Culture Shock, Part I: inside the Florida Gators’ implosion under Dan Mullen

Insightful article. Interesting that the major issues that we all saw were confirmed internally at the player level in this article. Grantham was a jerk of a person and a bad coach. Same to a degree with Hevesy. Mullen's loyalty-to-a-fault regarding these two ultimately did him in. The impact of the Jones/Richardson and Trask/Franks decisions were confirmed here, too. The pain of the last two-thirds of that last season resurfaced when I read this article. The recruiting topic stung. Wilson's asinine shoe throw and Mullen's sitting of Pitts during the LSU game, the embarrassing loss to a third-string QB at the SC game, the whole team quitting at the OU bowl game, and the worst defense I've ever seen all ring true again. Glad to have Napier.

 

Meyer turned around 4 programs immediately. That was coaching. His recruiting edge was later but he rarely stayed long enough to enjoy that.

 

From your response, I believe that you did not fully think things out. I get the feeling that you do not want the UAA to have controls in place to make sure that the UAA money is properly spent, the players get a fair shake/chance to participate, and the reputation of UF to be protected.

1. Today many top rank companies and organizations are using such polling. When used properly, top management (like the UAA) can get an idea on what to assets to leverage and what corrections to be made.
2. In these polls, the UAA can see if the coaches are on the same page and exercising teamwork and leadership. This is important because there is a lot of money in the hiring of these coaches.
3. These polls can also get a feel on how the scholarship athletes and the walk-ons are feeling about the coaching and why they left or stayed with the program.
4. The third item is very important because a lot of money went into the recruitment and the scholarships for those players. A lot of that money vaporized via the portal.
5. Your statement, "(which is all that article accomplished)" is faulty. Prior to the hiring of Napier, UF hired Muschamp, McElwain, and Mullen. In a time span of 12 years, all three hires basically crashed and burned.

Had the UAA kept their ear to the ground (conducted polls and interviews), we very well could of had better ride in those 12 years, and not doing another rehash of the Dan Mullen saga.

 

I think his change of mind came earlier. Looking at it from inside the program the writing was already on the wall and the NFL was an exit plan in order to save face. When that fell through he was left with a collapsing situation requiring actions he knew he had been avoiding and didn't want to take. That is when he mentally checked out.

 

Very interesting articles. I was NEVER a fan of Grantham. I didn't like him when he was at UGA (the choke) and I didn't like him at any point when he was coaching the Gators and I had no idea he was acting like this to his players.

 

From your response I get the feeling you've never played or coached football at any level...you sound like HR. In addition, your PC kumbaya "solution" is great for companies/programs that are more concerned about hurting feelings than the bottom line. It looks great on paper but never produces the desired results.

Great thing about message boards is you are free to share and defend your thoughts. Perhaps you have specific examples of the survey method working. Please share. I fixed broken businesses for about 15 years but we never tried the survey-the-staff method. Perhaps I'll get back into the game after your reply.

 

A lot of people stopped caring about their jobs and working hard in 2020. It seems to me like Mullen was one of those people. He was probably a perfectly fine CEO of the program before that and at MSU and that’s why Strickland felt ok bringing him over.

 

Part 2 of this is even better.

 

Kelly, yes at first. But SS cooled on him later. Frost was a consideration, from what I understand, but never more than that.

 

Since this is a message board, I guess you are entitled to issue you incorrect assessment on my background and for the surveys.

For your information I did play high school football and I participated in other sports. As for fixing broken companies, I was in that position once. Me and bunch of other talented people helped take a bankrupt company and put back into the Fortune 100. Also, the four companies that worked for in thirty years all used surveys.

As for the value of the surveys, I suggest that you do a google search on "do big corporations send surveys to their employees". You will find a lot of items that list the pros, cons, and ways to conduct these surveys. The short answer for you statement on doubt of this process is, yes there is documentation that when done correctly they do work.

Questions to you:

1. Do you want the AAU to continue to stay out of touch with the football team like they did with Muschamp, McElwain, and Mullen?
2. Do you want to see a repeat of running program into the ground?
3. Or do you want to wait for another Mullen screwed up article to be posted on this board?

The opening article we saw on this thread shows that the UAA went deaf and blind on what Mullen (and the two coaches before him) and his coaching staff was doing. Do you have any ideas how much money was wasted: on the coaching salaries under Mullen, the recruiting of scholarship players, and on those scholarships that vaporize into the portal? By the way the total of that money goes way beyond tens of millions of dollars.

 

Tragic. I feel horrible for the players that were treated so badly during some of the prime years in life. The article was also validating in many ways for all the fans on this site and other sites that questioned the playing of Franks, Emory and not playing Pierce enough. Many of us took a lot heat from several people on here (“trust the coaches!” crap when it was so obvious the wrong player was on the field) and the press (“Gator fans are the worst” crap). So glad to have a staff that cares about these kids, let’s hope they can win some big games.

 

No shit

 

It was all so depressing to read. You have the keys to the kingdom running one of the best brands in America, and you piss it away. What a waste.

“Wes Chandler was Percy Harvin before Percy Harvin was born.”

 

Guilty as charged. I could not imagine our coaching staff was that bad. And I was wrong. Not just bad coaches but bad people. Truly a shocker for me

 

Tell me who is?

And who was the coach YOU would have hired instead of Mullen at the time? Eliminate Kelly because he wasn't coming.

Go on; I need some laughs.

 

What evidence do you have to show that he checked out before then? He’s always been a lazy manager and a lazy recruiter who thought that his offensive scheming would overcome his shortcomings.

 

Kelly wasn't coming, period. West Coast guy. Didn't we beat this to absolute death five years or so ago? Damn.

Such revisionist history to even think he was coming to UF.

 

I didn’t bring it up. Was responding to someone else.

And there was some negotiating between UF & Kelly. That isn’t “revisionist” anything. It happened.

 

You nailed it. I've posted it million times here, but Stricklin was never chummy with Mullen at MSU. I know people who interacted with both of them while they were at MSU, and they had a pretty cold relationship. Mullen made MSU at the very least a consideration on the schedule, a rarity for them, so they made it work despite not particularly getting along. There's a circular firing squad effect where this board made and assumption and then became their own source for it with perhaps the exception of one puff piece written before the 2021 Alabama game.

And for the record, the State alumni weren't all that sad to see him go. Symbolically, they hated that a team like UF could scoop up an MSU coach so easily because it was a reminder they are still a second tier program, and they are smart enough to know that the consistency Mullen gave them might be a long time coming again. But they were also tired of Mullen's odd calls on who played, losing games he should have won, and some games just seeming to be checked out altogether. They also hated the way he just seemed to kind of lose his edge once they were out of the hunt for anything relevant each season. A colleague who covered MSU during the Mullen era told me to be ready for the above before UF ever played their first game under him.

Sound familiar?

It also seems lost in the mists of time that Chip Kelly stiffed us and Scott Frost went to Nebraska, whether he was ever seriously considered or not. Maybe some of that is informed on one being pretty lackluster and the other being a complete bust now that it has played out and ignoring that no one knew any of that then. That wiped the two hot names off the board, plus it was known Mullen was going to leave MSU for somewhere. So do you let the best of what's left end up at a major divisional rival or just go ahead and hire him.

Seriously, does anyone really believe we go through that whole dog and pony show with Kelly, including flying the Fuchs up to New Hampshire, if the Stricklin's burning desire was to bring his good ole pal from Mississippi State in?

I'm not saying Stricklin is a genius, and I also think Napier was his stab at a signature hire. It will be interested to see how his fortunes either rise of fall with this staff. To be honest, I'm pretty agnostic on him, but I don't think he was under any illusions about 2021 being make or break for Mullen.