Scott Stricklin has been the Athletic Director at the University of Florida for a little under a year but will now face a decision that will begin to shape his legacy with the Florida Gators.
Stricklin made the decision Sunday morning to part ways with head football coach Jim McElwain following the Gators’ 42-7 loss to Georgia. The two parties reached an agreement on buyout terms late Sunday afternoon but had yet to sign the agreement.
The decision to part ways with McElwain is the biggest decision Stricklin has made to date. Stricklin said, while the final decision was Stricklin’s to make, he had advisors.
“This is more than just wins and losses, and I’ll just leave it at that,” he said.
From the biggest decision of his short time at Florida to the next. Jeremy Foley will tell you, and probably tell Stricklin as well, what hiring the wrong football coach will do to your legacy. Foley is credited with hiring Ron Zook, Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain. There is some debate as to who should get credit for hiring Urban Meyer, clear home run hire. Still, Foley’s record with football coaches will be seen, at best, as 1-4. He built a great all-around athletic program but football is king at Florida.
The Gator have fired two football coaches in the span of four years. That could be enough to potentially make a coach queasy when Florida approaches so Stricklin started selling his program Sunday night.
“If you want to work in the best athletic department in the country and have access to some of the best talent in the country and have some of the best support in the country and play and coach for the best fans in the country, you want to be at the University of Florida,” he said.
Stricklin was on staff at Mississippi State when Greg Byrne hired Dan Mullen. He’s been in the room for coaching searches and he’s hired basketball coaches and baseball coaches but this will be his first go at it solo.
“In this position, you get a lot of free advice,” he joked.
But Stricklin will need to count on close advisors, people he knows and trusts.
“At the end of the day, regardless of the sport, it’s about finding a leader for a group of young people who can represent your university the right way and has the ability to organize and develop and all the factors that are really important,” Stricklin said. “Regardless of the sport, the process is the same. You want to end up with the right person – someone who gets you excited to come in the door and work with them every day and support them, and I’m excited for that opportunity to go do that.”
Stricklin is downplaying the importance of this decision publically but he knows it will shape his career. He admitted to “knowing the marketplace” for coaches that could be available and says the search will begin on Monday morning. Showing the gall to fire a football coach in the middle of the year shows he isn’t afraid of the task.
“I wanna do a good job,” Stricklin said. “I want us to have a really good football program and I want to do everything I can to bring the right leader in here that Gator nation can get behind.”