tcward
Senior Member
Isn’t there an OPT OUT Bowl? Lol
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Florida /UCF
- Thread starter huntersluck
- Start date
Big7
The Oracle
UCF is a tiny screwel.
Concrete Pete
Senior Member
I think they’re looking at a Tennessee style ‘lost decade’ situation. I could be wrong though.
FL produces top recruits and UF is in the strongest position to pull them out of all the FL schools.
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formula1
Daily Bible Verse Organizer
UF football remains a dumpster fire! I hope the new coach can revive them but I have my doubts.
bullgator
Senior Member
That was sarcasm, right?
across the river
Senior Member
Tennessee and Florida are two completely different situations. When Fulmer was there and had Rodney Gardener, they basically got who they wanted from Georgia in terms of recruiting, and that was a large part of their success. Mark Richt stopped a lot of that and it is even tougher now with Kirby, Saban, and Dabo pulling the truly elite talent in GA. They don't grow a ton of 4 and 5 stars in Tennessee, so you have to get them from somewhere else, and that used to be in large part GA. When that didn't happen they struggled.
Florida has talent around every corner, but most all of that talent is leaving the state. Texas A&M, Georgia, Bama, and Ohio State all signed Florida kids this year, and you could have a had a highly ranked class with just the Florida kids those teams got. They hired him to recruit. If he can do it, he should turn them around quickly. If he can't, then he won't be there very long. Norvell is doing better at FSU and Cristobal will recruit well at Miami, but he still has a bunch of kids to recruit from, he just has to keep them home.
So will the rest of college football which is why this is probably the last season I will pay any attention to it at all. "Opting out" is a quitter mentality. I got no use for it.
SpotandStalk
Senior Member
Yep. Welcome to semi pro football boys where only fans care about rivalry games and “amateur” players care only about NIL packages.
Big7
The Oracle
Yes.
huntersluck
Senior Member
I don’t think it would have mattered. Don’t get me wrong I would like to see Florida competitive again but they gotta get some players that are elite and not just mediocre
Doboy Dawg
Senior Member
Riverside Elementary has a bye week in their October 22 schedule if the Gators would be interested in gate money and a scrimmage game to prepare for next years SEC schedule.
bullgator
Senior Member
Yes.
A sizeable portion of Tennessee is to sparsely populated to produce tons of Power 5 football talent. Its always been so but UT was able to get just enough talent from Georgia, the Carolinas and Alabama to be very good. That changed when Mark Richt was hired at UGA and they have struggled to recruit ever since...and haven't helped themselves by making hiring mistakes like Kiffen and Pruitt. Their AD has also had money issues for years. They hover around 15 or so on the fund raising list which puts them at about 7th in the SEC.
Outside of the Spurrier years UF was, and is again, a middle of the pack SEC team. They have never, again, outside of Spurrier, recruited exceptionally well. They didn't win the conference for the first time until 1991...58 years after the formation of the conference but they also did not win a conference title in either of the SEC predecessors that the rest of the teams who have won a SEC title managed to win a title in also...in reality it took UF 72 years to win a conference title of any type. UF suffers from a lot of the same ills that UGA suffers from in that they are indeed the flagship university in a talent rich state but both Georgia and Florida have HUGE transplant populations with no ties to UGA or UF. Many of those transplants do have ties to other schools in the SEC, and in Florida's case they also have a huge population of folks with ties to the Big 10, the Big 12 and also have to contend with Miami and FSU in state. Outside of the Spurrier years UF football just wasn't all that popular in Florida and the results for 72 years bare that out.....
across the river
Senior Member
Wasn’t there a coach after Spurrier that won more titles than he did in less time? You seem to have forgotten about him.
That's just wrong..... ??Riverside Elementary has a bye week in their October 22 schedule if the Gators would be interested in gate money and a scrimmage game to prepare for next years SEC schedule.
He did indeed...the key phrase being "after Spurrier" not "before Spurrier". Meyer capitalized on what Spurrier built at UF and did indeed win and win big...but that does not change the fact that for 58 years UF couldn't manage to win the SEC and was, at best, a middle of the pack SEC school as they are again. Over a span of 15 years UF won 8 SEC titles, 6 with Spurrier and 2 with Meyer. In the last 15 years they haven't won a conference title. They have been in the conference for 88 years, and for 73 of those they have not been able to win the conference...and prior to Spurrier they were, again, at best, a middle of the pack SEC team.
Most of those years the SEC had 2 or more champions. Florida never even managed to get in on one of those.....
across the river
Senior Member
I don’t think anything prior to Spurrier really matters as the population of Florida has nearly doubled and the number of players there has grown dramatically as well. USC (Cali not Columbia) is similar in that their issues is they aren’t getting the kids they once did. Doesn’t mean the players aren’t there. Lincoln Riley hasn’t coached a game, and now a bunch of five stars that were leaving the state are now committed for 2023. Players and recruiting are what matters. If Napier can recruit his fair share of elite kids from Florida they will win, like Spurrier and Meyer did. If he can’t, then he will go the way of Zook, Muschamp, and Mullen. At schools with expectations like that, you have to do it year in and year out, and hit great classes every year. If not, people want you gone. Heck, Clemson looses three games this year and the sky is falling. Napiers success, or failure, will depend on his recruiting prowess more than his coaching ability. I won’t write him off though because the guy before Spurrier 30 years ago didn’t win. There is plenty of talent in FLA. whether or not he can he keep them from going North to play at other schools remain to be seen. If he can, he should turn it around pretty quickly. Way easier to do that in Gainsvile than in Knoxville.
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All this is true. Stated it before in other posts. Florida is now just being Florida. I can remember when a Natty wasn't even a consideration. Just wanted to beat our two big rivals UGA and FSU. That was the whole season. Now, darn near every SEC team is a rival and they better win. Spoiled students, boosters and the younger fan base expects Bama type years and it just isn't happening. Why ? Because it's Florida. The numbers and history doesn't lie. The fun (for me at least) is that maybe this new season is where it all comes together again. It's happened before, more than once !!!
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that UF rights the ship before UT. UT is a dumpster fire that UF ain’t close to being. It’s absolutely possible that UT never gets right again…. It’d be prett shocking if UF ain’t competing for the east for real in 2 years. I’m not sure UT ain’t at best several years away.
