Stricklin gets more mediocre every day - taking seats away in Swamp

[GatorInGeorgia]

UF students are currently 90% Asian (and will be 99% in 10 years), so removing that entire section for people that are actually going to show up is a good move. Asians think football is the dumbest thing they've ever seen.

If we revamped our concession stand and offered sushi, would that help?

 

[oxrageous]

If we revamped our concession stand and offered sushi, would that help?

Only if we fooled them into thinking that they were there to watch Sumo wrestling.

 

[GatorInGeorgia]

Only if we fooled them into thinking that they were there to watch Sumo wrestling.

We should add that to the halftime show…maybe scrap the marching band.

 

[MidwestChomp]

Isn't linking to a Pat Dooley article a bannable offense?

Depends on the article. Does he still publish his Ipod playlist?

 

[URGatorBait]

Probably smart. Aside from the product being ass on the field, lot of people are more content staying home and watching 5+ games with cheap beer and food.

You just gonna stroll in here after cheating on us with that other site like nothing happened?

 

[78]

You're right. I'll also add that much of that success (especially under Spurrier) was at a time when elite Florida high school talent wanted to stay in Florida (either UF, FSU, or Miami) so their family and friends could see them play (in person and on TV).

Miami and FSU had crappy facilities too (except for the luxury Burt Reynolds "dorms" for football players), Miami didn't have a stadium, FSU had an erector set. Lack of premier facilities didn't hurt us back then. Location was more important.

That changed over time. It became easier to see more games on TV. The facilities arms race became much more important.

I still remember being shocked to lose elite Florida talent to out-of-state teams. It was one thing to lose a player to FSU or Miami...but losing really elite Florida kids to Alabama or Clemson??? That was unheard of. These really stuck out to me:

--2005, CJ Spiller to Clemson despite playing just up the road in Union County. We dismissed it as half his family were FSU and the other half were UF and he didn't want to piss off half his family. An aberration, right? No, it was a harbinger of the coming disaster.

--2008, Trent Richardson to Alabama despite playing at Emmitt Smith's alma mater and wearing his number, and at a time when we were a dominant team under Meyer.

Losing Trent Richardson was shocking. This was when the alarm bells really went off for me and everybody else paying attention. Tragically, Jeremy Foley didn't hear the alarm bells. He was smug, arrogant, and complacent. It was in late 2014 (after 5 full seasons of mediocrity and losing recruiting wars) that he made this now infamous comment: “As you look around our facilities, we’re not into bells and whistles, we’re always looking to upgrade our facilities, but we’re not getting into an arms race.”

And now that we're FINALLY getting our facilities in order (not Bama, aTm, Klimpson, or UGA elite level, just competitive with the middle of the pack level), now it's all about NIL and transfer portal.


Alex.

Bear Bryant was frightened of what could be. He referred to Florida as a "sleeping giant" in reference to the vast recruiting potential that lay at its feet. It felt powerful and reassuring to know fuel was cheap and plentiful. And then the most amazingly thing happened. Other programs began poaching talent from beneath our nose, to the point where the Florida Advantage was exposed for what it really was. A mirage.

 

[Thick&ThinG8r]

The couple of times I was on them I liked it... as for seating, personally, unless I was in the first row (which I would only want to do exactly ONE time for the experience), I'd never want to be below about row 25... I prefer to be higher as you can actually see everything on the field unfold in real time during a play. It's much more a 3D viewing effect... you really can't see schit lower down.

The best game day experience I ever had was on the first row with my older brother. Emmit ran wild that day, of course the sidelines weren't nearly as crowded back then.
Staff are limited to sec. 59, 4, and 6. We looked into moving up this year, but would have to move to 4 to do it and would probably never get back to 6.
It is tough seeing the other end but you also get to experience things like the heeve to Cleve and Grier to Calloway right in front of you.

 

[GatorInGeorgia]

Bear Bryant was frightened of what could be. He referred to Florida as a "sleeping giant" in reference to the vast recruiting potential that lay at its feet. It felt powerful and reassuring to know fuel was cheap and plentiful. And then the most amazingly thing happened. Other programs began poaching talent from beneath our nose, to the point where the Florida Advantage was exposed for what it really was. A mirage.

I wouldn’t say it was a mirage because the talent pool is huge. We just happened to not continue to do some things necessary to minimize the poaching, which has always been an issue to some degree (at least since I was a kid). First, we didn’t continue to invest in top flight coaching. Florida always had tremendous talent on the roster going back to the early 80s (probably prior to that truth be told) but never had sustained success because we didn’t have great coaches. It took Spurrier’s skills to deliver consistent results. Coaching matters, regardless of those that believe recruiting is the dominant driver. Zook is Exhibit A proving this.

Fast forward to the recent past and we see that our failure to invest in great coaching/support staffs AND our failure to invest in facilities has opened the door to other programs coming in and poaching the tremendous talent in our back yard.

Fix those 2 issues and we can win big again. Keep hiring from the bargain bin and buying used carpet squares from Big Al’s House of Seafood & Pre-Owned Building Materials, while having a front office full of dipshytts, then nothing will change.

 

[B52G8rAC]

Just pass a law that prohibits Florida High School graduates from accepting scholarships or NIL money from any school not funded by state appropriated funds. No longer a problem. And Miami is out too. With respect to Daytona.

 

[78]

I wouldn’t say it was a mirage because the talent pool is huge. We just happened to not continue to do some things necessary to minimize the poaching, which has always been an issue to some degree (at least since I was a kid). First, we didn’t continue to invest in top flight coaching. Florida always had tremendous talent on the roster going back to the early 80s (probably prior to that truth be told) but never had sustained success because we didn’t have great coaches. It took Spurrier’s skills to deliver consistent results. Coaching matters, regardless of those that believe recruiting is the dominant driver. Zook is Exhibit A proving this.

Fast forward to the recent past and we see that our failure to invest in great coaching/support staffs AND our failure to invest in facilities has opened the door to other programs coming in and poaching the tremendous talent in our back yard.

Fix those 2 issues and we can win big again. Keep hiring from the bargain bin and buying used carpet squares from Big Al’s House of Seafood & Pre-Owned Building Materials, while having a front office full of dipshytts, then nothing will change.

The mirage was assuming we would maintain our recruiting dominance in Florida. We continue to have the edge, but it's certainly not what it once was.

 

[GatorInGeorgia]

The mirage was assuming we would maintain our recruiting dominance in Florida. We continue to have the edge, but it's certainly not what it once was.

Gotcha.