Steve Spurrier left Florida to coach Washington’s NFL club in January 2002. The Gators are on their sixth head coach since. That’s more than Vanderbilt over the same span. Heck, it’s more than Auburn.
Only Ron Zook, who succeeded Spurrier, and Will Muschamp, who followed Urban Meyer, could be labeled flops. (And Zook was 2-1 against Georgia, and Muschamp’s Gators went 11-2 in 2012.) Meyer won more national titles in Gainesville than Spurrier had. Jim McElwain won the SEC East in his first two seasons. Dan Mullen won the East in 2020.
As for Billy Napier, the latest Florida coach: He’d better hope somebody upstairs buys his we’re-a-work-in-progress line.
Only twice over the first 19 seasons after Spurrier did Florida have a losing record: It was 4-8 in Muschamp’s final year, the nadir coming in a home loss to Georgia Southern. It was 4-7 when the wheels fell off for McElwain. Only Meyer won enough to satisfy Florida standards, and he was gone after six years. Napier has had two losing seasons and could be bound for a third.
Many will argue that Meyer stayed too long, that his just-win approach left Florida in need of a clean-up. Meyer himself described the program he left as “broken.” Fourteen years later, it’s still in need of fixing.
The tenures of those who followed the Evil Genius: Zook, three seasons; Meyer, six; Muschamp, four; McElwain, three; Mullen, four. Napier is in his third season, and there’s no guarantee there will be a fourth.
When Florida sours on a coach, it really sours. Zook, Muschamp, McElwain and Mullen exited with games remaining in their final years. Zook and Muschamp were guilty of losing games the Gators shouldn’t lose. The exits of McElwain and Mullen were more complicated.
McElwain told the media he’d gotten death threats. School administration insisted he hadn’t reported them. “This was about more than wins and losses,” athletic director Scott Stricklin said, speaking after McElwain had been pushed out with a record of 22-12. It’s still unclear what those other things were.
Mullen was Meyer’s offensive coordinator in Gainesville and had started well as Mississippi State’s head coach, but he wasn’t seriously considered as Meyer’s successor. Jeremy Foley, then Florida’s AD, wasn’t a Mullen fan. Stricklin, Foley’s successor, came to Gainesville after being Mississippi State’s AD and working alongside Mullen. Only after Chip Kelly spurned the Gators did Stricklin offer Mullen the job.
Mullen went 10-3 and 11-2 in his first two Florida seasons. Both seasons were spoiled by losses to Georgia, which under Kirby Smart wasn’t losing often. In 2020, Florida beat Georgia 44-28. With one game left in the COVID-delayed regular season, the Gators were 8-1 with a date against No. 1 Alabama for the SEC title awaiting. But first they had to play LSU.
As we know, weird things happen in Florida. What happened in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Dec. 11, 2020, was beyond weird. The Gators lost a game because defender Marco Wilson was penalized for taking a shoe he’d pulled from the foot of LSU’s Kole Taylor and – in the immortal words of referee James Carter – “throwing the player’s shoe 20 yards down the field.”
The penalty allowed LSU’s drive to continue. That drive ended with a game-winning field goal. The Gators would lose to Alabama and, with many players opting to skip the Cotton Bowl, to Oklahoma by 35 points. What should have been Mullen’s best season ended 8-4.
Eleven months later, he was gone. With Kyle Pitts, Kyle Trask and Kadarius Toney – offensive stalwarts of the 2020 team – lost to the NFL and with the notorious Todd Grantham coaching the defense, Florida went 2-6 in SEC play. It didn’t help that Mullen seemed to downplay recruiting, which to SEC fans is the sin of all sins. He was fired the day after a one-point loss at Missouri.
Said Stricklin: “This is a place that you should be able to have a high level of sustained success over a consistent period of time.”
Next up: Napier, hired away from Louisiana-Lafayette. To date, he has presided over the worst Florida run since Spurrier was coaching Duke. His Gators are 15-17. After this season saw home losses to Miami – by 24 points – and Texas A&M, he seemed bound for the exit that has become a turnstile. But Florida has won three of four and is only a 14-point underdog against Georgia in Jacksonville. Progress!
On the one hand, Florida needs to stop firing coaches. On the other, its coaches need to win. There’s no excuse for a school with such assets – tradition, sunshine, institutional support, a vast recruiting base – not to play football at the highest level.
And yet: Florida is a fading giant. The Gators haven’t graced the College Football Playoff, now in its second decade, and the arrival of Texas and Oklahoma seems certain to push some former powers down the SEC ladder. Your likely candidates for demotion: Auburn and Florida.
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