If you’ve been on Twitter lately and follow anyone even tangentially related to Florida football, you’ve by now probably seen at least one post from Tim Brewster. He posts something nearly every day, and often multiple times a day.
He is not short on enthusiasm. It’s difficult to find things he’s put up that don’t have the alligator emoji, exclamation points, or the double exclamation points emoji. Since the beginning of 2020 (I don’t care to go through his feed further), every tweet he’s sent has had either an emoji of some sort or exclamation points except for a couple that marked people who had passed away. He will also retweet recruits, other university-related accounts, and occasionally his son Eric, who appears to be some kind of pharmaceutical sales rep.
It’s early, but Brewster’s style might be the most distinctive any Florida coach has had on the platform since Joker Phillips and his posting of atrocious Photoshop jobs under the hashtag #ComePlayWRForTheJoker. This is not a bad thing, by the way. Dan Mullen doesn’t appear to use social media that much, and neither do many of the on-field staff. Like the platform or not, Twitter is a place where a lot of recruits are. Having someone with an outsized presence there is a positive for the program’s recruiting efforts.
That said, while the style may be new for Florida, it’s not new for Brewster. On February 1, he sent the following message while still a member of the UNC staff: “Pretty amazing what’s happening in Chapel Hill. Today another step in winning a Championship [double exclamation mark emoji] #YouNext?” Eleven days later on February 12, he sent out this message: “I loved every second of my time w @CoachMackBrown and the Tar Heels!! 14 years together, 10 at Carolina. Just so blessed. I am now [fire emoji] [fire emoji] up to be a Florida Gator [double exclamation mark emoji] [alligator emoji] [alligator emoji] #GoGators”
One one hand, it’s admirable that he gives off the impression of 100% energy and effort in one job right up until he has another one, at which point he gives off the impression of 100% energy and effort in the new one. That’s how it’s supposed to work. I try to make sure everything I write for Gator Country is of a quality level I can be proud of, and I did so with every other publication I worked with in the past.
On the other, the sales pitch for Tim Brewster is different than it is for Eric Brewster. When Eric tells you “Its (sic) LIT at PharPoint Research!”, well, that’s a bit over the top. But style aside, you understand that he’s promoting a company. He might sincerely believe in its mission, products, and staff, but it’s also known implicitly that it’s a business relationship he’s hawking.
Tim is selling something else entirely. If he’s hewing to the party line that comes from the top, he’s selling a new family to players about to leave their current ones. He’s selling an identity, that of the Florida Gator. He’s selling parents and grandparents on the idea that he and his colleagues will look after the players as though they were their own sons.
And as of less than a month ago, he sold the exact same things on behalf of the University of North Carolina.
Again, this is not a knock on Brewster. It’s the way things work in college sports. This is all in the job description.
Something about the way nothing changed but the emojis and hashtags really drove home again for me that coaching is a mercenary gig. It’s something deeper for a few people like Steve Spurrier, who was grateful to UF for giving him a chance as a player coming out of high school and then starred at the school, but those cases are rare. Frankly, schools firing coaches with such frequency is a main reason why few head or assistant coaches stay in jobs long enough to create genuine emotional attachment.
I suspect Brewster will be around a while, just so long as Mullen is too. They worked together at Mississippi State in 2012. That he’s coming back to work for Mullen a second time is a good sign. Unless some NFL team — a good one, not like the Chargers or Jags — throws a ton of money at Mullen, then the trajectory projects him being around a long while.
But don’t forget where Brewster went after that one year in Starkville. He then spent the next five years in Tallahassee. All his old pro-FSU postings are still up; he used a lot fewer emoji back then, but otherwise it feels the same. He’ll profess to be a Florida Gator now, but his allegiance always goes (as so many of ours do) to the signer of his paychecks.
Opposing fans have and will call him a used car salesman, but the fact is his approach works. He’s very good at connecting with recruits, and there’s nothing out there that suggests he slacks on the personal development part of his job. He actually will build bonds with the guys he pursues and lands for the program. It’s hard to ask for more than that.
But his consistent sales style across many jobs makes it harder to keep up the shared illusion we all create and maintain that a “once a Gator, always a Gator” mentality extends to the staff as well. It’s easy for that veil to fall now in a slow part of the offseason, but it’ll be back up by fall. It’s a necessary fiction we all agree to, and it makes the sport better. Here’s to pretending.