Is This the End for Steve Spurrier?

Nobody wants to see Steve Spurrier look like this. Well, maybe some people do, actually—people who have wanted to wipe that smirk off his face for years.    

But really, college football is better off with that smirk. Most people have seen what Spurrier has meant to the college game, if not to the NFL. He has been fun, and he's shown passion and vitality. That's him, and it's also his football teams: permanent youth.

On Saturday, Spurrier looked old. Tired. Resigned.

Finished?

South Carolina lost in overtime at home to Tennessee, and Spurrier's postgame press conference was a monologue that lasted 54 seconds. Not one quirk or quip. And then? He walked off. It ended this way:

"So, I don't really—I don't need to take any questions. You guys watched it, and I need to just get out of here. Thank you."

Spurrier needs to just get out of here.

It might be time for Steve Spurrier to go. And if you're fluent in reading body language, you could see that he's thinking the same thing.

That press conference was hard to take. It's like when you see a champion athlete who has stayed around too long. Jack Nicklaus used to be openly scared that would happen to him and would say he'd never want to be a ceremonial golfer.

Some of the media who have covered Spurrier are ripping him for that press conference. Bleacher Report colleague Barrett Sallee called Spurrier a coward. CBS Sports' Jon Solomon said he wasn't standing up for his team, allowing "everyone else in South Carolina's program to face the heat." The State reporter Josh Kendall made the same point via tweets.

It's all way overboard. More so, that's just about reporters who are used to a party when Spurrier is around. This time, like in the movie Vacation, they got to Wallyworld and found that "Sorry, folks," park's closed.

Spurrier is entitled to one blow-off press conference every few decades. This isn't about manners or backbone. It's about Spurrier's psyche and will—effectiveness, too. It's about whether he's going to want to start going through another rebuilding next year, when he turns 70.

Spurrier has fought for years not to be old. He works out and hasn't been one of those obsessive coaches who spends every second on the job, thinking of every detail of the game as a matter of national importance. Unlike so many college coaches, he relaxes. He pokes at other coaches to get into their heads, and also just to have fun.

Earlier this year, he talked to The State about Nick Saban:

"How may SECs has he won there (at Alabama) in eight years? He's won two. He's won three nationals, but he's only won two SECs in eight years. Now, if you had the No. 1 recruiting class every year and so forth, I don't know if he has maxed out potentially as well as he could."

RICHARD SHIRO/Associated Press

That's not exactly calling Florida State "Free Shoes University" or saying when a fire at Auburn accidentally burned books, the shame was that some of them hadn't been colored yet. But by now, after years of this show, the media laugh a little too hard at every Spurrier comment. They see him now and think of him a long time ago. He does not look anywhere near his age.

So maybe that's why people didn't expect this season to be such a flop. The expectations were high because people aren't seeing today's Spurrier. The narrative at the beginning of the year was that Spurrier had one last mountain to climb, and that he was up for it. He was still his same old self, only don't say "old."

This is his 10th year at South Carolina, and he has never won an SEC title there or even gotten the team to a BCS bowl game. He has been wanting that SEC title forever, to go with the six he won at Florida. South Carolina was considered a contender, even with an outside shot at getting into the College Football Playoff.

And that was never reasonable, not after losing the first pick in the NFL draft, Jadeveon Clowney, and quarterback Connor Shaw.

Spurrier charmed the media and fans into those expectations. Even earlier this season he openly said, roughly, that he didn't think the team was all that great, but its ranking was nice anyway.

Age is tricky. If Spurrier is burning out, it isn't likely so much about age as about just how long he has done this. Bill Snyder looked old when Kansas State hired him 25 years ago. Now, after a historically amazing building job, followed by a short retirement, he is 75 and in the national-championship picture.

Year	College	Record
1987	Duke	5-6
1988	Duke	7-3-1
1989	Duke	8-4
1990	Florida	9-2
1991	Florida	10-2
1992	Florida	9-4
1993	Florida	11-2
1994	Florida	10-2-1
1995	Florida	12-1
1996	Florida	12-1
1997	Florida	10-2
1998	Florida	10-2
1999	Florida	9-4
2000	Florida	10-3
2001	Florida	10-2
2002	Washington Redskins	7-9
2003	Washington Redskins	5-11
2005	South Carolina	7-5
2006	South Carolina	8-5
2007	South Carolina	6-6
2008	South Carolina	7-6
2009	South Carolina	7-6
2010	South Carolina	9-5
2011	South Carolina	11-2
2012	South Carolina	11-2
2013	South Carolina	11-2
2014	South Carolina	4-5

Spurrier looked close to being done five years ago, when South Carolina finished the season on a losing streak and then lost to Connecticut in the Papa John's Bowl. He apologized afterward, and talk about his inevitable retirement started.

In the past three years, though, South Carolina has finished ranked in the Associated Press Top 10. It still needed to reach that one last mountaintop, the SEC title, and this looked to possibly be the year.

"Hopefully I've got several more years here, but you never know," Spurrier told USA Today during the offseason. "You never know. Got four more years on my contract, so that's good I guess. But if we go bad, they don't need me around here. We're planning on staying pretty good."

South Carolina is one of the worst teams in the SEC, at 2-5 in the league, 4-5 overall. His offense isn't his trademark fun 'n' gun anymore. His defense is a mess.

And he does not look like someone willing to start all over again.

"Just not good enough," he said in his postgame talk. "Not good enough to hold the lead. Not coached well enough overall as a team. I've done a lousy job of maximizing what we think we've got here. We can score a few points, but we find a way to lose.

"Yes, this is a tough one. It'll take a while to get this one out of your system. But we've had about three or four like this, this year, so I guess I should be getting used to it by now."

He has won too big, and had too much fun to ever get used to this. It would just be nice to see someone wipe that smirk back onto his face.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report. He also writes for The New York Times and was formerly a scribe for FoxSports.com and the Chicago Sun-Times. Follow him on Twitter @gregcouch.