The last two before him were stellar, particularly Mike Slive. Kramer was a visionary, but allowed himself to get a little too "close" to certain programs/coaches.
When UF started making overtures To Doug Dickey, I said Nooooooooo. We beat Tennessee in his last game at Tennessee in the Gator Bowl. Tom Shannon our QB led us to victory over Tennessee led team of all American Chip Kell og and Johnny Majors at safety. Big upset as Tennessee was 9-2 and we were 7-3. Doug Dickey always did less with more! Never won the SEC in the nine years he stayed at Florida.
I was never talented enough to consider playing any sport for money, but I can understand what goes through the mind of a 17/18 year old who needs a career/money. I'm not saying these guys look at the question of where to go this way, but here goes: A Power 5 football player has about a 1.6% chance of making an NFL roster. Average NFL career is a little over 3 years and the average NFL salary is $2.8M (but some QBs make $30M+/year). The average RB makes less than $1.8M/year. Seemingly two paths. First, maximize your educational opportunity to develop a non athletic career. Very difficult w/ their schedules (UF football players simply cannot take the classes/labs for most engineering majors b/c of schedule conflicts/limitations - I was told directly). Second, focus on your athletic career recognizing you have a less than 2% chance of hitting the NFL lottery. Obviously these paths are not entirely exclusive but if you want to be a great player, you gotta go all out. With NIL there is a third path where a college player from a poor background will make good, perhaps life changing, money. This is clearly not amateur athletics, but I'm not sure college for any of us wasn't about setting people up to support our families? I considered schools that were excellent in my chosen path and was lucky to end up at UF. If I could have afforded and gotten into stanford/MIT, I probably would have gone. Don't think that would make me a mercenary. When I was choosing my college and first job, I was very aware of cost and economic gain. Hard to argue with players with similar considerations. Like you, I want the supposed adults in the room to create/negotiate a system that permits teams to be built and player transfers to be controlled so that the current yearly mercenary auctions are less grotesque. The current system is a shambles and hard to enjoy, but I can't blame folks for maximizing their salaries, especially when their odds of a professional (NFL) payoff are exceedingly low. Crappy situation for fans of Universities and what used to be an amateur sports (admittedly, a long time ago).
In 69 Gator Bowl, John Reaves was QB. I think we finished 9-1-1 with loss to Auburn and tie against the mutts.
lmaoooooooo all jokes aside, I do expect them to “rebound” this upcoming season being that the ACC is still average. Should max out around 6ish wins.
