re: Florida has too good of a football program to hire a coordinator

That's pretty much the same as saying they're too good to hire a lower-tier HC from, say, the Mountain West Conference. It's not a question of the program's quality, it's a question of trying to catch that one up-and-coming coach that could pay off big time. Keep in mind, most of the true elite are hard to drag from their current positions. Saban was a lucky strike, as was Spurrier. OSU got Meyer because Tressel (another lower-tier hire) was on the way out at the same time Urban was faking health issues to escape the SEC. And so on. Even coaches with top-notch resumes aren't a guarantee, as RichRod's career shows. Or take Kelly's career at ND. It's looked decent, but it averages out to middle-of-the-road for a program like UF, where the demand for dominance following coaches like Spurrier and Meyer would eventually catch up with him (as it might at ND.)

UF hired Muschamp because he had a sterling reputation and was heavily in demand. He was assumed by most to be the HC-in-waiting at Texas (another program that would be consider "too good to hire a coordinator.) Florida was hoping to catch a future Hall of Famer on the upswing rather than gamble with the likelihood that a proven but not yet elite HC would become elite at UF.