm sort of in the forefront, I'm out there calling plays, yelling at this guy and that guy, and trying to, I sort of act like a basketball coach, you know, how they coach their team and yell and scream. That's just the way I do it. There's all kinds of ways to be successful, as we all know, but that seems to be what works best for me and our teams. So I sort of put myself in position that if someone wants to be critical "look at that guy down there yelling and screaming" that's OK because that's the only way it works for me as a coach.

Miller: Are you saying Bobby is one of those figurehead guys?

Spurrier: Well, he admits that he doesn't call any plays anymore, but he does a super job at what his role is, and that's to keep everybody together and make sure the responsibilities are delegated out. There's a lot of coaches that don't call plays and are not real active in the coaching part, and you can be very successful that way also.

Miller: You mentioned basketball; people might compare you to Bobby Knight throwing visors and such, but you often quote John Wooden, who is maybe the antithesis of that. Where do you fit in, are you a mixture of different types of coaching?

Spurrier: Well, I really don't throw as many as people think, I threw my visor about four years ago. I think its that last time, and I found out when you throw them they get grass stains, so they're ruined forever. So I don't throw them anymore, and maybe I've thrown a headset to the headset guy that hangs behind me there, but the only time I usually get upset is when the guy I'm coaching, the quarterback, does something that I can't quite understand why he did it. That doesn't mean he threw a bad pass or this, that and the other, its just maybe he didn't throw to a guy that was wide open or checked out of a good play to a bad play. I think all of us as coaches, when the player we coach doesn't perform like we think we've coached him up to do, then we're upset at ourselves and the player, and you show a little anger at that time. But you're right, coach Wooden, his philosophies of coaching, I've said many times, are what I admire, and I would try to follow his as much as any coach that I've ever read about. One thing he always said is that if you are a good coach, your players play pretty close to how you coach them to play, and so I try to encourage all of our coaches to make sure your players are playing pretty close to how we're trying to teach them to play. If you can do that you have got a chance to be successful.