That's a rather dour bit of selective history. Who was Foley's first choice after SOS left? Shanahan, one of the brilliant offensive minds of our era and who Foley has seen held back by Pell. ((He went 5 wide, empty backfield in the early 80's.) Second was Stoops, a DC at heart but who fostered great offenses at OU. Zook was a desperate lunge after missing on those two.
Meyer was the hottest coach at the time and led UF to explosive offensive production and the Tebow era. "Forced to hire"? C'mon, man. That was a huge win and got us two NC's and the greatest player in UF and maybe NCAA history.
Foley thought Muschamp could be the next Stoops and only went that direction after Stoops wasn't willing to leave one of the most storied programs. Muschamp hired a 2-time Super Bowl champion OC. Yes, that all collapsed offensively and Mac wasn't the right person to fix it, but Charlie Cheeseburger was supposed to develop a great offense. That's failure but not lack of trying "at every opportunity."
I am not at all selective in my memory nor do I just take things on the word of participants:
1. Foley claimed he wanted Zook all along, but as I said above I do not just take what is publicly said. I will say Shanahan was a stretch the field horizontally type offensive guy so don't confuse him with SOS or coaches like him. So it is not like a single coach in the first search was anything like SOS. And the bottom line is UF's athletic administrators got the kind of coach they wanted in that search.
2. You can believe that UF was right to snub Spurrier and hire Meyer in December 2004 if you want. You can not force other people to believe it. You can also believe that Foley had the right to hire whomever he wanted and he only wanted to interview Spurrier and Meyer if you choose, but you can not forces others to believe that either. I certainly remember all of those 2004-05 etc arguments that Spurrier was too old and Meyer would be coaching at UF long after Spurrier was retired. Ha! What the evidence shows is that UF hired the president of Utah first and then shortly after hired the Utah football coach when Spurrier was available.
3. I don't really care what Foley thought Muschamp would be. I am the first to say that all coaching hires are crap shoots. There is no guarantee Spurrier at UF would have recaptured his magic whether he was hired in 2004, 2010 or 2014 or 2017. Similarly there is no telling for sure if Mullen will be great or a disaster or in between. Heck there is no way to know if Meyer could recapture his magic if he came back to UF. No matter what Foley thought Muschamp would be he was still yet another DC just as McElwain was an OC who came from a school of deferring to defense and special teams.
Still to me the bottom line is this sentence I wrote above, "There is no guarantee Spurrier at UF would have recaptured his magic whether he was hired in 2004, 2010 or 2014 or 2017." This athletic administration hired a football coach in 2004, 2010, 2014 and 2017. Each of those times there was out there a UF alum, who was a hall of fame coach, who had his greatest success at UF and they failed to hire him each time. That to me is an unforgivable sin on the part of the upper administrators in the UFUAA. Their heads should all role and UF should get a group of athletic administrators who recognize what their important contribution is and also recognize what the contribution of the coaches are.