Since I am apparently condemned to stating the obvious this weekend, here I go again:
This Gator roster is as talented as just about ANY team's in the current Top 25.
The difference is coaching.
Most of their Coaches, and a few others, could have had us "in the mix" too, I think. For eg., that guy over at Ohio State is pretty good, judging by results: Head on straight and motivated (as he is again now), think he might have been able to do a little more with what we've got now? Not that I'd WANT him, wish HE were here, but maybe we have to at least be honest with ourselves about what our priorities are looking forward to who and/or what we should be considering after this season. Even a "hired gun" that can put it together on the field for a few seasons, damn the surrounding details, is preferable to the "good guy" who everyone is willing to follow right off the cliff he is heading for, head held high.
We've seen both extremes now--and who'd rather be "right" than WINNIN'???
Sure, we'd like to at least TELL ourselves we'd rather "do it right", have 'em both, see it through from start-to-finish. I mean, the best-case scenario in my book would be another "visionary coming into his own", a team of young devotees coming in with him to cut their teeth putting together a winner from a mess that just HAPPENS to have most of the necessary parts already there, amongst the apparent ruins. Fill a few key gaps, change the philosophy and vibe, and VOILA! We're back. But at this point, even a known a-hole who gets results looks better than what we've got: a frustrating embarrassment of good intentions/bad performances and inconsistent, "fits and starts" on the way to general mediocrity.
Even Muschamp's "best" (that second year, 11-and-2 season) was hard to watch (what was it, the 112th-ranked offense in the nation?), a team that faded and lost when it really counted--and he was OK with that, overall: They were doing things his way, in every way. And we've been watching "Muschamp's Way" ever since--no-fun wins among a parade of embarrassing moments, UNwatchable games becoming strings of losses...The wins still uneven, sometimes gut-wrenching everywhere but on the scoreboard--and what by now has to be seen as more than a trend: A pattern of tightness, blown opportunity and dismal prospects. OK, OK, I know: (best Ronald Reagan voice) "There you go again, DRU..."
It's all been said. But we're about to start hearing more and more "instant-revisionism" re Muschamp, that somehow he's been "judged too soon, too harshly", "unfairly maligned", "prematurely pigeon-holed by those ungrateful, unreasonable, EXTREME FRINGE Gator fans".
Won't matter that this is COMING from the same folks who couldn't wait to marginalize us in the first place, who hated it when we hit our stride a few years back--who couldn't wait to see us back in a box on the shelf. At this point they'd have everyone believe it was only that "genius", Urban Meyer, who made US, not a confluence of special players and a "Sleeping Giant" finally coming into its own that, with the help of Meyer AND HIS STAFF of (then young and hungry) talented potential Head Coaches-to-be, TOGETHER caught lightening in a bottle.
I don't know if now is the time we can begin anything like that, so many factors coming together so well it creates something that dazzles EVERYONE, but I do know that "WE" (this program, with any one of a wide range of talented "types" in the driver's seat) can be winners, right there with the cream of the current SEC (and CERTAINLY "trade places" with the likes of FSU again!), and get it done in a matter of 2 or 3 years. Guess we'll have to look at who and what's out there, what we want versus what we CAN do, and hopefully get the mix of "realism" and "magic" right this time. However, keeping Muschamp isn't ANY kind of answer. We've seen the whole thing, know how that story goes. And hopefully how it ends--most of all "now, or very soon".
