That's a pretty bad way to go about being an AD.
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I was mostly being a smartass about the messageboard bullshit floated out there about why Foley wouldn't "take" Dan Mullen.
But I think you're mistaken if you think it's a viable strategy for a program like Florida to bypass proven coaches and purposely choose to roll the dice when hiring coaches.
I seriously doubt that. In reply to Scotty.
I like the hire because it kills one of OM's backup plans... But I agree that from a Florida perspective, it is a very underwhelming hire....
I don't know if it's viable, but in football Foley has hired Ron Zook, Urban Meyer, Will Muschamp, and now McElwain. Only Urban Meyer looked like a good hire at the time. Looking into it, I didn't realize that Foley whiffed on two NFL head coaches before settling for Zook, and of course possibly whiffed on Freeze before McElwain (if you believe Freeze's agent, and why would he lie). Muschamp was at least a very well thought of DC so taking into account who he whiffed on, his hires don't look nearly as perplexing. It seems like his problem is that he does a poor job assessing viable targets, and then either gets left picking from a limited field or just makes a panic hire.
Looking at basketball, he's hired Donovan and now Michael White, with Donovan obviously being a phenomenal hire in hindsight and White it least looking like a reasonably good hire.
Geez, Foley is basically 1 out of 3 in football hires and 1 for 1 in basketball. Granted his two good hires were Urban Meyers and Donovan, so he pretty much hit a grand slam with Donovan and a home run with Meyer (only because he didn't stick around as long). But that's not that great of a track record considering he is recruiting coaches to Florida and in football had the benefit of recruiting somebody to take over SPurrier's program.
I'm not sure why you think I'm talking about the press conference or what fans think. I'm saying that Florida has the ability to go get a coach that is more of a sure thing (meaning a more proven coach who they know can go win games) than White.
I don't care about the press conference; I'm saying White is a complete unknown in terms of whether he can win on that level. There's no reason to take a chance like that at Florida.
Who is out there at this point that you think would be more of a sure thing that they could get? Not disagreeing with you just think all of the midmajor coaches are basically a crap shoot and (for obvious reasons) I haven't paid a lot of attention to basketball the last year or two and don't know who has had success at a big conference school that UF could poach from.
I think there is a group of coaches that just aren't leaving for another college job no matter what - Coach K, Calipari, Self, Izzo, Pitino, Roy Williams, Bo Ryan, Sean Miller.
After that, if you're Florida, you have to at least go after them. So that puts in names like Gregg Marshall (even with the contract extension, you should have a shot), John Beilein, Mark Few, Jay Wright, Greg McDermott, Archie Miller, Lon Kruger, etc.
I'm not saying you could get all of those guys, but you could probably get a few of them. And they're all much better hires than Michael White.
SEC. coaching rankings...
1. John Calipari
2. Ben Howland
My how things have changed for us in the past couple of months.....
I was thinking it might be Duke but wasn't sure and you damn sure don't want to throw Duke out there and be wrong. I always get that tidbit mixed up with the Andrew Luck dad thing and another somebody with a dad AD mixed in too. My point to the OP was that he isn't exactly the type who hangs out with his pants halfway down asking for handouts. He's probably a pretty good kid. Looking at it now I'm more sure that I'm glad UF got him. That completely bypasses OM. There is no road from UF to Oxford.