Thoughts of the Day: June 15, 2021

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning:

FEELING NOSTALGIC … A COUPLE OF WHAT IFS

WHAT IF BOBBY STOOPS HAD BECOME THE UF HEAD COACH IN 2002?

Sitting in the stands at Citizens Field in Gainesville in the fall of 2004, I spent an hour talking with then Oklahoma co-defensive coordinator Brent Venables, who was in Gainesville to watch Avery Atkins of Daytona Beach Mainland. Inevitably, the conversation turned to what happened in January of 2002 after Steve Spurrier had abruptly resigned as Florida’s football coach. All eyes turned to Norman, Oklahoma and Bobby Stoops, who had beaten Florida State, 13-2, for the national championship in 2000, his second season at OU.

“All I can tell you is that on Friday we were going to Florida and on Saturday we weren’t,” Venables told me. “What happened overnight? I don’t know. Something. We all thought we were going to Florida.”

Jeremy Foley spent Friday and Saturday in Norman. Sunday, he flew out. On Tuesday, Foley was in New Orleans talking to Ron Zook, the defensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints and Spurrier’s former defensive coordinator. On Wednesday, news broke that Foley was hiring Zook, a move that sent shock waves through the college football world. Why, for a job this important – Spurrier went 122-27-1 in 12 years, played for two national championships, won one and won the SEC six times – did Foley hire a head coaching novice who had never even been on anyone’s radar as a head coach prospect?

Foley was enamored with recruiting, which is where Zook excelled but Stoops was 42 years old, had a 31-7 record in three years at OU and had won a national championship. The Zook hire didn’t make sense except that Foley thought Zook’s recruiting could overcome his coaching inexperience.

Seven games into year three of the Zook era, Foley was all but forced to fire him. Losing to a Mississippi State team that finished the season 3-8 had something to do with it, but there was an underlying reason. Back on September 16, there was an incident in front of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house that involved Drew Miller, Billy Griffin and Steve Rissler, who was sucker punched. Zook got a call, rushed to the frat house where tempers flared.

According to a police report, Zook shouted to the fraternity president, “I’m not going to let you take the #$%& football team down … I will do anything in my power to take this house down.”

When Zook was fired, UF president Bernie Machen was asked how much that incident played into the firing. Machen answered, “Not much,” but he couldn’t empower a bunch of frat boys by saying they had provoked the football coach into losing his mind enough to the point he had to be fired. Machen simply waited until Zook lost an unlosable game and that was it. He was allowed to coach out the season but left to take the Illinois job prior to Florida’s loss to Miami in the Peach Bowl.

From the moment Zook became Florida’s lame duck coach, it seemed only a matter of time before Urban Meyer became the head coach. Machen was the president at Utah when Meyer was hired from Bowling Green in 2003 so it was assumed correctly that Meyer was target No. 1. At least he was the top target in Machen’s eyes. Many credible sources claimed that Foley’s top choice for the job was Bobby Petrino, who went 11-1 in 2004 while Meyer was running the table at Utah. Whatever the case, Meyer wound up at Florida where he went 65-15 in six years with national championships in 2006 and 2008.

There were flashes of hope that Stoops would come to Florida when Meyer resigned after the 2010 season but that never materialized, in large part because Foley seemed dead set on hiring Will Muschamp from day one. Like Zook, Muschamp had never been a head coach. When Muschamp was fired toward the end of the 2014 season, there was a glimmer of hope that Stoops would get a call and the third time would prove to be a charm, but Foley hired Jim McElwain, the former Alabama offensive coordinator who was resurrecting the program at Colorado State. McElwain didn’t last three full seasons at Florida, fired by new athletic director Scott Stricklin when he lied about death threats he and his family had received from zealous Florida fans.

The time to hire Stoops would have been in January of 2002. The Gators were coming off a 10-2 record in Spurrier’s final season with the only two losses when Earnest Graham was hurt and couldn’t play. Had the Gators beaten Tennessee in a game pushed back to December after the 9/11 attack on the United States, UF would have played Miami in the Rose Bowl for the national championship. Florida had big time name recognition and so did Stoops. He was the one coach who could have stepped into Spurrier’s shoes without blinking or feeling a ton of pressure. After all, when you’ve been the coach at Oklahoma where Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer once coached, you know all too well about the pressure to succeed. Stoops handled Oklahoma like an old pro. There is no reason to believe he would have had any problems taking over for Spurrier.

Ron Zook was indeed an exceptional recruiter who signed 20 of the 22 starters for Meyer’s first national championship team in 2006, but it was his misfortune that he had no prior head coaching experience. It was like giving the keys to the Caddy to the cabana boy. If Zooker had spent three or four years at an outpost in the Mid-American Conference or at a school in one of the smaller Division I conferences where he could have learned how to budget his time and delegate authority, he might have succeeded at Florida.

Zook went 23-14 at Florida, never once putting together a 9-win season and never once winning the SEC East. In Spurrier’s 12 years on the job, the two worst seasons produced nine wins (1990, 1999). During the three years Zook was Florida’s head coach, Stoops went 36-5 at Oklahoma with three Big 12 championships. During the four years Will Muschamp was Florida’s head coach, Stoops went 39-13 coaching the Sooners.

In his 18 years as Oklahoma’s head coach, Stoops went 190-48 with one national championship and 10 Big 12 championships. His Oklahoma teams made it to three other national championship games.

WHAT IF THE BIG EAST HAD ACCEPTED PENN STATE BACK IN 1982?

Back in 1982, after having his idea of an all-eastern football conference rejected, Joe Paterno tried to join the Big East Conference for all the other sports at Penn State. In particular, Paterno wanted to bolster the basketball program in Happy Valley but his petition was rejected by a single vote from the eight Big East schools, so the decision was made to join the Atlantic 10 in all sports but football. Rather than Penn State, the Big East voted to add Pittsburgh.

It’s fair to ask what would have happened not only to the Big East but conference expansion everywhere if Penn State had gotten one more vote back in 1982. In 1981, Joe Paterno proposed an all-eastern football conference that consisted of Penn State, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Maryland, Syracuse, Temple, Boston College and Rutgers but the effort failed. Had the Big East voted Penn State in for all its other sports in 1982, would Penn State have been able to gain support for a Big East football league prior to 1990 when the Big Ten added the Nittany Lions in all sports?

When the Big East decided to form a football league in 1991 to accommodate football-playing schools Syracuse, Boston College and Pitt, it needed a marquee program. Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Rutgers and Temple made geographic sense. Miami, which was 880 miles from Blacksburg, made no geographic sense whatsoever, but the Hurricanes were college football’s bad boys with a national following. The league got what it needed because Miami won two national championships (1991, 2001) as a Big East member and played for the national championship in 1992 and 2002. West Virginia was unbeaten in its regular season in 1993 only to get clobbered by Florida in the Sugar Bowl. Virginia Tech played FSU for the national championship in 1999. In 2000, Miami and Virginia Tech both finished 11-1. Miami left for the ACC in 2004. The football league fell apart after 2012 when Syracuse and Pitt joined the ACC.

Back in 1991 when the Big East formed its football league, Roy Kramer was determined to expand the Southeastern Conference from 10 to 12 teams. His first choices were Texas and Texas A&M of the Southwest Conference, which would have given the league a footprint in the state of Texas. However, legislative hurdles kept them in the SWC. When that option was no longer available, Kramer turned to both Miami and Florida State, who both said no.

Bobby Bowden has gone on the record that FSU chose the ACC instead of the SEC because the path to national championships was far easier in the ACC. Miami had three options – the SEC, ACC and Big East. The Big East was selected because the league – desperately needing a marquee football program – allowed Miami to remain independent in baseball. If the Big East had been off the table, would Miami have chosen the ACC or the SEC? And, if Miami had chosen the SEC, it likely would have eliminated South Carolina joining the league in 1992 when the Gamecocks and Arkansas were added.

Arkansas and South Carolina were Kramer’s third choices. They really didn’t bring much of a television footprint to the league, but they did give the SEC 12 teams, which Kramer needed to stage the first SEC Championship Game. The athletic director at Arkansas was Frank Broyles, who was an SEC guy from his days at Georgia Tech. He wanted out of the SWC (they used to say it stood for Sure, We Cheat), which he saw as the most corrupt league in the country. Arkansas brought a powerhouse basketball program to the SEC (won the national championship in 1994) and the nation’s best track and field program. The Razorbacks have won seven national championships in cross country since joining the SEC and 25 in indoor and outdoor track. South Carolina got almost exclusively because Miami and FSU turned Kramer down. Since joining the SEC, South Carolina owns three national championships – two in baseball, one in women’s basketball – since joining the SEC.

Had the Big East voted in Penn State back in 1982, conference makeup might look a lot differently today. A Big East that included Penn State might have become a mega-conference in football. Miami might have joined the SEC and South Carolina might have eventually gone back to its ACC roots if not for the SEC invitation.

And one last thing: The SEC distributes more than $45 million a year to each of the 14 schools that make up the league in 2021. When the new deal with ESPN kicks in a couple of years from now, the Southeastern Conference will be distributing in excess of $60 million a year. The ACC just cracked the $30 million level in 2019.

OMAHA BOUND: When Mississippi State (45-16) won the Starkville super regional by knocking off Notre Dame (34-13), 11-7, Monday night, it gave the SEC three of the eight teams that will play in the College World Series in Omaha with Vanderbilt (45-15) and Tennessee (50-16) the other two. The ACC has two teams (North Carolina State and Virginia) while the Pac-12 has two (Arizona and Stanford) and the Big 12 one (Texas).

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Despite having to withdraw from The Memorial while leading by six shots because he tested positive for Covid-19, Jon Rahm is a 10-1 favorite to win the US Open this week at Torrey Pines. Phil Mickelson is given 50-1 odds even though he won the PGA last month and will be playing the course he grew up on. Phil will be 51 years old tomorrow but he’s probably going to have 95 percent of the Torrey Pines gallery pulling for him as well as every golfer and golf fan in the world who’s more than 50. If you thought the crowd at Kiawah was worth a couple of shots because of their energy when they got behind Phil, imagine what it’s going to be like at Torrey Pines.