Has administration learned its lesson?

correct. Accurate depiction of me. I’m being a little b&;ch but still…. It’s a lot all at once

 

Mac was not a “good” or even “sneaky good” recruiter… BUT, he was a better talent evaluator than Mullen, and a better roster manager/builder than Muschamp. His biggest success was filling holes and correcting Muschamp’s sorry recruiting mistakes with less decorated talent. But he was NEVER going to be a competitive recruiter with the top 4 in the conference.

And neither Mac nor Muschamp in the same universe with Mullen with play calling and game design.

 

I can. October 24th, 1984

 

I remember all the trash thrown at Jeremy Foley and his hires. Let's see, who hired Donovan and Meyer, I forget.

 

Wow!

 

All accurate except we beat Beamer woodshedded them actually.

 

Yeah ….why did I put them on there ? Lol. I think maybe my brain did some thing because of the serious turns both teams took after that game

 

I seriously believe that the “Trask” offense was the design and execution of Brian Johnson. Mullen had NEVER run an offense like that before (they had the talent in 05 and 06) and as soon as Johnson left he immediately went back to his earlier offensive design.

 

Although JF had to be "convinced" to hire Meyer by the president. Don't think he would have done it on his own accord.

 

It's almost like if we could Frankenstein a lot of our past coaches together we would be unstoppable. Get some Zook, Mullen, Muschamp and a lot of Meyer and Spurrier.
Zooker and Musclecramp for the defense and recruiting. Meyer for recruiting offense and motivation/culture and Spurrier for offense design and play calling.

 

That was bad, but IMO the stretch from May 89-March 90 was worse.
We were under investigation from the NCAA AGAIN, for both football and this time for basketball.
The football program was facing the very real possibility of the death penalty.
Hall was staggering, couldn't recruit and was stuck in the 6-5 range.
And our offense was so bad that without Emmitt we were beaten by Vandy and shutout by Auburn.
Miami and FSU were on the rise- and their 87 game was a classic for the ages. It seemed like both schools were CFB's future. (And they were.)

We had just dropped Miami from the schedule, and the media had a field day with that.
The media landscape was far different then, but rest assured we were embarrassed nationally.

Basketball fired Stormin Normin for NCAA violations and his successor (interim) took that 89 NCAA tourney team to a 7 win season in 90.

I wasn't in Gainesville but I heard all of our programs were under investigation.
A track friend told me they even looked at our 86-87 team that won the SEC triple crown.

This nightmare got far worse with the unspeakable tragedy of the student murders.
I think all Gator alums were affected by that, because we had lived or known someone in those apartment complexes.
Those murdered students could have been us, or our family members/ friends.
But weirdly, that seemed to be the end of the downturn.

Because out of that pit came the Oklahoma state game Labor day weekend of 1990.
And our slow rise, like a phoenix, to some good days in the 90s.

So yeah- it's been far far worse than now.

 

Need to clarify something here. Galen lost 30 scholarships. Once that was over he recruited extremely well. He left Spurrier with team full of players who had played as freshmen and sophs that became the 90 and 91 teams. Galen did go 6-5 for a few years. But go compare that to the other teams from those days that went on probation( Clemson, Oklahoma, Auburn, Miami) and you will see that 6-5 was a much better low spot record then those.

I also compliment you for not naming the coach who took over for Norm as interim for that season.

 

The NIL thing with Rashada is a PR nightmare regardless of what the actual facts are.

 

In all fairness to Tebow he didn’t have the arm that Trask did so while some skill players may have been equals the QB position wasn’t equal.

 

You don't have to go far to find someone who lived at one of them.

I was in 1205 Gatorwood from 1985-Aug 1988.

I walked out the back door past that apartment on the ground floor just about every
day when I took the trash to the dumpster.

 

Yeah, I delivered pizzas to Gatorwood.
I had been gone about 3 years, but like all UF alums, Gainesville remains a part of me.

 

I remember the name so yes, that was intentional...

You are right that Hall lost scholarships, but I was talking about our 89 recruiting class.
I got Gator bait magazine and, at least according to that, our recruiting was not very good that year.
I believe Hall's best class was 87- the Emmitt class. Most of that class was redshirted and they made up the crux of SOS's team in 90 and 91.

By 89 recruiting had fallen off. Our offense sucked, and we were a perennial 6-5 team.
The big-time recruits were going to Miami or FSU, not us.

It was a tough time to be a Gator...

 

89 recruiting did fall off but part of that was because of all the great players that we signed in 87-88 and their was a big question about playing time for the 89 recruits. There was no portal then so it wasn’t that uncommon in those days to fall off a little for a year after strong recruiting classes. Look at our 2001 class after our 2000 class which, on paper, was one of the greatest in college football history. (Think about the NIL deal that Brock Berlin would get today and not be worth 10% of it).

That being said, our 89 offense was working very well until Kyle Morris and Shane were suspended for gambling. I was at the LSU game that year which was Kyle and Galen’s last game and we all walked out of Tiger Stadium thinking that the Gators were back! With a defense like Darnell had put together 21 points/game would have gotten us 10 win seasons. (Gary was a great recruiter and DC). I loved Donald Douglas’ heart and effort but he was not anywhere near ready as a freshmen for the situation he was thrown into.
Now I’m not saying that the move to get Spurrier wasn’t what we needed, but I’m not going to disparage an excellent coach like Galen Hall to justify it. We never lost a winning culture under Galen even when we weren’t winning. I believe he is still to this day the only D1 coach to lose that many scholarships and not have a losing record 2-3 years out. It was just a matter of having an excellent coach but letting him go to get a GOAT. Believe me, if Arnsparger had his way and we had gotten Archer we would have rued the day we let Galen go.