The article has the right idea, but they go about it in a ridiculous manner. I have posted articles stating the salient points in that trashy article:
1. Recruit the powerhouse high schools
2. Win over the media
3. Embrace the Gator culture
Fact: Mullen did win some recruits from the powerhouse high schools that McElwain had lost.
Fact: Mullen did win over the media and they were willing to overlook his personality quirks when the Gators were winning.
Fact: Mullen lived the Gator culture more than Muschamp and McElwain. When the Gators were winning he had his kids sing the alma mater with him at games!
I do not agree that there are only 3 choices for Florida's next coach. I can show you the data that shows there is only 1 experienced program re-builder (Stoops), 1 or 2 up-and-comers (Napier and Fickell), and everyone else. There is nothing wrong with "everyone else" as long we evaluate the entire staff that the next coach brings along. There are no articles out there talking about the assistant coaching staff, which I would argue is what led to the downfall of Urban Meyer (at Florida and Ohio State), and Dan Mullen. None of the coaches have a deep bench of assistants except Stoops. Napier has the potential to pluck assistants from the Swinney and Saban trees in addition to his Louisiana crew. Kiffen can also pluck assistants from his Pete Carroll and Nick Saban trees. Greg Schiano is the most CEO-like of the bunch, but he is not a proven winner. Everyone else on the list has a limited coaching tree and limited experience on the big stage.
TLDR: The SDS article is shit.
You know, what’s interesting to me, now that you lower both barrels at it E—, is that I more or less have become somewhat immune, even blind to the “trashy” aspects of ALL such “regular media commentary” out there. Or, to put it maybe more bluntly, there’s so damn MUCH of it out there, the blind sensationalism that pervades EVERYTHING written by everyone about EVERYTHING (and NOT just about sports, either—but politics, social commentary, even “science”), that in order to wade through the stinky marsh that is modern “news”, I not only am used to doing so with plugs stuffed in my nose, heavy shades and blinders on, but I hardly notice or remember their seeming necessary presence anymore.
Aside from YOUR overviews and summations here, E—, I don’t even EXPECT most of what I read, react to and/or report on from “out there” to be anything BUT, well, “TRASHY” is the relatively mild way of describing most of it. More’s the pity, I suppose—but it is the nature of the times, and pretty well the “seas we sail and navigate among” now, don’t you agree?
It has pretty well soured most “civilized discussion and behavior” by now—and in the political realm has done worse than that, of course.
More than merely “symptomatic”, it heralds dangers that may well ultimately threaten our republic, I’m afraid...and in noting it here I am sorry to realize I have indeed become so numb to it.
Which is about as far into the “socio-political” realm as I will ever go here again—except to say that I pray that I am wrong, that sanity, decency and wisdom will prevail, and meanwhile that whole shallow and narrow-minded reactionary way of thinking and expressing ourselves will recede, rather than continue to grow.
