Billy D: Muschamp ‘an incredible man’

Florida coach Billy Donovan said he reached out to recently-fired football coach Will Muschamp by text message.

“I basically said to him if you wanted to get together and ever talk, I’d love to do that,” Donovan said. “I think you guys know how I feel about him and the comments I’ve made publicly about him.”

Through the ups and downs that Muschamp endured in four years as UF’s football coach, Donovan was supportive. Muschamp will coach the Gators on Saturday against Eastern Kentucky and in UF’s season-finale at Florida State before stepping down.

“From a coaching standpoint, standing back and watching him handle what he’s handled with, I think he guy’s been an incredible man,” Donovan said. “He’s handled himself in an incredibly professionally in a very, very difficult circumstance. To me that was really, really, really impressive. I have a high level of respect for him.”

Donovan was most impressed with how Muschamp handled himself off the field and represented UF.

“People want to see more games won on every level,” Donovan said, “But what we do is not who we are and to me as a man Will has been able to separate that. And I think that’s really, really impressive. This is what he does, he’s a football coach. And as he said, maybe we didn’t win enough games, that’s fine. But he never let it affect who he was and what we stood for. And to me that was very inspiring.”

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