In Meyer, Foley hired one of the two best football coaches in college football over the last 10 years. In Donovan, I would argue that may have been the best college basketball coach hire ANYWHERE since possibly Coach K at Duke, given the context of FL was not a big time basketball program and Donovan turned out to be one of the best 2 or 3 coaches during his tenure, especially if you consider coaches that have kept relatively clean background.
He hired the coaches that lead to 4 national championships in football and basketball in a 2-3 year span.
For those that think the Meyer hire was a slam dunk, why didn't Notre Dame get him? He open spoke of wanting to end up at Ohio St, Michigan or Notre Dame. Yet UF got him. And there was a fair amount of hand wringing whether Meyer's approach would work at an SEC level.
UF continually ranks among the highest in the nation in terms of all sports rankings.
Now it appears he has landed one of the hottest prospects in college football as a coach.
From all appearances, Foley handles himself professionally. He treats the hires fairly. He gives them a reasonable chance to succeed, but he won't cling to losers for too long. No coaching prospect wants to come to a place where if they get some bad breaks they are kicked out on their ass in 2 years.
Zook was not a great hire, but Spurrier quit in January. Nobody of any notoriety is going to jump ship in January. He was forced to make a roll the dice hire. And in spite of being a terrible coach from a consistency perspective, he certainly left the program in good shape in terms of personel and recruiting.
Muschamp was a reasonable hire, on paper. It was a perfectly logical hire. It just didn't work out.
I'm not sure how you can look at how long Alabama floundered before Saban, how Auburn bounced around until recently, how TN has struggled for 15 years, how Michigan was absolutely awful for a while, until now (with the good fortune of having a NFL successful coach alumni coming back - which almost never happens). Or you could have GA, which has been consistently pretty good, but seemingly never going to take it to the next level.
What fans still don't get is successful coaches at big time programs don't leave to go to other big time programs that are in turmoil. It just doesn't happen. So you are forced to find an "up and comer", either an assistant or a Head Coach at a lesser school. There is obviously risk in that. It appears coach Mc is the real deal, but he could have turned out to be a flop (or still may, hopefully not) Being a HC at CSU vs the pressure at UF are completely different deals.
I just don't get it. It is pure idiocy.