Meanwhile, the Gators’ day-to-day activities remained in the bowels of the south end of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. He quickly changed his tune when he returned to college football at South Carolina in 2005, but his attitude regarding facility upgrades in the ’90s sunk in with Foley and athletic department leadership.Īlabama built an indoor practice facility in 1986. When it rains, we either go in the gym or call practice off.” “A lot of people think we’ve got those fancy domed places with AstroTurf,” Spurrier told reporters before his Gators played Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl following the 1995 season. In the mid-’90s, Spurrier delighted in beating up on teams that he felt were wasting money on football operations buildings and indoor practice facilities. “From where we were when Billy got here, that’s going to take more than one year.”īruce Feldman’s 2023 College football Freaks list is now available. “The way out of that is to put things in place structurally and personnel-wise that will allow you to get back to having the highs but have them be sustained,” Stricklin says. How did once-dominant Florida fall behind its rivals - in terms of facility upgrades, recruiting and, most recently, name, image and likeness operations - after spending years ahead of the pack? And how long will it take to pull even again? And Stricklin understands he might not be the one making another hire unless it’s a long, win-filled time from now. He hired Louisiana coach Billy Napier one week later. He hired Dan Mullen and fired him near the end of season four after three consecutive New Year’s Six bowl appearances. Stricklin, who took over when Jeremy Foley retired in 2016, fired Jim McElwain in the middle of season three. It had consecutive seasons (20) that featured SEC East titles – and losses to rival Florida State in which the Gators didn’t score an offensive touchdown. The roller coaster has included an 11-win season (2012) followed by a 4-8 season with a loss to Georgia Southern. But that era ended when the Tim Tebow-Brandon Spikes class graduated in 2009, and the Gators haven’t been able to recreate that consistency since. An avalanche of success squeezed into 18 years trained Florida fans to expect nothing less than dominance. After decades mired in mediocrity, the arrival of alum Steve Spurrier as coach in 1990, followed by Urban Meyer’s dizzying six-year run, turned the program that could never get over the hump into the program that couldn’t stop winning. Three Waterford crystal footballs sit atop national championship trophies from 1996, 20. “But we have been incredibly erratic with some incomprehensible lows that you wouldn’t expect the University of Florida to have.”Īround the corner, banners commemorate the Gators’ eight official Southeastern Conference football titles. “Since we won our last national championship, we’ve had years where we’ve had some good success - high-level success,” Stricklin says.
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