Serious what Happened?

Didn't the team have guys that were on the team in 2008, who played in the big games that year and last year and yet this is what we got? Hope the new guys and I hope a new OC will do better.

It's the Prima Donna Effect. Listen to Powell and Easley complaining about how the seniors from the '08 team treated them. Look at the Homecoming parade--most of the freshmen were in a dumpster decorated as a float. Listen to locker room issues, mostly splitting the team into the '08 champs and the Nobodies. The '08 Champs certainly graded out as champions this year, except Ahmad Black--that dude is a stud.

Escambia94 said:

It's the Prima Donna Effect. Listen to Powell and Easley complaining about how the seniors from the '08 team treated them. Look at the Homecoming parade--most of the freshmen were in a dumpster decorated as a float. Listen to locker room issues, mostly splitting the team into the '08 champs and the Nobodies. The '08 Champs certainly graded out as champions this year, except Ahmad Black--that dude is a stud.

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Aren't these similar to the complaints that players had during the Zook years?

sumguy said:

Aren't these similar to the complaints that players had during the Zook years?

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I don't remember. Maybe this is a serious problem at UF no matter what. If this is the case, Urban Meyer will need to tear this program down and build it up again every few years.

More and more I find myself in agreement with the observation that the upperclassmen doing the most whining to the press and bullying behind the scenes are the ones that were NOT pursued by the NFL to any great degree--that's why they're still HERE! It shouldn't come as any huge surprise that these were not the "older players who could lead by example", and their unspectacular, often mediocre play made a mockery of their blustering efforts at leadership. Why SHOULD these younger players respect and follow guys like Pouncey?
Yeah, the freshmen (many of whom had been in close contact with each other during the recruiting process, deciding to be Gators at least partly because the others did) probably came in with more "Here we are!" flash and swagger than even the normal youthful enthusiasm of kids who were already the best players in their schools, towns and districts. Two or three seasons ago they WOULD have had to wait, when there were true LEADERS on both sides of the ball commanding EVERYONE'S respect who would have cooled things out, and coaches who would have known how to deal with it. By now we NEEDED those "prima donnas", however, so it was a tricky situation from the start, one completely mishandled by a few blowhards' bullying and the usual self-delusional neglect of this coaching staff.
The good news: a lot of these "lessers-of-the-great-recruiting-haul" are about to move on. Attrition alone will change the compositional balance of the team: not only will "the rift" become moot, but the coaches (even the ones that foolishly acquiesced to that disastrous "seniors start, no matter what"-policy) will HAVE to play the young guys--because THAT WILL BE OUR TEAM. They will be relying on them now.

sumguy said:

Aren't these similar to the complaints that players had during the Zook years?

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Oh CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!

Please don't mention that name around here. I almost had a heart attack. Ugh...

I'm still amazed that the great Urban could field such an utterly uncompetitive team (see Alabama, South Carolina, Free Shoes U) and still look bewildered when we were getting our a**es kicked.

Wow, maybe he had great assistant coaches all those years

Gator1986 said:

I'm still amazed that the great Urban could field such an utterly uncompetitive team (see Alabama, South Carolina, Free Shoes U) and still look bewildered when we were getting our a**es kicked.

Wow, maybe he had great assistant coaches all those years

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The assistant coaches do make a difference. This fact does not take away from the head coach's genius, but there is far too much to do for one coach. The head coach normally does not have direct involvement in gameday execution. I think we probably executed a lot better in games where Meyer did get involved with gameday execution, but you can see that the offensive coordinator has the power to make the team suck. This right here is what business majors and defense acquisitions call "program management". No matter how good the program manager is, he needs the right team leaders. Meyer looked bewildered because not only was HE outcoached, but his entire coaching staff! How do we fix that? First, the head coach needs to find a new coaching staff. If that fails, then then person above the head coach, the athletic director, gets to fire the head coach. Let's hope Meyer finds the right staff. If he sticks to his statement about keeping this staff, especially the Dazzler, then we are screwed next year. Probably.

Escambia94 said:

Look at the Homecoming parade--most of the freshmen were in a dumpster decorated as a float. Listen to locker room issues, mostly splitting the team into the '08 champs and the Nobodies...

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Say it ain't so!!!!

Is there a picture of this somewhere on the internet? What kind of crap is that? Is this for real?

I usually catch a rerun of the homecoming stuff on WUFT-TV, but missed all of it this year. So this is the first I have heard about this stuff.

There's an old saying in business..."There's no such thing as bad companies, just bad people." In other words, the business reflect the actions of those within the organization. This is atrocious and so humiliating to those involved. One can only wonder what has been said by them to their friends & team mates from high school. In all the years I have been a fan of my beloved Gators, I have never heard of anything this bad before. These guys are not some kind of fraternity pledges.

Why hasn't this received more attention?

:mad0235::mad0235::mad0235::mad0235:

G8RB8R said:

Say it ain't so!!!!

Is there a picture of this somewhere on the internet? What kind of crap is that? Is this for real?

I usually catch a rerun of the homecoming stuff on WUFT-TV, but missed all of it this year. So this is the first I have heard about this stuff.

There's an old saying in business..."There's no such thing as bad companies, just bad people." In other words, the business reflect the actions of those within the organization. This is atrocious and so humiliating to those involved. One can only wonder what has been said by them to their friends & team mates from high school. In all the years I have been a fan of my beloved Gators, I have never heard of anything this bad before. These guys are not some kind of fraternity pledges.

Why hasn't this received more attention?

:mad0235::mad0235::mad0235::mad0235:

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I cannot say that this is not normal. I have seen Homecoming parades, but this is the first year that I really paid attention to how the floats were arranged. This is also the first year I can remember that we did not have an obvious superstar "leading" the parade. In the 90s most wore #7 jerseys for Wuerffel. In the 00s it was #5 Earnest Graham or #13 Alex Brown, and so on. Here in 2010, the only jerseys I saw were #15. There were occasional #1s, but they could have been #1 Jenkins or #1 Harvin leftovers.

No clear leaders, a divided locker room, and a host of coaching and personnel issues = one subpar year.

Again: to some extent at least, the "rift" becomes mostly "moot" with the loudest mouths/worst offenders among the upperclassmen (the "prima donnas", a la Escambia94) are about to move on, for the most part.
The rest of the problem, with coaching and a lack of leadership off-field as well as on (and probably the larger one, since they let it happen), is well-covered in the "Embarrassed"-thead.