Buddy Blog: As Oligarch-Like Money Flows Through Coffers, Can The Good Ship Gator Be Turned Around?
Updated: May 1, 2022
I estimate between $25-$30M is what it cost for Florida to rid itself of the members of The ‘M Mistake’ Club — plus a couple of other minor indiscretions. The bulk of that went to Mullen, who was last seen working on his tan for TV while swilling a cold one and counting his $12M, or maybe doing the exchange rate for cryptocurrency.
By BUDDY MARTIN
GatorBaitMedia.com Editor
In the fortune of sport, there are cycles governed by destiny, determination and flat-out chance. Which can lead to success or survival, or just plain surrender. Sometimes feast, sometimes famine -- sometimes in between. Sometimes maybe a touch of it all.
Which leads us to what appears to be the state of things at latitude 29.651634, and longitude -82.324829. Commonly known as Hogtown, some 643 miles away from where Billy Napier once coached the Rajun Cajuns. Gainesville, where it might be asked: “Has Someone Left The Cake Out In The Rain?”
This cake certainly wasn't left out in the rain.
For a while now, The Sporting Life at UF has been celebratory for the most part since Kennedy was in the White House and Steve Spurrier was ballin’. (Having nothing to do with the color of our state. Never mind red or blue, it’s about the Orange & Blue which we speak.) But I ramble, so let’s fast forward from the Sixties to the Roaring Twenties Part 2.
To paraphrase the HBC, God has, indeed, Smiled On The Gators since the early Sixties. Although some of the Millennials, Gen Xers, Gen Yers, Gen Zers – shall I take a beat here? – feel that God’s Smile on the Gators should be in perpetuity, because He Owes Us. Even the author of that phrase, Steve Spurrier, would laugh at that.
Lately, to some it may feel more like Jimmy Webb’s 1968 McArthur Park lyric about The Cake getting rained on as a more accurate reflection of today’s mood. In other words, WTH is going on in Hogtown these days?
My former high school football teammate and inveterate Gator fan Richard keeps asking me: “How come we keep losing coaches and how much have we paid these guys in severance?”
Ponder that while we get back to the news of late:
In the Scott Stricklin Era, the body count of coaches continues to mount. It went up by one with the axing of women’s soccer coach Tony Amato. Stricklin had already fired the head football coach and women’s basketball coach, all of whom were hired on his watch. And while he didn’t hire, nor fire, the men’s basketball coach, he might as well have driven Mike White to the county line because there was an angry mob trailing about which he could do nothing.
In Gainesville, the halcyon days of yore have certainly come to a sudden halt, at least for the moment. Which is not to say The Cake cannot yet be sheltered from the rain. It’s just on pause for the moment, with a bit of a chippy attitude by some fans, perhaps.
For the first time since Albert The Alligator was a pup and before Alberta was the apple of his eye, the football and basketball programs were – for a moment – run by headless horse people. Help is on the way. Capable help, too. We just don’t know HOW capable yet. Therein lies the conundrum.
In the Undercover World of the Cruel Internet, hedge funds are already being conceived and perhaps even devised. How long before we see a “Fire Billy Napier” or “Fire Todd Golden” or even a “Fire Scott Stricklin”.com sticker? After all, isn’t there a darker side that occasionally rears it’s ugly head among We Are The Boys?
You know that old saying about The Swamp: “Where only Gators get out alive … except the coaches who get chewed up and spit out.”
Let me have this caveat: My words here are not meant to injure, maim, discredit, or read like a Hot Take. Nor am I attempting disrupt the current rebuild on Lemerand and Stadium, or stir up trouble for Stricklin. I both like and respect Scott and feel he is absolutely the right man for the job.
The Good Ship Gator, however, is massive and cannot be easily turned around in the channel without a heavy cost. (The blockage of the Suez by the barge Coral Crystal the cost $400M a day.)
So what about Richard’s question? I estimate between $25-$30M is what it cost for Florida to rid itself of the members of The ‘M Mistake’ Club — plus a couple of other minor indiscretions. The bulk of that went to Mullen, who was last seen working on his tan for TV while swilling a cold one and counting his $12M, or maybe doing the exchange rate for cryptocurrency. You might say he cooked up his own NIL deal in the Coaches Transfer Portal.
Charge the miscalculation of Mullen to Stricklin. But raise your hand if you were among those guilty of believing in Fool’s Gold after the first two seasons. I certainly was. And Mullen had to go.
The price for parting company with Jim McElwain, hired by Jeremy Foley and fired by Stricklin, was about $7.5M. Will Muschamp, hired on Foley’s watch, cost $6.3M.
The most egregious mistake by Stricklin — but hardly the most expensive — was not properly vetting women’s basketball coach Cam Newbauer, who had more baggage at Belmont than Delta Airlines in the Atlanta airport on Thanksgiving week. Stricklin whiffed, but the exit cost was minor — at least in dollars when you consider football.
According to the website Athleticdirectoru.com, in the period from 2005 to 2019, Florida spent $24,891,148 on football severance payments since the 2005 fiscal year, just ahead of Nebraska at $24,340,701. I’m no bean counter here, so I am just going with the flow of what I can see.
Really, though, it matters not. And whatever that number may be, the ship had to be turned around. Call it CODB, cost of doing business. Clean up your mistakes and move on. Why?
Because the people writing the checks want it done. They are the ultimate underwriters. And in the present-day promiscuity of money grabs, really $25-$30M is chump change.
Not since Charlie Pell went to Ben Hill Griffin circa 1981, and got him to pony up $22M for the stadium and oligarch status in Gator Nation, has the money flowed like this. New facilities, new shine and perhaps a new day. How much? I can’t even count that high, but if Florida doesn’t play winning football, it won’t be because of a money shortage.
Hugh Hathcock’s $12.6 M, plus Gator Collective’s deep pockets and the ingenuity and foresight of founder Eddie Rojas keep the green stuff rolling in. Gary Condron has raised $30M, including a recent $8M for the Condron Family Ball Park.
I respectfully refer to them as the Gators’ Good Guy Oligarchs because of their generosity, wealth and influence, not given to I’ll-gotten gain as are the Russians. Because of their visibility.
Unlike Ben Hill, a country boy at heart who cared more about eating barbecued ribs and collard greens and corn bread on his front porch in Frostproof than being paraded before the masses, these new, kind and gentle American oligarchs are being introduced by the coach at Gator Clubs while happily investing their millions in Gator annuities.
However, while this may sound uber-generous, the fact is that when Griffin stroked that $22M check, according to my high -finance friend Rob, it was the equivalent of $90 million today. So keep it coming Boys (And Girls) of Ol’ Florida. You’ve got ways to go before you catch Ol’ Ben Hill. And by the way, that cake ain’t getting wet, because it’s just raining dollars.
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