The pressure on UF AD Scott Stricklin has greatly intensified

“What in the wild, wild world of sports is-a going on here?” – Taggart, as played by Slim Pickens in the movie “Blazing Saddles”

Yes, what is going on here? A Thursday night that began quiet and calm turned chaotic in a matter of an hour or so, in its wake leaving LSU without an athletic director and Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin without an interim baseball coach. Both the firing of LSU AD Scott Woodward and UF interim baseball coach Chuck Jeroloman taking the assistant head coaching job at Tennessee will have a direct impact on Stricklin and the future of Florida athletics.

Start with Woodward, who fired football coach Brian Kelly back on Sunday, one day after the Tigers were smoked by Texas A&M, 49-25. Hired in 2021 on a 10-year deal worth $100 million, Kelly was considered a spectacular hire. Kelly was poached from Notre Dame, where he played for the 2012 national championship and was in the final four of the College Football Playoff in 2018. When hired, Kelly declared he could win national championships at LSU, but in his 49-game tenure went 34-15 despite two seasons with the best quarterback (Jayden Daniels, 2023 Heisman Trophy winner) in college football.

From the moment Kelly was fired, LSU became a favorite to hire Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin. Kiffin is also thought to be the top target for Stricklin, who fired Billy Napier a week prior to LSU firing Kelly.

When Kelly was fired it was met with the endorsement of Louisiana governor Jeff Landry. On Wednesday, Landry stated that Woodward would not be in charge of hiring the next LSU football coach. On the “Pat McAfee Show” Thursday,  Landry criticized Woodward for the two most expensive firings in college football history – Jimbo Fisher, fired and paid a $77 million buyout at Texas A&M, and Kelly, whose buyout was $53.333 million.

Woodward is not without success when it comes to hiring new coaches who have won national championships. He hired women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey, baseball coach Jay Johnson and women’s gymnastics coach Jay Clark. He also hired men’s basketball coach Matt McMahon, who is 45-53 in three years without taking LSU to the NCAA Tournament. Woodward made a big deal of hiring McMahon from Murray State. At the same time, with far less fanfare, Stricklin hired Todd Golden, who won the 2025 NCAA title and is 76-33 in three years.

Golden and the Gators start the new season on Monday (vs. Arizona in Las Vegas) ranked No. 3 nationally and considered a serious threat to win back-to-back titles. McMahon and LSU have been picked to finish next to last in the SEC. If he doesn’t make the NCAA Tournament, McMahon is thought to be toast.

Woodward’s firing creates major instability at the top of the LSU athletic program. The criticism of the cost of firing Kelly gives the impression that finding the money it will take to hire Kiffin will be hard to come by for LSU. Through back channels, Kiffin has a reported offer of six years and $13.5 million a year to take the Florida vacancy. Ole Miss is reported to be matching or exceeding the Florida offer. Some speculate that Kiffin could become college football’s first $15 million a year head coach.

At the press conference in which Stricklin made the formal announcement that Napier was fired, he was asked who would be hiring the new head coach. Stricklin replied that he alone would make the final call on the new head man. Ever since then, multiple websites have claimed that Stricklin might be the figurehead but well-heeled boosters and the UAA board of trustees would be hiring the new football coach.

A week ago, Stricklin announced that baseball coach Kevin O’Sullivan was taking an indefinite leave of absence to deal with serious personal problems. Immediately, there was speculation that O’Sullivan, who won the 2017 national championship and took the Gators to the College World Series nine times, would not be back. Jeroloman, the associate head coach and recruiting coordinator, was named the interim head coach.

Thursday evening, just a short time after LSU fired Woodward, it was announced that Tennessee had hired Jeroloman as its new head coach. Tony Vitello, who took the Vols to the 2024 national championship, was hired by the San Francisco Giants as the new manager.

Jeroloman leaving for Tennessee comes at a most inopportune time for Stricklin. Not only does he head an athletic department that doesn’t have a head football coach, but now he doesn’t have a leader for the baseball program. That is two of the three major sports at the University of Florida that don’t have a permanent head coach.

This is potentially a disastrous situation for the Florida athletic department and Stricklin in particular. Other than Golden, Stricklin has not had much success hiring new coaches. He is 0-2 in hiring football coaches. He hired Dan Mullen in 2018 but fired him in season four. In the three previous seasons, Mullen took the Gators to New Years Six bowl games, winning two of them. He took the Gators to the 2020 SEC Championship Game where they nearly knocked off Alabama which went on to win the national title. Mullen was fired in 2021, his only season with a losing record. Mullen was 34-15 as Florida’s head coach. He’s gone on to UNLV where he is 6-1 this season and challenging for the Mountain West championship.

Napier was hired the same year LSU hired Kelly. Napier was one of the hottest names in the coaching carousel, but he left with a 3-4 record in 2025, 22-23 overall.

Stricklin also hired and fired Cam Newbauer as the women’s basketball coach amid allegations that Newbauer was abusive. Kelly Rae Finley was promoted to the head coaching job but in four years she has only made the NCAA Tournament one time and has a 75-60 record. When Becky Burleigh retired as soccer coach after the 2020 season, Tony Amato was hired but fired after one season. Replacement coach Samantha Bohon is 18-32-16 in four seasons. Mary Wise, one of volleyball’s iconic coaches who won 25 SEC championships and 987 matches at Florida, retired and was replaced by Ryan Theis, who is 12-7 and in sixth place in the SEC in his first year on the job.

The pressure is firmly on Stricklin’s shoulders right now. All the money people at Florida are demanding Lane Kiffin as the head football coach. It may take a Godfather offer to lure him to Florida from Ole Miss. Failure to bring Kiffin to Florida will be met with tremendous disdain and may signal the end for Stricklin.

While baseball is not a revenue sport its importance is third only to football and men’s basketball. Stricklin is almost boxed into a corner. Can he afford to wait for O’Sullivan to make a decision about returning as baseball’s head coach? If he waits too long and O’Sullivan doesn’t return, the impact on the baseball program could be nuclear winter.  Stricklin almost certainly has to demand an answer from O’Sullivan. If O’Sullivan gives Stricklin an acceptable timeline for returning, then an interim coach must be hired to lead the Gators, but who? Jeff Cardozo, who is the baseball play-by-play announcer, is a former Gator pitcher and well respected by both current and former UF players. He might be the most logical choice for an interim.

But beyond that? Stricklin has to treat the baseball hire with the same measure of importance as the next football coach. He needs a home run hire for football and there is only one: Lane Kiffin. He also needs a home run for baseball, whether it is the return of O’Sullivan or a new head coach.

This is a less than ideal situation for Scott Stricklin. These next two hires cannot fail if he intends to be Florida’s athletic director long into the future.