Not going to debate your entire post as there are some valid points. But to your statement and question, I'll take a slightly different angle. I think the answer is simply that neither of those ADs(yes, including Stricklin) have proven to be very good at their jobs yet. In the case of UF, we publicly went after the big, obvious name, then according to most reports made a move on a less experienced version of him that again was totally contrived and likely headed home all along. All of this on the back of two disastrous hires, when we absolutely could not afford to get it wrong again. Every time I watch any of last year's games, I immediately think to myself, Mullen needed to be the choice with where we were as a program to close 2017, and I can't envision either of the other two candidates(who combined for 7 wins) coming even close to grind-it-out SEC victories like Msu, Lsu, etc.
So again, there can be some debate as to whether or not DM is an elite coach at a place like UF. But the fact that a guy who gave Jim Elwain an extension going into 2017 was sold on a few others before possibly even getting lucky that Mullen still available doesn't tell me a whole lot.
