Preach on Brother.... 1-16-2003
Since fireronzook.com has been taken down I thought it would be appropriate to post as much material from that site here as possible. The posts are dated by original publication date.
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I am not going into a recruiting sermon yet. There is still too much time left. I am ecstatic about Leak coming to UF. He made a great choice and is a huge talent. I have to go back and reflect (get pissed off beyond rational thought) on our friend Foley's search process for a coach.
Here is a thought about the worst hiring in college football history. Why did our new coach have to have Florida ties? We have had true success under one coach and some success in the 80's where I could see Shanahan being a candidate. Stoops is the best coach in college, but I think he called Spurrier or the other way around, they are close friends and heard that Spurrier didn't like that Foley left him out to dry on the Graham thing and demanded assistants be fired after the Tennessee loss. I don't blame Stoops for staying at OU. I still dream of Stoops being a coach here, him or his brother would be great.
Zook was a terrible defensive coordinator here, but had Florida ties so we had to have him! Why was it necessary to have Florida ties? I mean Ray Perkins had Alabama ties, Paul Hackett had USC ties, Gary Gibbs had Oklahoma ties, were those successful hires?
Why would you restrict your coaching search to someone with Florida ties? It almost makes sense at Alabama and Oklahoma. They had 12 national titles between them. But it didn't work out there until they got away from that practice. Sure Bama won with Stallings but everyone knew they cheated their ass off to get that team. Now these schools have good coaches and 7 national titles each. Alabama hired another good coach in Mike Price even though they have, what, 4 more years of probation left? UF would have been much more attractive to Price. Foley had to give his friend a chance and now it appears he wants to show everyone that it wasn't a rushed decision (which it was) and he's not going to rush him out the door (which he should) But Foley's blunder was amazingly stupid. Billy Donavan is one of the greatest hires in NCAA history, where is his Florida ties? Why didn't we replace Kruger with Vernon Maxwell? Maxwell had Florida ties, why wasn't he considered? Because that would have been the stupidest thing we could have possibly done! We went out and got a qualified coach who took a borderline successful hoops program and put it on the national map. Not some UF coaching flunky, like we did with Zook. If they promoted Jimmy Ray Stephens I could understand the logic, or Dixon. I would have wanted someone else but I wouldn't have dreamed up a website to get them fired. I would have given them time.
We ran Zook out of town, actually he wasted so much defensive talent and had the worst scheme in the universe that he ran himself out of town. I know Zook supporters would say that special teams/assistant head coach is a higher up than defensive coordinator, and they are way wrong. No one wants to get recruited by the special teams coach, hence they throw in the title assistant head coach. Name a special teams coach that has been hired to be a head coach anywhere?
But back to the point, if a guy were qualified to coach at another major college, why wouldn't we look at that guy as a potential head coach of our program? Especially if he was qualified? How does Florida ties become more important than being able to recruit in Oregon? Washington State? Or Louisville?
I just don't know how a major college program can just give away seasons�"wait until two years from now" should be the Gators new slogan! Now I have to hear how Mularkey is going to Jacksonville and I want to die! If you wanted a guy with Florida ties he was the right guy to pick. He should be our coach! The guy made Tommy Maddox good! For the love of god! He is fun to watch, with Ward and El throwing passes, did you see that two-point conversion against Tennessee? How hard is Foley's job when you think about it? You royally "F"ed up Foley, Now FIX It!
Foley, thanks for ruining another season!
Go Gators!
Mike NYC
