Preseason Reading: UF’s Culture War

Linked below is a great 2-part article taking a first-hand inside look at the disaster that was Mullen’s coaching staff, and the challenge that Napier accepted and is correcting, so far inspiring confidence and buy-in.

I say this for my Gator brethren, it actually gives me encouragement of a possible surprise to the upside this season. Relatively of course (Vegas sits at 5.5 o/u).

With no apologies to Drink and Mullen, we all appreciate having a Darth Vader program in the conference, and Florida is so good in that role.

Articles from iakow.com blog, 8/23/23. Note: long reads
Part I
Part II

Part I highlights:
“I’ll put this as bluntly as I possibly can,” a defensive player told me. “Mullen brought me to Florida, and I’ll always be grateful for him for that. But to answer your question, I have absolutely no idea what the f**k he was doing there.

At various points during their careers at Florida, former players say, Mullen went over to Todd Grantham to inquire about Houston, Miller, and Andrew Chatfield not seeing time with the starting defense. Each time, Grantham brushed him off, and Mullen- apparently not wanting to ruffle feathers- obediently slunk away and didn’t broach the subject with that player again.

Multiple players theorized that Hevesy would gather information about players while recruiting them, hold onto it, and then use it against them years later. Players would excitedly tell Hevesy on recruiting visits that they were their families’ tickets out of their less-than-fortunate situations, only to hear those sentiments sarcastically thrown back in their face when they’d miss a block at practice. And to hear his former players from 2018-21 tell it, Hevesy seemed to carry a genuine delight in assuring them that they’d never achieve their dreams.

Part II highlights:
But it’s even more than that. Billy Napier isn’t merely Dan Mullen’s polar opposite temperamentally; he’s Mullen’s polar opposite as a recruiter, as a coach, and most importantly, as a CEO of a program.

“Napier is all about relationships, man,” Pearsall told me with a laugh after the Florida spring game. “He’s all about developing relationships with the guys you go to work with every single day. Napier preaches that when you know the guy to your left and your right, when you really know him know him, it makes it different. You don’t want to let those guys down.”

This aforementioned former player sadly shook his head when we met virtually to discuss the differences between the two coaches. “Too many people are going to read this piece and say, ‘oh, wow, Hevesy used demeaning language,” the player commented. “Too many people are going to go, ‘Wow, Hevesy said the word p***y!’ It’s not about that. It’s not an issue of us being soft or part of a soft generation or anything like that. Coaches curse, that’s football, and that’s not the problem. This current staff of coaches values their players as human beings first, football players second. John Hevesy and Todd Grantham did not value us as either. They didn’t care for us as human beings OR as football players.”