UF made national news earlier this month when, after the Board of Trustees gave a big thumbs-up in late May to University of Michigan president Santa Ono to be the school’s new president, the Board of Governors voted to reject him for the job. It’s a black eye for Dr. Ono, who resigned from Michigan to take the UF gig, and for the Board of Trustees, since they had declared Dr. Ono to be the sole finalist for the job. You don’t typically put someone up for this kind of vote unless you already know the answer is “yes”.
The rest about what happened with UF president job itself is deeply political — members of the Board of Governors have explicitly said as much publicly — so that’s where my comments end. This is not a political newsletter, and I am not a politics expert.
With that said, the office of the president is still important when it comes to sports. University presidents are the ones who hire and fire athletic directors. Then-UF president Bernie Machen was instrumental in bringing Urban Meyer to Gainesville. It matters.
There are enough teams in FBS football that presidential comings and goings happen every year, and they don’t often make sports news programs. Yet, I have seen UF’s presidential saga actually make it onto the docket for some sports analysis shows.
The reason is because of how close things got to completely falling apart in the UF athletics department a year ago. A leadership vacuum may be the only thing that stopped a full-on house cleaning from starting around the beginning of October.
If you don’t remember, here is the short version. Then-UF president Ben Sasse abruptly departed at the end of July. Rather than rush a hiring, Sasse’s successor was also his predecessor, Kent Fuchs. Dr. Fuchs was merely an interim appointment, however.
A month after Sasse’s last day, the 2024 Gators took to the football field for the first time. They got their rears handed to them by Miami 41-17 at home. After a tune up against Samford, they made Texas A&M backup QB Marcel Reed look like a Heisman finalist in a 33-20 loss.
A lot of folks, myself included, thought Billy Napier was toast following the A&M game. I at least gave myself a last-second reprieve by hedging in the final paragraph: “Barring some kind of miraculous turnaround and/or institutional paralysis due to UF having an interim president, Florida will be in the market for a new head coach yet again this November.” (emphasis added)
The post-off week turnaround did seem miraculous because Napier finally did something he had steadfastly refused to do up to that point: change. He followed the players’ requests to simplify the defense during the extra time following the Mississippi State game, and the unit got noticeably better afterwards. That, plus DJ Lagway’s increasingly stellar play through the fall, ultimately saved Napier’s job.
But also, the institutional paralysis angle was real. For as much as people were debating whether Napier should stay or go, there was nearly as much discussion about AD Scott Stricklin.
For all the athletic program’s success under his watch, a lot of it traced back to coaches who were Jeremy Foley hires. Napier would’ve been Stricklin’s second failed football hire, and ADs usually don’t get the chance to make a third. Stricklin also held onto men’s basketball coach Mike White longer than a lot of fans would’ve hoped, and not just one but two of his women’s sports hires were fired in the wake of allegations of mistreatment of players.
There was no quick hook for Stricklin. There were no easy answers to be had last fall, because as I said above, university presidents hire and fire ADs. Though Dr. Fuchs had been the full-time president in the recent past, he committed to his interim role being a true interim gig. In athletics as elsewhere, he wasn’t trying to make big and consequential decisions. Therefore, Napier got a real chance to save his job, and perhaps by extension save Stricklin’s job too.
Napier didn’t save his job forever, though. There is no forever in college football, but especially not for a man who is exactly .500 after three years at a program that is capable of winning national titles. If things go poorly this fall, we could actually be in for a coaching search.
I don’t think there is any situation where we’re in for an AD search however. The main reason is that Todd Golden just won a national title in a revenue sport, and he’s unambiguously a Stricklin hire. Plus, Napier turned down multiple SEC jobs before taking Florida’s — Auburn and South Carolina have been reported on pretty strongly — so it’s not like he was a pick out of left field. It’s still on Stricklin if Napier flames out this fall, but it was a defensible pick at the time.
But in addition to Golden lending Stricklin some credibility in a marquee sport, UF appears to be headed for a second straight fall semester with an interim president. Given that supposedly Dr. Ono was the sole finalist after many months of searching, it stands to reason it’ll take many more months of searching to find another suitable option.
In the end, I think the Golden factor weighs much more heavily than the Ono factor does. UF is not a basketball school like a UNC or Kentucky, but men’s hoops is a solid No. 2 in the pecking order. The 2024-25 Gator Boys bringing home a trophy probably clinched it for Stricklin even if Dr. Ono had gotten the gig.
So if you’re wondering how the issues with the UF president’s office will affect sports this fall, the likely answer is that it won’t. I think Stricklin’s job is safe for some time, and Napier is still skating on thin ice. A 2-4 start is on the table with Games 3 through 6 being at LSU, at Miami, home versus Texas, and at Texas A&M with an open date following UM.
Dropping all four of those in a row might cost Napier his job. I don’t think it’d cost Stricklin his in the process, however. There really isn’t anyone around to fire Stricklin, and I don’t think he’s going to get fired without cause anyway.