GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Naturally, Steve Spurrier had some explaining to do.

He did it Monday during his final news conference at Florida, an hour-long "farewell party," as he called it, that was historical, heartwarming and hilarious, enough to fill a dozen notebooks and bring back a hundred memories.

	Steve Spurrier lived up to form in his last Florida press conference Monday.

It was vintage Spurrier, a virtual Best of Steve Hour, full of admissions (maybe he really did run it up too much), denials (no, he doesn't have an NFL job wrapped up) and one-liners ("I guess I'm supposed to cry because that's what all those FSU people say I do.")

Looking unusually formal in a black suit and an orange-and-blue Gators tie, the coach's blue eyes sparkled as he summed up his career at Florida, the reasons for his sudden resignation and his NFL prospects. Of course, he couldn't resist taking a final shot or two at all those foes who loved to hate him over the years, and the new enemies he might make in the pros.

But regrets about the decision? "I don't look back too much right now," he said.

The decision was building as his 12th season wore on. A conversation with John Lombardi, the school president who recently stepped down after 10 years, led him down this road.

"Somehow, late in the year, it started hitting me that this was as good a time as any to say goodbye," Spurrier said. "Although certainly I was hoping, as we all were, that it would be after the Rose Bowl."

Now, he'll be shooting for the Super Bowl, although the team he'll do it with has yet to be determined. Carolina has an opening. So do Minnesota and San Diego. Spurrier said he hopes to have his new job within a month, but he was evasive when asked about where he might wind up.

He said he didn't necessarily have to coach in Florida -- sorry Bucs fans -- but wanted to go somewhere, if only to see whether his style of offense, his style of coaching, can work at the NFL level.

"I figured I better go now, or it's going to be too late," the 56-year-old coach said. "I don't want to coach too far into my 60s. By then, I'll be playing golf four or five times a week."

He stressed that he doesn't want a job where he's in charge of personnel or the salary cap -- "They've got other guys who can do math, don't they?" -- and he doesn't think being in the NFL has to be a 100-hour-a-week job.

"I saw a story saying Jim Haslett comes in at 4:30 every morning -- that's not doing him much good," Spurrier said of the Saints coach, who went 7-9 this year.

Also, coaching an underdog wouldn't be so bad. In some ways, Spurrier was a victim of his own success. The Gators went from humble underdogs to double-digit favorites over Spurrier's 12 seasons of success, and that got to be a burden.

"It's like a disgrace when we lose and a relief when we win," he said.

Nobody won quite like Spurrier.

He was the patriarch of Florida football, the man who generated the success, and the fun, that took the program from years of troubled mediocrity to 122 victories in 150 games.

But he wasn't really a father figure. A sneaky big brother was more like it -- always trying to outfox the other guy, or get away with something nobody else would dream of.

That crazy Emory & Henry formation, the halfback passes and double reverses, punting on third downs. All that stuff was Spurrier at his best, and worst, and it made Florida refreshingly unique in an ever-growing world of copycat coaches and programs.

Spurrier knows he rubbed people wrong, but he did it by choice.

He told of receiving a letter from a fan who was troubled by watching him rant and rave on the sidelines during a 35-0 victory over Alabama in 1991. He figured maybe the guy had a point. He changed his persona the next week and the Gators got drilled by Syracuse.

"I came back home and apologized to the players," he said. "I said, 'Fellas, that style may work for some people, but it doesn't work for me. That's the only way I have a chance to be effective."'

So, the visor tossing, the yelling at the quarterbacks and the steady barrage of complaining resumed, and it never really stopped.

Florida fans loved it.

They loved the way he turned ancient rivalries against Auburn and Georgia squarely in Florida's favor. They loved the way he dominated Tennessee for a while, and how he helped make the Florida-Florida State really mean something.

But the party is over.

Spurrier said it was time to go, before he got pushed out the door. This job, he said, has chewed up and spit out every man who has held it over the last 75 years.

Sure, people told him he would never be like the others.

He is, after all, the guy who won the Heisman for Florida, then rescued the program when it needed help, and took the Gators to their only national title and won them six Southeastern Conference titles.

"But that's not the point," he said. "If it ever started going downhill pretty good, you have to make changes. That's part of our coaching profession, and we all know it."

When it was over, Spurrier yielded the podium to Rex Grossman, the quarterback, one of the many he's coached and helped turn into a star on the college level.

"That's a tough act to follow," Grossman said.

As Grossman spoke, 100 sets of eyes were watching Spurrier slip quietly out the back of the room.

His wife, Jerri, was crying, and the rest of the Gator Nation was wondering: Without Steve on the sideline, how will things ever be the same?