PD’s Postulations: Thoughts on the UF-Georgia Catastrophe

If you haven’t seen the movie The Perfect Storm, I’ll give you a quick synopsis. George Clooney is the skipper of a commercial swordfishing boat, and he leads Mark Waulberg and a crew of hopeful salts on an ill-fated fishing trip. They head out to sea amidst what seems like everything falling apart in their world. They keep pressing further and further out to sea until they get to the Flemish Cap, where the fish are. They keep pressing eastward to where they could succeed, ignoring the fact that their ice machine that would preserve the fish on the return trip was a rattling piece of garbage that may never get their catch back to port, and ignoring that there was a huge convergence of storms in their path back home. At the point they fill the hull with fish that would set the market back home, they just kept trying to get out of the storm, but the storm wouldn’t let them. Right up until the final effort when they could see the sun and calm waters ahead but could not get over the last skyscraper-tall wave that threw them back into the storm, upside-down and doomed to sink.

Now, the film was entertaining and not terrible as these kinds of mass-marketed schmaltzy human interest dramas go. And it was based on a true story, so I had the comfort of knowing that at least the action of the movie was directionally true to life. And as a fisherman, I loved the backdrop of the story, so I was satisfied until the very end. That’s when the story reveals that everyone on the boat dies. Not a single survivor. And none of them sent out any diary pages on the wings of a carrier pigeon, so we the audience have it shoved in our faces that we just sat through 90 minutes of a supposedly true story and every single word of it was made up. I felt gyped.

But now I know that it WAS a true story. However, it was not a story of a boat called the Andrea Gail that happened in the past. It was a true story about a ship called the Florida Gators, and it would happen in the future.

That was not Mark Walburg and George Clooney standing shoulder-to-shoulder trying to drive and will the Andrea Gail to the calm waters, while the crew huddled below in fear and loathing, wondering if they were going to make it. It was Jim McElwain and the Florida football players standing shoulder-to-shoulder trying to get the Gator ship through the perfect storm of 2017 to the calm waters of 2018, while the Gator fans huddled below in fear and loathing (a LOT of loathing), wondering if they were going to make it. Because if they could get past that last deadly wave that was the final month of the 2017 season, 2018 would bring a loaded roster that would be healthy again, no more credit card suspensions hanging over the program, a new offensive coordinator who would make the Gator offense work again, one of the best signing classes in school history and the savior quarterback of the future leading the way.

The problem is that the rattling piece of garbage that propelled us this far only to leave all those wins and divisional championships worthless and spoiling in the hull was not the ice maker, but the Gator offense. And the final giant wave that prevented us from getting through the last month of 2017 was not created by mother nature or some Gator curse; it was created by Mac setting off some deep sea charges, right after he drilled holes in the bottom of the boat.

So…what does one do when he witnesses the worst defeat to the hated Georgia Bulldawgs since he has been following college football? Well I don’t know what you did, but I went out and saw the greatest Pink Floyd cover band on Earth. And once again it was clear that life had imitated art. Every song was another chapter in the Gator saga.

How Did We Get Here?

It’s mostly rhetorical. But it bears remembering the journey, because the ending is as incongruous with the beginning and with the journey as one could imagine.

Come in here, Mac boy, have a cigar,
You’re gonna go far, You’re gonna fly high,
You’re never gonna cry, You’re gonna make it to Atlanta if you try,
They’re gonna love you.
I’ve always had a deep respect and I mean that most sincere;
The team is just fantastic, that is really what I think,
Oh, by the way, which one’s Claribelle?

In retrospect, we should have seen the parallels between the Mac tenure and The Perfect Storm early on. Coming off a 5-year stint in Meyer-Muschamp purgatory, where Gator offense went to die, it all started coming together remarkably fast for the new head coach. In his first season, with the enigma of the past (Treon Harris) pushing the quarterback of the future (Will Grier) to shed his paternally-created shell of entitlement and laziness, one of the only offensive pieces sitting in the cupboard when Mac was hired showed all the promise of being the next great Gator quarterback, and with him, Mac had the look of the next great Gator coach. Absolutely hammering the #3 team in the nation in the Swamp, and rolling up Missouri for a 6-0 start, the Gator ship appeared to have split the tidal waves and was steaming toward calm seas.

Then the Red Box appeared. A failed drug test tossed the Gator ship back into offensive oblivion and perpetual uncertainty. Gator Nation was again thrown into a haze. But we’d been here so long…

There is no offense, you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Mac’s lips move but I can’t understand what he’s saying

I have become uncomfortably numb.

And yet…somehow Mac won the East. And in 2016, once again we had a quarterback who looked capable of lifting the offense out of lethargy, and with our championship defense, we could challenge Alabama if things fell right. Then things fell right on the new quarterback’s leg. And we were stuck in Groundhog’s Day.

When we clobbered Kentucky
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
We cannot put our finger on the end zone now
The QB is down
The offense is gone

I have become uncomfortably numb.

Again.

Then we saw a summer recruiting windfall the likes of which we haven’t seen in Gainesville in over a decade. We got a big name transfer quarterback for insurance, our heir apparent signal caller Feleipe Franks was starting to finally look the part, the capable Luke Del Rio was healthy again and even Kyle Trask was ready to run the offense if an avalanche of injuries and other crazy, unforeseen misfortune happened.

Then an avalanche of injuries and other crazy, unforeseen misfortune happened, Trask included.

But even after The Suspension of the Gainesville 9, even after losing Del Rio a third time, a miraculous Franks man-throw to beat Tennessee and the same uncanny ability to just keep winning games anyway, 2017 had the look of going to Atlanta once again and winning just enough to bridge the gap to the recruiting class of 2018 hitting campus and the injuries and suspensions healing or going away.

Then all hell broke loose. Again. But more on that later. Let’s consider just how badly so many assistant coaches failed this year. And overall.

The Final Cut

Ironically, and this is based on many truths and some assumptions on my part, the final cut in the chain connecting Mac with the future of Florida football was the fact that he was slow to and in cases unwilling to cut loose assistant coaches who are and have not been performing on a remotely acceptable level. The dead wood on the staff. The coaches who weren’t teaching their kids much, if anything at all.

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no self control
No accountability in the film room
Coaches leave them kids alone
Hey! Coaches! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you were just another brick in Mac’s fall

Just look at the areas being “coached” by the dead wood on this staff. Look at how their kids played on Saturday. Was there a single play involving a tight end where they didn’t fail to do their job? I know there was a team-wide lack of focus because of the off-week insanity, but how difficult is it to catch a ball? Was there ever a wide receiver open? Could our special teams be any worse as an overall unit, kicker and punter aside?

And this connects with the other big cut that severed his ties to the Gator program: a stubborn unwillingness to change. Anything.

Remember how Steve Spurrier would change his offenses throughout his Florida career to adapt to his personnel (or certain defensive schemes)? When he had a great pass-catching tight end, a lot of his offense ran through that position. When he couldn’t protect the quarterback under center against overload rushes, he installed the shotgun. When he faced the best defensive end combination in decades (Copeland-Curry in the 1992 SEC title game), his offense suddenly because the Fun & Gun & Shovel. When he had great backs, he’d run more; when he had the President of the “(bleep) It, I’m Going Deep Club”, he used the deep passing game a lot more; when he had the master of the fade pass, guess what we saw? Remember when Urban Meyer changed his entire offensive philosophy to build around Chris Leak for two years?

Then there is Jim McElwain. His offense was golden and ready to take over the world with Will Grier, but when he was lost forever, he and offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier did nothing to change the offense to fit Treon Harris’s skill set. Likewise, when it immediately became evident that Feleipe Franks does not have the skill set to run his offense, he and Nuss did nothing to fit the offense to his strengths. And all this time, he is slowly losing more and more support in the fan base as they grow wearier and wearier of watching the same thing again and again.

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way

And then one day you find 2.5 years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

Okay, Feleipe lets do this. Okay, you couldn’t do that, so let’s try the same thing again.
Okay, that really didn’t work. But let’s do it again this week.
Nothing is working, I know. Let’s do it again the same way.
Well that was terrible. Again. Ouch, that looked painful. Again.
We keep shoveling this horse manure long enough, we’re bound to find a pony eventually.
We’re going to beat this thing. Do it again. Same thing.

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The games are the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and your career is closer to death

I was pretty shocked, as most were, that after hearing about it for a long time, we finally saw a wildcat play this year. And it worked great. So it went away for a long time and rarely ever came out again. Likewise, jet sweeps and end around plays have been some of the rare effective and explosive plays for this offense. So why not run your offense off of those base plays, and as the defense adjusts to stop them, that opens up more of your traditional offense that maybe your young quarterback can execute better? Or at all.

But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t? He didn’t. He either refused to do it or refused to make Nussmeier do it. And it was the same stubbornness and unwillingness to make changes on the coaching staff that I think contributed greatly to his meltdown.

The Division Bell

The information came piecemeal through the week, leaving many confused and angry and at a loss for explanation (you can certainly count me in all three groups). But by the time the St John’s Massacre kickoff rolled around, the major pieces fit together pretty clearly, and it was a dreadful meal.

After a second-straight loss by less than a field goal (which Eddy Pineiro could have kicked from our side of the field multiple times in each game, had we ever bothered to give the most dangerous kicker in football the opportunity to do what he was signed to do!), GatorCountry got the great news from insiders that changes were coming to the coaching staff. Maybe as early as the off-week. The future seemed a lot brighter. Clooney was going to steer us out of the perfect storm.

But no changes happened in that first week. Then Monday came the unexpected belly-flop into the press conference rabbit hole. Then suddenly, Mac and Athletic Director Scott Stricklin suddenly went from a supportive relationship to game over. There is no way that happened by chance. There had been little bubbles of discord, from Mac telling the post-bowl media room that he was going to wait and see if UF keeps its promises on facilities upgrades, to even Shark-gate, but nothing more than bumps on the cucumber, when taken alone. Unless you’re a head coach who just got told by his boss to make staff changes and didn’t want to. Unless you are an extremely sensitive head coach who wants full support from all around him while offering little in return. Unless you’re a head coach who can only function when everything is going right, and when anything goes wrong, starts worrying more about social media fan approval ratings than winning football games.

The lunatic is on the grass
The lunatic is on the grass
Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs
Got to keep the loonies on the path

There was a very easy path out of this, a clear path after Mac made those vague death threat comments. That path could have been hammered out between him and Stricklin in about ten minutes when they met. But it would have required a major concession or two on Mac’s part, and above all, a humble admission of mea culpa and an assertion that he wants to keep doing his job. In other words, what any sane person who wants to keep their job would do. Without hesitation or reservation.

But instead, Mac dropped a handful of live grenades at Stricklin’s feet and stomped on a bouncing Betty that he had buried before his press conference. I was upset at Stricklin at the time of the UAA statement because it threw gasoline on the spark. What I didn’t know then was that it was in fact already over. The statement wasn’t gas on the fire. It was a signal that the building was already burned down. In that context, it was not only the right thing to do, it was the smart thing to do. Thinking back on Mac’s career at Florida, whenever anything controversial came up, whenever there was anything testing his mettle as a coach, was there ever any time where he seemed to be fighting for his job? He always appeared to be fighting for his personal respect, but not for his job. It was clear in the end that he simply didn’t want it anymore, and maybe never properly valued it.

And now Mac will undoubtedly head out west and take a job at a low-pressure, low-expectations depot, and probably find fair to middling success there. And he’ll be comfortable and his goofy, likeable neighbor persona will fit right in. And he can talk about how cool it is and how lucky they all are to be in a stadium that’s nearly half full every week.

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the football field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the fan base to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spell

We have now had two coaches – one head coach and one coordinator – who failed in their duties at Florida because they were more concerned with zenning out with New Age philosophy and getting in touch with their innermost feelings than doing their jobs. I won’t name the coordinator, but you may recognize him when I say that I don’t want Florida to hire any more hipster fly fishermen from the Midwest.

Gator Fans Take Comfort

Hello?…Hello?…Hello?…
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home?
Come on…now
I know you’re feeling down
Well I can ease your pain
Get you on your feet again

As distraught and lost as Gator Nation is right now, there’s gold in them thar transitions. If, I say boy, IF Stricklin can make the right hire. We’ve already heard a lot of encouraging words from the elite recruits in Florida’s committed signing class, and the feeling here is that the right hire, if it is done in the most timely manner possible, and the staff does Florida a solid and does not submarine the class, then we can come out of this with a big upside, and very importantly, with a great near-term outlook. And there are many reasons for the remaining coaches to toe the line for Florida. Foremost of which they are all auditioning for their next job, and for some of them, it might be on the next Florida staff.

Had Mac stayed, the 2018 season was going to be a good one. A potentially special one. We would finally have the talent pool to really push our opponents around. All of them (I’m looking at you, Georgia and LSU). That is, assuming he made at least 3 staff changes and we avoided another atomic bomb of suspensions or injuries or both.

So if we get an even better coach – one who would bring in a great offensive mind, rather than a terrible one – and he keeps the recruiting class intact, this could potentially be an upgrade for which we don’t have to wait to see the results. So hang on, Gators fans…

Hey you, out there in the Swamp
Getting lonely, getting romped
Can you feel me?
Hey you, standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles
Can you feel me?
Hey you, don’t help them to bury the liiiiiight
Don’t give in…without a fight

But, whether we have to wait or whether the new head coach doesn’t skip a beat, the process is going to take a toll on the mentality of Gator Nation. Coaching searches are never fun for the fans. Every hour there is a new squirt of rumors, information, misinformation and complete nonsense. Then we will have to wait for the recruiting period to end and see how many of our guys we keep, and how many great new ones we bring onboard (or, in bad situations, how many backup plans we go to). Then there is the wait through spring to see what the unfinished product looks like in the Orange & Blue Game. Then as always, the summer of our discontent, when we clench our teeth, clench our fists and clench some other unmentionable parts, and wait out the weeks of treacherous unsupervised time to see if we can get to the first game without a major scandal or crime spree. It will hurt, but it will be over sooner than you think.

Okay…okay…okay…
Just a little pinprick
There’ll be no more, “AAAARGG!!!”
But you may feel a little sick

Gator Fans Must Chill!

So…So you think you can tell
Galen from Pell
Blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a Madden game fail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot Spurs for dreams?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange
A walk on part as a fan
For a lead role in a cage?

When I reflect on all that makes me happy about Gator fans, and all that makes me unhappy, I am reminded of a Nick Nolte line from Teachers: “They’re not here for us…we’re here for THEM!” I started attending Gator games in the mid-80s (that’s 1980s, not 1880s…sometimes it feels the other way around). Back then there was no mistake, no confusion, no doubt: the fans were there for the team. We lent our voices in the stadium to every play. We gave our high-fives when they walked to the game. We gave them cheers on Homecoming, Senior Day, media day and any other day we had the chance.

Something has changed between then and now.

Today’s Gator fans in the Swamp certainly seem to have the same attitude we had in the MTV age. They represent and show up huge for the team every week. But stray onto social media or call-in shows or most water coolers around the south, and it seems that the attitude of a lot of Gator fans has shifted to the belief that they are here for us. And I have heard and understand the arguments for holding the coaching staffs accountable through negativity, and there is validity to some of it. Maybe a lot of it. And I certainly understand getting frustrated by certain players who are underachieving on the field or messing up off the field. But at the end of the day, why are we fans? Why are you a fan?

Is it because you want your Saturdays to be full of entertainment? Because you want to rub it in the faces of rival fans, and not the other way around? Because you base your happiness or mood on how a bunch of 18-to-21-year-old strangers play a game?

There are certainly aspects of all of those things that exist in everyone’s fanhood. Absolutely. And there’s nothing wrong with all of it in moderation. And in perspective. But I personally am a Gator fan because it is in my blood. It is part of me and I, part of it. It is every day I spent on campus, coming of age, drinking in the moments of joy; drinking in the moments of heartbreak; drinking in the experiences with everyone I met; drinking in a LOT of beer and wine coolers.

Yes, wine coolers. I said it was the 1980s. Respect yourself, Bruno.

And while it is certainly up to you, I’d ask that whatever introspection or personal choices everyone makes, that one of them be to have some patience with the next guy. The fan pressure directly contributed – a great deal, in fact – to Mac’s meltdown. However, it is very clear that this fan pressure didn’t create his mental or emotional break – it just revealed the weakness at fault and gave it a reason to explode. A weakness that would have reared its ugly head some time down the road, regardless.

I suspect that Stricklin will do his level best to vet the constitution of the next head coach for this sort of foible. But even if he comes in with a stomach of nails and skin that is 4-feet thick and made of steel, we owe it to him, to UF, to the players and everything else Gator, to give him a chance. A real chance. Just because a coach can take the abuse, doesn’t mean we have to give it to them. We’re better than that.

Most of all, remember that returning to elite status almost certainly won’t happen overnight. There will be growing pains, and we have to accept them and negotiate them before we can expect the big payoff.

If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding!
HOW can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?

The Coaching Search

If you’ve read any of my comments the last few weeks, I have not expressed much confidence in the availability of any home run hires, or in our ability to lure one if he existed, given the toxicity that has been created around the Florida head coaching job lo these many years. The prospects seem like a cacophonic black hole of hope.

And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes…

But unlike some guys I know, I am able to walk back my own comments when warranted. And the last few days have revealed that we have a couple things going for us that we didn’t have before or that I did not realize.

Firstly, Scott Stricklin has really opened my eyes to his abilities as an athletics director. As I told someone today, I might have figured out the method to his madness last week much earlier had I remembered that he is from the world of sports information. He wasn’t just assistant athletics director at Baylor and Kentucky; he was Assistant AD for Communications and Marketing, and Associate AD for Media Relations, respectively. This context makes the two UAA public statements very strategically clear. His press conference Sunday was the most calming and comforting presser I have seen in a long, long time. In addition to his media-savvy background, as the Senior Associate Athletics Director for External Affairs at Mississippi State, Stricklin was the fundraising lynchpin for the department. As he speaks about dedication to the facilities and the coaching search, I have profound confidence in his willingness not only to spend the money that is necessary, but to raise the funds to make it possible. About as much confidence as I used to have that Jeremy Foley would NOT spend money. In short, Stricklin’s management of things this past week has made me change my outlook on the difficulty of getting a difference-making hire to come to Gainesville.

He got this.

The other benefit that has turned our way – and it is 100% thanks to the way Stricklin has handled his business behind the scenes and with the two public statements – is that the national sports media has gone from a largely confused amalgam of blaming both Mac and Stricklin , to being pretty unified in putting the blame all on Mac. That’s what we needed right now. Badly. For the coaching search and for recruiting. The risk of looking like a school who always fires its coaches too soon was looming, but that has been washing away pretty cleanly since rumors and news started breaking all over the place this past weekend.

So now we look at who we have as possible new head coaches. Many say that Stricklin’s first move has to be to make Bob Stoops, Chip Kelly and Dan Mullen all say “No”. I don’t want any of them, but all of them could make it work quickly at Florida, so I see the angle. All have reasons to want the job and reasons not. As these were all thoroughly litigated when Mac was hired, and nothing substantially has changed for any of them except employment status, so I will just add this: for all their hype and histories of putting good products on the field, Kelly never won a national title, Mullen never won anything, and when high school recruits think of Bob Stoops these days, they think, “Now there’s a guy who won a national title. The year I was born.”

So I’ll move to the other candidates. Some of the best candidates just took jobs at mostly big time Power-5 programs the last two years and we can assume aren’t going to split with them so soon. Here are the other top candidates, and all the reasons NONE of them will come to Florida:

UCF’s Scott Frost is a flight risk (Nebraska, his alma mater), and might just hold out for that job like Kirby did for Georgia. Mike Norvell at Memphis is seriously inexperienced, with half the head coaching experience today than Mac had when hired. Toledo’s Jason Candle is a Midwest guy (don’t want any more Ohio guys anyway after Zook flopped, Meyer bolted and Stoops never pulled the trigger). Frank Wilson at UTSA only has a year under his belt and is probably waiting for the LSU job to open back up (he knows the wait will be short). Matt Campbell has put his name on the map this year at Iowa State, but the best he’s ever done in 6 previous years as a head coach is a trio of 9-win seasons at Toledo. He also fails the “no more Ohio guys” test, but that’s probably just me. The shine has really come off Phil Montgomery at Tulsa this year. I think Chad Morris wants to stay in Texas where his roots run deep. Willie Taggart has been a head coach for 8 years now and only has one great season to his credit, a 10-2 season last year at USF. Neal Brown at Troy has added a huge bullet point to his resume by beating LSU, but I don’t know if he’s really on the level of the other guys. Same for the coaches at Air Force and Navy. And Troy Calhoun is too old, too – in his 50s.

Of course, any of those guys could be a Hall of Famer in the making. Any one of them could have the Gators in Atlanta next year and in the college football playoffs in the next two years. But none of them are slam dunks. No sure things. None of them look like the sure things that Spurrier and Meyer looked like when we hired them. And that’s what we need

But Scott Stricklin, in his first hire for a men’s program as Florida’s athletic director, will first identify who the next Hall of Fame Gator football coach will be, and then do what it takes to secure his signature on a contract of employment.

And all that is now and all that is gone
And all that’s to come and everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon

Do you really think that’s going to happen?

Do you really think it’s not?

I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon

David Parker
One of the original columnists when Gator Country first premiered, David “PD” Parker has been following and writing about the Gators since the eighties. From his years of regular contributions as a member of Gator Country to his weekly columns as a partner of the popular defunct niche website Gator Gurus, PD has become known in Gator Nation for his analysis, insight and humor on all things Gator.