Fixing Florida

But we can brag about our overall sports program while we get our asses handed to us in football.

 

“Back and forth?” I’d kill for a back-and-forth rivalry with Kentucky today. Under Napier, all we have is a forth with no back.

 

Nothing improves recruiting and player retention like winning. Do you think Etienne would be playing for Georgia if we had won 3 more games last year? DM allowed the team to take a game off if it "didn't matter" (Bowl games, LSU 2020 as examples). The thing is; every game matters. A team is judged by it's win/loss record, especially in games with a national audience. If he had prepped his teams and lead them in these "didn't matter" games, he might still be coaching here. Did you ever see Nick Saban act like a game didn't matter?

 

Texas and California have entered the chat.

Look, the other schools are trying, too. You can’t just expect to win for the factors you named. That’s not at all how this works.

 

Underrated post.

 

What truly flummoxes me is that anyone sees anything in those comments that wasn't either painfully obvious or self-exculpatory. Any reasonably observant fan probably understands that we cratered in '21 due to a long-standing history of bad hires, subpar facilities, chronically slipshod recruiting and a HC who thought himself incapable of being wrong about much of anything. FTR, I do agree about the need for patience and order in the ranks. I've expressed my attitude toward the "I want it all and I want it now crowd' on numerous occasions. But IMO, anyone who honestly thought this reclamation project was going to be quick or easy, obviously needs to rethink some assumptions. I just prefer not to give myself over to self-serving commentary from one of the primary architects of our dilemma. UF got zero solutions for averting disaster from DM when his words and actions actually meant something. Why would I look to him now for input on the future? On a positive note, IMO, BN deserves a legitimate chance to get it done this year and in '25 - unless we continue to founder at the worst possible moment in '24. I'm somewhat optimistic about him getting it.

 

But to put us in the position of “all else equal”, not to mention the ability to have such a natural head start for long term relationships, absolutely helps.

 

Sounds like rationalizing, and accepting, mediocrity. That won’t do for Florida. We have the resources but we don’t have the management for those resources. That’s the problem.

 

Many schools have resources. If you want to say we haven’t had the management piece to win championships lately, I won’t disagree with you. But that’s not what you were saying in the post I replied to. I understood you to say that because Florida has size, tradition, and wealth that we should be successful. Billy has not performed to standard yet, but I am optimistic that by year 4 with Lagway starting we will see his vision come to life. I am willing to wait it out, but I’m not sure about the rest of the fanbase. Hopefully, he survives to year 4, because I think DJ was the plan from day 1. Mertz was a pleasant surprise last year. I hope the team can at least post a winning record in this gauntlet of a schedule.

 

Then I was inartful with my words. To be more clear, we have every resource and reason to be consistently great. Where we have failed is the collective management of our assets. Mismanagement is unacceptable, and it is now long-term mismanagement.

You brought up Napier, but he is just an entry of mismanagement. I have not seen from him any indication that the mismanagement is on the verge of correction. He really seems to be a likable, good human, and I will cheer and hope the team turns the corner this year, even though there is no internal optimism to meet my hope and cheer. And if the team does not turn the corner this year in terms of wins and losses, the team will be under new leadership, and perhaps the entire athletic program will be under new leadership.

 

Well… I agree Billy has underperformed. It’s pretty clear. I do think that sometimes it’s just a player or two that makes all the difference. We saw that with Kyle Trask. I don’t think Billy is a mess, but there was something missing the past three years going back to Mullen’s final season.

Our athletic program is outstanding, so I don’t get all the hate for our AD. Football has been down, but the other sports have been outstanding, and basketball is showing vast improvement under Golden. I understand the desire to win, but not at least seeing Billy with his hand picked QB as the starter is just short sighted folly. Program resets should be few and far between.

 

In my opinion, the football team has not just been a player or two short of greatness. Going on 4 years, we have had the worst defense that I have ever seen Florida put in the field, even in our down years, we always had a nasty, mean, hard-hitting vicious defense. These past 4 years our D has been like Bernie Sanders giving handouts. And particularly under Billy, special teams has been a red-hot disaster.

We generally have a good athletic program. I love our non-revenue sports. But what have we had in terms of success this past decade in football or basketball? I know you’re a big fan of Mike White, who also genuinely appears to be a really good human, but he just couldn’t win and we were stuck in no-man’s land for 7 years, all while hoping he broke through. My goodness, look at where we are now. We have a team that is unranked and headed for a middling seed in the tourney, and we are downright giddy!!! Ten years ago we’d have been ho-hum with a year like we had.

And our ADs have made very bad choices for the hires to lead our football program. Spurrier, and then Meyer, built the foundation for our team to be a Giant at the top of the mountain. We had a top 3 most attractive coaching job in America. And rather than hire a proven, established winner at a top program, our ADs stuck to this “up and coming” hope approach. There was no need for us to get an up and comer, we should’ve hired a coach with a proven track of winning at this level. SS did hire Mullen, a proven winner, but that was after he failed to get his top guy, and that was with full knowledge that Mullen had a terrible weakness in the will to recruit (and so he came with a “I hope he’ll change” caveat). The football hires have been so disappointing.

But the bigger problem with the AD is precisely what Mullen was talking about. Our athletic department has been well behind the curve for the past 15 years+. We were behind the curve in getting facility improvements — so much so that when we finally got to it, it became borderline irrelevant. And we are behind the curve in NIL, for reasons that I will not understand.

 

I am not a big fan of Mike White. I was a fan of his while he was our coach, and I generally dislike false narratives about him. Like him or not, we usually went to the NCAAT and won a game or two under his tenure. That is what elite programs do. Don't quibble with me, look it up. There is a misconception that the best basketball programs are in the Final Four every year. It's just not true. That may be true of one or two programs, but it doesn't last for more than a few years at time. We had our time like that and now people think it's the expectation.

As far as this year's bball team, yes we are excited about them. They are far better than their ranking suggests, and Golden has the fans charged up. I feel sorry that you can't enjoy what's going on there. I'm sure if they lose early, you'll be there to diss Coach Golden and the team.

I love watching the Gators, but some of you guys take sports too seriously. It's a distraction... a pastime. It's fun. We have people here who lament our University's rise in academic standing because they believe the emphasis should be on sports. I can't get jiggy wit it.

 

I think that ship has sailed, frankly. Look at the five stars coming out of the Sunshine State since 2010:

Alabama.................15
FSU.......................15
Georgia..................12
Clemson...................9
Florida......................9
Miami.......................9
Ohio State.................8
Oklahoma..................5
Colorado....................2
LSU...........................2
Notre Dame................2
Texas A&M..................2
USC...........................2
Auburn........................1
Maryland.....................1
Michigan......................1
Ole Miss......................1

The Big Three of Florida get 33 of 96 (34%), so 2/3 of the 5-stars go out of state.
Alabama, Georgia and Clemson get 36 of 96 (38%). Most of Alabama's and much of Georgia's come out of IMG.

By comparison, Florida got 11 out of Florida from 2002-2009: Zook had five and Meyer had six.

 

“Gator fans have no clue how far behind the program became.”

I’m sorry, whose fault is this? And the same man responsible is now saying we are clueless and have no patience?

So you know just how bad you screwed up but failed to fix it?

The coaching profession is beginning to sound like a racket.

 

I’m giddy over the bball team this year. We are almost relevant again. I don’t recall ever dissing Golden. And of course I take sports seriously— I pay to read insider info. Gator Country. But my life thankfully does not revolve around it. And as for people disheartened by our academic rise, that’s something I’ll never, ever understand.

 

I have spent time with DM and his wife. Our opinions are just that, and yours deserves as much respect as mine! Sorry if my response felt unjustified.

 

I think most people would agree that a person can fail at an endeavor and remain a "decent" human being. TBH, along with the undeniably lazy recruiting, my greatest complaint about DM lay in his refusal to address the Todd Grantham issue when there was ample evidence that the failure to do so could be catastrophic. Whether it was vanity, outsized ego, contempt for the opinions of others or just old-fashioned stubbornness, he made a series of mistakes that capsized the program and remains unapologetic to this day. Make of that what you will.