re: 2023-24 Attrition Thread - Who’s gone? Portal/NFL/Graduation / Coaches Included

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How much is it our Big Boosters not being like some other teams you think? I told one friend I thought maybe the school had got too nerdy and we had too many big money guys not into football like the ones from years ago.

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This got long. Sorry.

Michigan just won a natty. You aren't getting a nerdier public university than Michigan. They almost played Texas for it, another big time football program that is also a top shelf public university.

Incidentally, Michigan was also who we were chasing with Go Greater campaign. That's who the admin at UF sees as the model.

So no, I don't buy the "too nerdy" thing. Michigan and Texas are doing just fine, and both are academic powerhouses among public universities and compete well with many of the richer privates as well.

I would probably compare us the most to Texas during the last years of Mack through hiring Tom Herman. Money was rolling in despite the bad seasons, and that seemed to make everyone not named Red McCombs happy enough. Red wanted to win and wanted to spend to make it happen, but he was also such a giant, single minded a-hole about football that he just divided the boosters. I don't know that we have a Red type, but I do think we have a lot of the former.

I feel like we need someone with the gravitas that Nick Saban had in 2007. Probably the most important thing he did was clear the program out after saying he wasn't taking the job without being 100% backed in taking whoever he saw as garbage out to the curb. He disassociated some heavy hitter boosters from the program and cleared out anyone else who might get in the way of Alabama being HIS program.

I doubt the folks around UF want the team to lose, but I also doubt the folks around Bama wanted it. If you want to see and example of what I think is the psychology here, look at any discussion of students or uniforms a Gators forum.

On the one hand, the olds think our students don't show up and do enough at games. I don't necessarily agree, but whether it is true or not is irrelevant. They want more student participation, but they hated the "move back you suck" chant returning. They hate all rap and R&B music pumped out at games. They hate black jerseys, which students AND players really like, and want that to stop.

Basically, they want to win AND they want everything from the players on the field to the students in the stands to look and act like they remember things when they were at UF. And everyone that doesn't get excited about winding the clock back two or three decades is a bad Gator. Sure, they got to do their own thing when they were students, but frick these kids for wanting to change anything. They just don't understand history!

Now imagine boosters having that same perspective. I'd argue that's most of the problem with the UAA and money around the program. They want to win, but they want it all to look like it did during whatever they feel were the glory years.

I STILL hear shite about just drawing it up in the dirt or how he can beat you with his and turn around and beat you with yours. You just coach 'em up.

Sorry man, I love SOS as much as anyone, but it isn't the 90s anymore. I feel like that, while we have modernized, it's always done kicking and screaming, years and years of discussion and getting buy-in before we do something we should have done half a decade back.

Ironically, nothing is eroding the real legacy of the 90s and 00s like drifting into mediocrity because we keep less-is-moring so much of the program. I don't think there is such a thing as a "homerun" hire anymore, but there is no excuse to ever hire a head coach again who hasn't been regularly in the hunt for the playoffs (which, incidentally is why I think if Fisch wasn't an alumnus, no one would be excited about him either to this point).

Hell there is no excuse to ever hire a coach again who at least hasn't shown some success in a major conference.