Only a basketball powerhouse and an academic giant kept the Florida Gators from being picked to finish last in the SEC East division at football media days last week.
Vanderbilt was voted last and Kentucky next-to-last, and while those teams always seem to play decent football when on Arkansas' schedule (same as Florida), the biggest question is how the once mighty Gators, winners of three national championships, not only have been dethroned but practically kicked to the curb.
Some of the responsibility has to fall on the shoulders of Athletic Director Jeremy Foley for hiring Ron Zook and Will Muschamp, but then he's also the guy who hired Urban Meyer and Billy Donovan, winners of two national championships each in football and basketball.
Foley, 62, is an interesting sidebar in the Florida history book. It's possible he had never been south of the Mason-Dixon Line until he took an internship in the Gators' ticket office in 1976.
He's never left, climbing the career ladder and becoming athletic director in 1992. If you cut him, little alligators might run out instead of blood.
Anyway, he inherited Steve Spurrier (and probably could have hired him back on more than one occasion but chose not to) and in the 25 years since the old ball coach was putting Florida football on the map, without NCAA problems, a trend has developed.
Spurrier was 122-27-1 at Florida before leaving for the Washington Redskins.
Foley tried to hire Oklahoma's Bob Stoops and the Denver Broncos' Mike Shanahan but settled for Zook, who had not been a head coach.
Zook was a relentless recruiter, but his teams earned the reputation of not being able to finish, building halftime leads and then losing in the second half. Zook was 23-14-1 in three seasons before being fired by Foley.
But Foley did his homework and ignored the groundswell to bring back Spurrier, who had sat out a year after being fired by the Redskins, and hired Urban Meyer.
Meyer has proven to be one of the nation's best coaches, like him or not.
He led Florida to a 65-15 record and two national championships before resigning to take a leave of absence, then coming back before the next season and eventually resigning again. A year on TV convinced him, and probably everyone who had to watch him, he belonged on the field and not in a booth. Now he's the defending champion coach of Ohio State.
He won on the field, but some of his players had off-field issues.
Foley had the "Eyes of Texas" already playing in his head when he hired Longhorns Head-Coach-In-Waiting Will Muschamp, one of the game's great defensive minds.
Muschamp went 29-21 in four seasons at Florida, was fired, with two regular-season games yet to be played, and received a guaranteed $6.3 million severance package. That is not considered a strategic move on the part of the Gators, because he now makes $1.6 million a year as Auburn's defensive coordinator, plus his total buyout.
Foley's every odd number hiring of a football coach has been good, and he went west again and this time came back with Jim McElwain, a former assistant to John L. Smith at Louisville and Michigan State.
McElwain helped Nick Saban and Alabama win a bunch of games, including a 12-0 season in 2009, before becoming the head coach at Colorado State, where he became the first head coach to win his debut (over arch-rival Colorado) since 1970 and last season led the Rams to a 10-2 record.
McElwain inherits a team with only 10 returning starters, but the trick might be to get to his fifth season in Gainesville, the past five coaches fired at Florida didn't make it beyond four seasons.
Sports on 07/21/2015