Additionally, and more importantly, in addition to a Mullen team there was still a Mullen culture. We had several players leave in the spring. My guess is there were probably around 30 other scholarship players who stayed and just told the new staff what they wanted to hear. Those players outed themselves over the course of the season and most are already in the portal. Mullen was a loser, only topped by Grantham, who was a bigger loser. Culture change doesn’t happen overnight. The Low Expectation/No Accountability culture that had taken full root at UF was a cancer. Firing Mullen was the surgery. Napier in 2022 was Chemo/Radiation treatment. 2023 will be the rehab. 2024 will be back to full speed. Im not claiming that Napier is a Spurrier. No one is. Spurrier is the greatest college of all time. Take any two even remotely equal college teams and give one to Spurrier and one to Saban. Give them both a three weeks to prepare for one game against each other. Who are you putting your money on? Spurrier inherited a hell of a lot of talent from Galen Hall. Hall didn’t win with them because he had to play so many of them as freshmen. Meyer inherited a team stacked with future NFL starters who, once again, mostly started or were key back ups as freshmen. How many future successful NFL starters did Napier inherit from Mullen? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say none. This rebuild is going to take some time. If you cannot handle that, please at least keep your football ignorance to yourself for a year or two.
That culture had its roots late in the Meyer era. It only got worse under Chump and Shark Boy. The way Mullen's era unraveled was quite striking. None of those coaches addressed and properly dealt with it.
Chump kicked a bunch of kids and actually had them playing hard for a bit. The offense was just no good but they weren’t soft.
I’m going to respectfully disagree on one point. Chump tried to change culture. Kicked off Jenkins - an NFL talent. I just don’t think he could run a program. The rest of your post: 100%!
If we turn in another 6 win season anyone think BN gets a third? Personally Id be out if that happened.
Napier gets a minimum of 3 seasons, most likely 4 if enough benchmarks are met. If we're sitting here at this time next year with an even better recruiting class lined up, he definitely stays.
I hate it that it didn’t work for him. He wanted it as bad as any UF coach has. Someone said to me within the last week: “if only he had head coaching experience before coming to Florida….” I responded, “apparently he didn’t learn his lesson. Made same mistakes at usc.”
But doesn’t that go against the “bad culture” theory.? Grier got busted for whatever it was (I say that because I’m not sure it’s really ever been released). There were lots of rumors about other stuff and his roommate also ended up off the team(a kicker). I don’t disagree Grier was great and I may have missed a bit about him leaving or being “let go”.
I think he gets 3 regardless of what he does. I'm not sure we that we have the Board/Booster setup here that kicks a coach to the curb after less than 2 years like Auburn did to Harsin (Fortunately). My nightmare scenario is that the wheels fall completely off in 2023 and recruits see a dead man walking similar to what they did when Muschamp was in his final year.
That article perfectly illustrates why he is a failed coach at two P-5 universities: Zero self-awareness.
Shark Boy's team lost half of its starters in the final season, due to a credit card scandal. If that isn't an indication of a culture problem..... His jettisoning of Grier was more of an indication of ego driven decisions than sound coaching.
