On3: "The Ghost of Jeremy Foley continues to haunt UF"

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Why a UAA housecleaning is long overdue
From 1992-2016, Jeremy Foley spent 24 years as Florida’s athletics director, ripping off a resume of hires as impressive as any AD in modern athletics.

Foley famously hired Billy Donovan (basketball), Urban Meyer (football), Tim Walton (softball), Becky Burleigh (soccer), Kevin O’Sullivan (baseball) and Mike Holloway (track and field), among others, all of whom won national titles with the Gators.

But Foley had his blind spots, too, particularly when it came to investing in UF’s football program. Because of Steve Spurrier’s unique success in the early 90s, the Gators ran their athletics department with an arrogance that they didn’t need things like an indoor football facility.

Florida was slow on change — with facilities, support, fund-raising and more — and Meyer (with a loaded roster and an incredible coaching staff) only further emboldened UF’s hubris with his two national titles.

The ‘Gator Way’ became a holy-than-thou rebuttal.

A dozen years (and four football coaches later) after Meyer abruptly resigned from Florida in 2010, Billy Napier was sitting at the same desk Meyer once occupied, with the same curtains and the same carpet inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Florida’s football players were making the same long walk across Gale Lemerand to the practice field before the school finally opened the Heavener Complex before the 2023 season — many years in the making, and still many years too late.

“Nothing changes around here,” a UF head football coach once said.

Foley retired in 2016, but he maintains an emeritus title with the university. The problem is the Ghost of Foley continues to walk the hallways of the athletic department. Scott Stricklin is now the AD at UF, but a large swath of Foley’s inner circle and top lieutenants remain in power positions within the university.

These are not bad people, but they’ve long had bad ideas. The Peter Principle doesn’t just apply to Napier. There’s a leadership vacuum and total staleness within the athletics department that has created the very outcome of having to hire four football coaches — now eying a fifth — in 12 years.

It’s been an endless cycle of rut. It was a surprise to no one in the know in Gainesville that Florida didn’t have it’s NIL house in order or was a step slow attacking the transfer portal.

If Florida is serious about wanting to produce a championship program again, they have to make serious changes above simply who is just roaming the sidelines.

It’s time to move on to a new era. A clean slate.

Stricklin shouldn’t be allowed to hire a third football coach, but it’s not just him. The entire UAA needs a housecleaning.

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