- Nov 22, 2015
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Over the last 13 years, Gator football has had 5 losing seasons. This recruiting/development of talent/poor coaching is now systemic. IF administration gives a ****, the only way to turn this decade plus of garbage around is firing Foley and Strickland first. Remove any human who had any input into football staff/personnel decisions over the past decade and go find an aggressive, football first AD and give them their marching orders to make Florida football ELITE again. UF has plenty of resources to get back where winning 10 games a year is the expectation but the administration has to want this as an expectation. Truthfully, there is no incentive other than pride and dignity to have an outstanding football program. Media revenues are not performance based, their is no downside to losing records other fans/alumni complaints. It is my opinion that current administration doesn’t care about football/winning and doesn’t give a **** about the fans or alumni and how we feel about football. Mississippi State fired their coach in 8 games and hired one of the best offensive assistants in America to lead their program. He has made some impressive hires and it looks on the surface like Cowbell will be winning 8 games a year again very soon, which is their program expectation. At least their leadership acts like they care. My hope is that this post doesn’t age well and in 12-14 months changes will have been made to bring back winning football to G-ville and the Gator nation can be excited about making their first CFP and playing a home game in December at the Swamp In the next two to three years.If you can recruit at a high level, players will make you successful, or appear to be a great coach. If you cannot recruit, does not matter how well you coach if your roster is projects. It doesn't appear our OL coaches can recruit at that level and aren't doing well with the projects they took. We were painfully slow against fsu and they lived in our backfield. A great staff could have schemed around that, but... you know.
Apparently since they will have no team in the CF playoff. Who woulda thunk it?You guys are so right. SEC, worst conference in the nation. Can't state it enough.
1a, 1b, and 2 “things to watch” still holds, tenuously, and not off to a good start on any of the three.Watching UGA / Bama, I think it if it hasn’t already it should have dawned on everyone that Billy’s plan is for us to look like those two teams: effectively run-heavy with the goals of pounding their opponent into submission AND either maintaining a lead or staying within a winnable margin against equal / slightly better teams, throw game being more complimentary to an extent; defensively being superior on the DL and in coverages. Great template, not always exciting, but with superior personnel, disciplined but calculated coaching strategies, and solid special teams play throughout the seasons, high expectations are achievable.
Unfortunately, it is crystal clear that Billy overestimated both the depth and skill of the roster overall to include remaining talent and that which was brought in through recruiting and the portal vs that which was lost, but equally and maybe more importantly the serious lack of development at the hands of him and staff. The apologists, and I think you have to view Stricklin as a primary here, are basically telling us that we have to have a long-game approach, a degree of patience and at the end of the rainbow will be our pot of Bama / UGA gold. Big picture, unfortunately, is that immediately on the heels of Mullen’s final disaster and Billy’s inaugural 6-7 followed by 5-7 and no bowl and only a signature SEC win over UT, the long-game is out of the question. The future is now immediate or should be.
We’re seeing signs of decay with the upcoming recruiting class already. Lord only knows what Billy’s plan for the portal is going to produce (and take away), and questions about staff effectiveness linger amid two immediate defensive firings. All this swirling while we stare down the barrel of the toughest schedule in the conference if not nationally. I think at this point reality has set in for most and replaced any optimism that Billy and his attention to detail with all things programmatic engendered when he was hired. The outlook is at the moment quite bleak and it is hard for most, I believe, to see a great improvement on the horizon. The pisser is that once more it appears that we will be ushering in another reset, for what will be the fifth time since Urban Meyer. It’s hard to believe the high water mark in that span was two SEC Championship Game appearances (and losses) by McElwain. Certainly, there’s got to be better days ahead, but as previously stated, it’s going to take dynamic changes at player, coaching, and administrative levels for it to happen. I just hope I’m alive to see it! God speed, Gators!
Technically, Sunday is still in play and after this weekend, especially if F$U eclipses Bama for a playoff spot, there’ll be ZERO judgement if you were to fall back off the wagon, “potato vodka” notwithstanding. But I’m all for what’s best for you and your liver…and your longevity As Bill Murray used to say in his SNL Lounge Singer schtick…”Don’t you ever die!”1a, 1b, and 2 “things to watch” still holds, tenuously, and not off to a good start on any of the three.
PS Can’t believe I didn’t consume a drop of alcohol this weekend
Technically, Sunday is still in play and after this weekend, especially if F$U eclipses Bama for a playoff spot, there’ll be ZERO judgement if you were to fall back off the wagon, “potato vodka” notwithstanding. But I’m all for what’s best for you and your liver…and your longevity As Bill Murray used to say in his SNL Lounge Singer schtick…”Don’t you ever die!”
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Now we all be like...Just for the record, there were some very cool people that were excited about Napier and tried to see the best.
Talking about our "norm" being before the 80s when Florida had less population than Mississippi is geezer loser talk.This talk of average SEC teams got me to thinking. Florida is historically not a perennial winner in the SEC. Our great years and winning stretches are the aberration not the norm. We lived through those, they are what we've experienced, so yeah, we are "spoiled fans". Or maybe we're just back to our norm.List of Florida Gators football seasons - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
That may be true for basketball, but given our location, resources etc. we should regularly contend for football championships.This talk of average SEC teams got me to thinking. Florida is historically not a perennial winner in the SEC. Our great years and winning stretches are the aberration not the norm. We lived through those, they are what we've experienced, so yeah, we are "spoiled fans". Or maybe we're just back to our norm.List of Florida Gators football seasons - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Talking about our "norm" being before the 80s when Florida had less population than Mississippi is geezer loser talk.
Unfortunately there is some truth to this. Most of us remember the days of hoping to win, wait til next year and generally was used to being average at best. The championship years are the deviation from the norm. Hell, we’ve never even had ONE undefeated season. Not one.This talk of average SEC teams got me to thinking. Florida is historically not a perennial winner in the SEC. Our great years and winning stretches are the aberration not the norm. We lived through those, they are what we've experienced, so yeah, we are "spoiled fans". Or maybe we're just back to our norm.List of Florida Gators football seasons - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
What frustrates people with Napier is, much of the negative we see is from decisions he made. So, there's that. He's not a victim.
I know my opinion doesn't mean much, but totally disagree with everyone saying Napier doesn't care about the outcome and is just counting the days to get fired so he can get paid the buyout.
I believe Napier wants to win here and he believes that what worked at ULL will work here, given enough time. I think that is where his thinking fails him, but he is not pulling a Mullen IMO.
In 100 years, from 1910 - 2010, we had 80% non-losing seasons...This talk of average SEC teams got me to thinking. Florida is historically not a perennial winner in the SEC. Our great years and winning stretches are the aberration not the norm. We lived through those, they are what we've experienced, so yeah, we are "spoiled fans". Or maybe we're just back to our norm.List of Florida Gators football seasons - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
In 100 years, from 1910 - 2010, we had 80% non-losing seasons...
In 50 years, from 1960-2010, (an epoch which covers the majority of present day fans) we had 92(!)% non-losing seasons...
Now, from 2011 - Present, we've had nearly 40% LOSING seasons.
It's easy to see something has majorly changed in the past decade or so, vs the previous 100 years. Imho, fans expecting to see a productive, competent, entertaining, football product that they can be proud of is not what's changed...
Edit: That's overall record W/L (not SEC W/L) - point being made about overall football product still stands
Having a non losing season and a good season are 2 different things.