Bill Carr, a football All-American, Gators assistant coach, and athletic director, died at the age of 78.
Carr, who died late on February 3, was born in Gainesville as the son of a Baptist minister and raised in Pensacola. He returned to UF, where he became quarterback Steve Spurrier’s centre and a standout in his own right, garnering All-SEC and All-America honours during Spurrier’s 1966 Heisman season.
“Wonderful guy, wonderful friend, and super Gator,” Spurrier told the Orlando Sentinel.
Spurrier claimed he saw Carr about a month ago after he returned home from rehabilitation after a fall that had previously hospitalised him for many weeks.
When I visited him, he seemed upbeat,” Spurrier recounted. “He usually called me Orr, which is my middle name. And I always called him Willie C.; his name was William Curtis Carr. It appears that we all had a moniker back then.
“But he said if it’s my time to go to heaven, I’m prepared. I am prepared. He appeared to glimpse it in the future.
Carr, a fourth-round pick by the New Orleans Saints in 1967, spent two years in the United States Army and three years coaching at UF under Doug Dickey (1972-74) before transitioning to administration as an assistant to Gators AD Ray Graves.
Carr became Division I’s youngest athletic director in 1979, replacing his previous coach at the age of 33. He held the position until 1986. At the same time, Jeremy Foley worked in Carr’s department, eventually becoming AD from 1992 to 2016.
“Bill’s fingerprints are all over the foundation of this programme,” Foley added in his remarks. “I have a front-row seat to see his effect and vision. He was one of my earliest mentors.
Carr’s son, Scott, is the AD at FIU, but his father has grown increasingly disillusioned with the current state of collegiate athletics. Bill Carr spoke with the Orlando Sentinel in the summer of 2021 about the uncertain impact and potential unintended consequences of Name, Image, and Likeness law.
“The intercollegiate athletic experience is not an enterprise that it is intended to be a financial endeavour,” that’s what he said. “That is not the point of it. It is diametrically opposed, and I completely disagree.”
However, Carr said that he and other administrators lacked foresight decades ago, when media rights began to generate millions of money that did not flow down to athletes. Carr said that a programme giving lifetime health insurance, similar to what military personnel receive, would have been a worthwhile investment and a gesture of good faith.
“The NCAA should have studied that,” he went on to say.
Carr was astounded by the expanding size of football staffs and resources.
Coach Billy Napier’s 2022 Gators, his first UF squad, were photographed with 116 players and 140 staff members, many of whom were UF undergraduate volunteers, according to Napier.
“When you talk about increasing the number of people in your staff to over 55 people and you’re spending $5 million more on your support system, it is no longer a battle of skill and effort,” Car was quoted as saying by the Sentinel. “It is a competition for investment. It’s crazy to have that many people involved in that football programme.”
Carr readily expressed his ideas and insights while always supporting the Gators.
In 2015, at the age of 69, he was the oldest “Honorary Mr. Two Bits” during Florida’s season opening under former coach Jim McElwain.
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