Gator Nation: General ruminations / Love it or leave it?

I have one foot in the apathetic club and the other is moving closer. I think UF should be better than it has been but I don't see the stars really aligning for UF to have the success it saw under HBC and Urban. We all know the potential for a great dish is there but some ingredients are missing.

 

I'm still a fan but no doubt after all these years since '08 my enthusiasm has waned. However, how much of that is just maturing as God fearing man should and how much is apathy because I've been disappointed so many times? When I was in my late teens to early 20's I hardly missed a home town ball game on the radio (Expos) and watched more hockey games than not (Canadiens). Today whole seasons go by without me seeing a single game live. You get older, you get busier, priorities change.

 

We have the best recruiting grounds, top level facilities, legendary stadium, great school, good tradition, 3 fairly recent national championships and a wealthy program. There is no real reason we are not an elite program except for past incompetent hires.

 

I have said in the current college football win at all costs landscape, UF is an 8-4 or 9-3 school, with an occasional better run. If we get to that I will be ok, problem is we don’t feel close.
JMO.

 

This

 

If Billy gets to 7-8 wins and a bowl game, then with that momentum we will be well on our way back to the top.

 

Yes, 7 plus a bowl win would be a real improvement and likely mean a lot to fans and recruits. Less than that and as Lizard suggests, the active fan base will find something other to care about.

 

Yep, we are right on the edge. 4-5 wins and we are most likely looking for a new coach. 6 wins apathy will set in and it will be a long offseason. 7-8 wins and we are on our way. Crazy.

 

Napier's missteps (if they were instead of bigger picture program building) pale to what major college football has become with the NIL and instant transfer abilities. Napier is likely to be removed with more building and less urgency (and the same results) but that is what the job entails. But the Wild, Wild West is not what I am enthused. Give me upper echelon status (in playing skills) without demand for NCs and I won't complain. I just don't know how far it will remain before it goes into full apathy.

 

My apologies for the small image, but this is the largest I could upload. This is my analysis of Gator football recruiting, blue chip talent, and transfers since 2002.

Some takeaways:

• Between 2002 and 2010 the Gators recruited the best players in the nation. The Blue Chip Ratio (BCR) recruiting classes varied between 52% (2006) and 81% (2010), and the total number of BCs varied between 39 and 56 out of ~85 scholarship players.
• The Gators lost the edge on recruiting in 2011, with the exception of Muschamp's highly touted classes loaded with all defense and not much defense in terms of BCs.
  
• From Muschamp's last year through McElwain's entire stint, the Gators seemingly lost the ability to grab BCs or keep them on the team (cough, cough...Will Grier).
  
• Mullen made some progress improving the BCR, and he brought in highly rated transfers...until his last year. Maybe Brian Johnson was the key to his recruiting success.
• Napier has the BCR back up to its highest levels since Urban Meyer. The problem is that even with that high BCR, it is still outside the top 3-5 in the SEC. On the bright side, he is improving Florida's ability to attract portal talent that is not normally accounted for in the BCR. For the sake of discussion I do include those transfers in the overall Blue Chip on Total Roster (BCTR) metric.

TLDR: Napier is fixing restoring Florida's ability to attract top talent and the talent level is approaching the levels it was under Meyer. Unfortunately, those levels of talent are no longer top-3, so there is more work to do. (Presumably, that will be a chicken-and-egg discussion between winning games and winning recruits...which is still an area of improvement.)

 

Just so everyone knows, if folks click on the image you posted it gets a little bigger.

 

Dominating the landscape is a heady feeling. One you want to keep feeling. And Feel again now.

I like the journey we're on. Good players and coaches representing well. Wins are coming but realistically not near elite for another couple of years and that will require a good showing between now and then.

 

The game UF is playing at the admin level is a dangerous one of misrepresentation of goals. The STATED goal is to be a championship program but to DO that in today’s climate you have to play the game, cut corners, provide incentives, lower academic qualifiers etc etc. UF has all the resources of Ohio state but has the standards of Duke. So maybe they need to publicly change the narrative and clarify expectations. “UF - championship academics, pretty good football”

 

Just enjoying the game and rooting for your team is not toxic. Demanding excellence from your team is also not toxic. It's just 2 different viewpoints to consuming what at the end of the day is an entertainment product.

I know I shouldn't let it, but a Gator loss like that of UK last year ruins my weekend. I don't want it to, I've tried to move away from it, but here we are. So yeah, I want them to win, win now, and win often because the solution of just not caring is, IMHO, worse.

 

I love the Gators and will till I close my eyes for good. I can do that and still have issues with the football program and the way it is run. I will say it again. Year two should be a big improvement. It happened under SOS, Urban, Saban, Smart and Stoops to name a few. There are others. I hope I am wrong but with this schedule I can't see 7-9 wins.

 

You're right, we will never be shady as some programs, but some need to be to be competitive. If you simply look at our recruiting grounds as compared to others and our program overall it does not make sense. We are a top 10 revenue producing program on top of that. Also, Noter Dame has higher standards than we do and they have been playing much better football over the last 10 years than we have.

We spend millions on coaches and the program so there is a big commitment to winning. Don't forget SOS was the highest paid coach in the country when he was here and so was Urban. We are not afraid to spend the money.

If you look at the hires, there is not a single proven P5 coach since Urban. This is complete incompetence of the ADs and Presidents. The one guy who was not proven, but half way decent, was Mullins and he totally tanked the program and it seemed intentional. I think he couldn't handle it and was done coaching and wanted to get fired and receive the buy out. Evidenced by the fact, he has never tried to get another job, which would lessen the buy out.

Just to prove the value of a proven coach, if Urban, Saban, Day, Smart, Harbaugh, etc.... were to take over the program we would be at an instant high roar and we would be pulling the top talent in the country and winning.

I hope Billy is that guy, but because he is not a proven P5 coach it is going to be a longer rougher road than it needed to be. He finally has all the pieces in place, if he just starts winning it is going to snowball because we are FLORIDA.