Preach on Brother.... 9-20-2004
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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Well as all the voice mails said last night "Same shit different year". When you play not to lose, it really means your playing not to win. Its 3rd and 4 and you need 4 F'ing yards to finish Tennessee. Leak is looking great so what do you do? You run a dive right up the middle like it is 3rd and inches. That was a joke. That was a quitter's call. How do you explain that? I mean fine if your going to run fine but you know they are looking for it and you know they are going to rush blitz the middle. Actually I doubt Zook knew that. I am sure everyone watching the game knew it except for Zook because I am not sure he knows what a run blitz is. Actually I doubt he knows what the term "blitz" means.
How do you let these two freshmen quarterbacks have so much time? Florida gave them time so they could learn how to be quarterbacks on the college level. Wouldn't it be logical to pressure freshman quarterbacks into mistakes? We knew we had a young secondary so I would assume you could use some zone blitzes and rattle the freshmen. Instead we sat back, like we always do. What about a run blitz is that possible?
These games are now going to be more and more common. Because our coach's philosophy is to sit back and let a game happen and wait to make a play to win the game. The downside of this philosophy is what do you do if the other team makes the play?
You lose. That's what you do.
We are a passive team and it's painful to watch. So many people knew we were going to blow it. I had a Nebraska fan and a Notre Dame fan with me who bet on the Gators straight up (which I advised them not to) tell me with 5 minute left the Gators would blow it. I had a friend tell me this morning that we were up by 7 and there was five minutes left and he was wondering how we would blow it. I told him it is simple, Zook will have a choice to go for the win or just try not to lose and he will cost us the game with the latter.
I hate the bullshit football we play.
The good parts to this game is Leak, Fason, Wynn and Crowder are all great players. Federo, this year's offensive coordinator, is 50 times better than Zaunbrecher. We didn't throw 100 bubble screens. He still is not good. Tennessee's secondary is very young like ours and we could have done some more damage against them. We still only throw deep balls with sideline fly patterns. No corners No flags. No posts. Same old shit, new year.
Our special teams still are horribly coached. See Caldwell's catch at the 5 yard line and falling out of bounds. I was furious. We still have sideline huddles with 24 players in them. Why? Because it is the same old shit, new F'ing year!!!
Zook had his chance and he blew it.
17-11 is his record, someone try to defend him. Just try!
He has all his guys now, he has players for his system, the players are good but the system sucks. In the second quarter, the Tennessee line just dominated us. Tennessee's young lineman and the veteran Munoz had their way with Zook's SUPER RECRUITS. Recruiting doesn't mean shit if you can't call a play!!!! It's proven! Simply look at Mack Brown at North Carolina and Texas, Ray Goff at Georgia. Gary Dinardo at LSU. Any Southern Cal coach before Pete Carroll.
Do you need recruits? Yes of course. But look around at college football. Gary Pinkell and Missouri lost to Troy State because the game plan was chicken shit. I know this because I bet on Missouri. Lee Corso said "the guys in the white shirts are just better then the guys in the dark shirts" and Herbstreit agreed. Guess what? Troy State whooped them, made adjustments and out-coached a more talented team. So I don't want to hear this "well he's a good recruiter crap". Who isn't a good recruiter? I mean I could recruit at Florida. I recruited all my drinking buddies to come down and visit all the time. How hard is it?
I just want this three-year nightmare to be over. Let me pick the next coach. I guarantee the coach I pick will have a better record then Zook. I would bet my salary for a year on it. There are plenty of very good coaches out there. Watch a Purdue game. It will remind you of the glory days with Spurrier. They are so fun to watch that I am jealous of Purdue fans. READ THAT SENTENCE AGAIN!!! Now go back in time 10 years ago and ask yourself if you could ever fathom that last statement?
How many more games do we have to lose? I am so sick of this crap. I am sorry it took so long to post this but I was depressed as hell and I went and got blasted at a bachelor party last night. I can�t talk about the game. I just played Gator club football and people would bring it up and I just said "I CAN'T TALK ABOUT IT, IT NEVER HAPPENED"
I pray that this nightmare is just that, something that never happened. That I will wakeup and just laugh and say "the weirdest thing just happened to me. I dreamed that somehow Ron Zook became the coach at Florida and he destroyed the program as Jeremy Foley just watched and made excuses for him". And my old roommate Ron would say "are you insane? Who in the hell would hire a bad defensive coordinator to be in charge of a top 5 program in the country� and I would reply "I know, I know its insane but that was my dream". Then he would counter with "that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of, you're a moron for just dreaming that could happen. You better write Jeremy Foley a letter and apologize for even dreaming that" and I would say "Okay, where is my Gator pen?" and that would be that. Imagine three years ago if I told you that.
When will the same old shit stop?
Please God tell me it will be this year, I can't take much more of this.
It Hurts. It hurts real bad.
Mike NYC
