Once you get past the two outright laughers in this piece (“It’s a good time to be a Gator.” and “Perfect fit is one way to describe Mullen’s start at Florida.”), you’ll come to where Florida’s AD is on the Cocktail Party:
Stricklin also facing a difference of opinion when it comes to the Florida Georgia game that’s played in Jacksonville every year. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said at the SEC spring meetings that the game being played in Jacksonville hurts recruiting.
“It’s just not great for recruiting because you lose a home game every other year and that just comes with it. But it certainly helps to have more home games,” Smart said.
Stricklin believes Jacksonville is still working for both sides.
“We are in Jacksonville for the next three of four years and Jacksonville has been a great home for that matchup for many, many years,” Stricklin said. “We are always going to keep an open mind, but our hope deep down is that game will remain in Jacksonville.”
In other words, as long as they keep stroking those big checks…
Get The Picture 
What’s unsaid in that piece is that the Gators also think the location of the game in Jacksonville gives them an advantage. I’m not saying it does—nobody can really say that either way. For sure. I’m saying they think it does. If you don’t believe that just ask Steve Spurrier.
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https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1992-10-31-9202260630-story.html
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Unless Spurrier is coming back to coach the game, I fail to see the relevance of this.
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Even if Spurrier comes back to coach, I don’t care … Kirby has better players just like Spurrier did back in the day.
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even if he did have better players, they wanted to play for him. Spurrier was one BIG pain in the ass. Glad he is gone.
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Kids in Florida wanted to play for him in 1992. He was doing something innovative for the time. 2015? Not so much.
He hated recruiting, so as recruiting became much more important, he got left behind. That’s the thing about Saban. Even as he has aged, his desire to recruit and to win hasn’t gone out.
Spurrier was a pain in the ass in the 90s because he was one of the best. He was a pain in the ass in the 10s because he was just a case of the hemorrhoids.
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“He hated recruiting”
He may have, but they wanted to stay home & play for him anyway. Little different setup than South Carolina.
At UF:
122-27-1 at UF
Won one national championship and played for another.
Won six SEC championships
Named SEC Coach of the Year five times.
Could he do it now??…who knows, but I am pretty sure he has not forgot how to coach (Orlando Apollos – 7-1 in 2018 ). I also bet the kids in state would also want to come.
I for one, would not want to see him go to UF again. Once a competitor, always a competitor. Again, glad he is gone…
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No doubt he was dominant in the 90s. You could make the case that Tom Osborne & Bobby Bowden were the only coaches in the same stratosphere as Spurrier. Count me as one who would be very skeptical of Spurrier’s ability to recreate that at 74 years old (Saban is 67 and looks younger than that). If Stricklin fired Mullen tomorrow and hired Spurrier on Thursday, would he be in Hogtown at 77? Doubtful.
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again, who knows….the Orlando Apollos took a chance on him in 2018 & he went 7-1. As far as age goes (looks), I think Spurrier looks as young as Saban and probably has as much energy.
Put it to you this way, I think Spurrier probably has 3-4 good years left in him….and I would rather see Mullen than Spurrier at UF for those 3 or 4 years.
Will he come back to UF?? In all probability….probably not. Not at his age. I think Senator’s original comment was more tongue and cheek…and I agreed.
BTW, don’t think Spurrier did anything innovative in the 90’s….the forward pass/spread had been around for years, he just reintroduced it….set the trend. The SEC was more of a 3 yards & a cloud of dust conference back then. Everything cycles in football…and will continue to do so.
Spurruer was one of the best game day coaches around…great at situational play calling, he had a knack for it. I hope we get better, cause I think it has cost us a few important games to this point….but Kirby has got us there, for that….I give him an enormous amount of credit. You keep knocking on the door enough, it will eventually happen.
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You guys seem to be glossing over the fact that Spurrier recruited a couple of the best players to ever suit up for the Gamecocks. He certainly mailed it in his last few years but he was always capable of getting big name talent
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No doubt. He got Lattimore and Clowney. I would suggest that was before Dabo (and IPTAY) cranked up the recruiting machine inside South Carolina.
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SOS wants ZERO of the Kirby teams…much less the occasional Bama.
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The relevance is the secret agenda the Gators have for keeping the game in Jacksonville. They think the venue gives them an advantage because they believe it is a de facto home game for them. So they will do anything to keep it there. Maybe our numbnuts AD can use that to our advantage financially in negotiations.
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Stricklin has zero ties to UF’s glory years… other than Mullen’s hire and the jury’s out on that one.
And UGA doesn’t negotiate against UF. Both schools negotiate with Jax.
By the way, if it’s a “secret agenda”, how do you know about it? 😉
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Well…I knew about the “double secret probation” too. 😉
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Second quarter freshman year. It ain’t THAT secret….
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concur….100 yards long and 53 1/3 yards wide & goalposts on each end.
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Crowd split 50/50, and we own the series record by a significant margin, even including Florida’s fluke 15 years of relevance. I can see why Florida thinks it’s an advantage to play in Jax.
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I’d thought this was all posturing for the first few weeks of heavy discussion but am getting very, very worried that we may walk away from one of the great games in college football.
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Then the posturing is working. Perhaps Jax feels the same way.
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The thing is, the DNA of this game is in the location. As a home and home it loses its identity. People won’t be arriving in Athens or Gainesville on Wednesday to play golf, hang out on the beach reconnect with friends. Tens of thousands of people who don’t even have tickets won’t be tailgating around the stadium. Neither school will sell half the stadium to the other team. Lose all that and you lose something truly unique that can’t be recreated or manufactured. Then GA/FL becomes just another game. That’s truly unfortunate. However, it continues the trend of gutting college football of everything that makes it attractive to begin with. The fans always lose in the end.
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Excellent post Paul. I’ll add that having the game in Atlanta would ruin it as well. No one wants to go to Atlanta on Wednesday for three days of nightmare traffic and high priced shopping and dining.
College football is in a downward spiral, the attendance numbers show it, but the people running it are whistling through the graveyard. Continuing to destroy the traditions of the game will only hasten its demise.
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Exactly this. College football is about traditions. When they throw away those, then it really will be just an NFL minor league.
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Stricklin is not mentioning the problems Florida is having getting its fans to show up in Gainesville. It’s been an issue since Urban’s last year.
Not willing to play a true non-conference road game outside their state, they have added ‘neutral site’ games in Orlando, Tampa, and Arlington to boost attendance and interest in the program.
This is another reason Jacksonville is important to them.
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“Perfect fit is one way to describe Mullen’s start at Florida.”
“Big mistake” is another way.
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Said this in a post last week..concerning the WLOCP. My apologies for the repeat but I think it bears consideration.
Imagine of how Junior and Lulu see this game.
They seethe over the attention and hoopla given to UGA and UF each year.
Given the chance, I’d bet UT would take Georgia’s place in the WLOCP in a heartbeat.
Then we’d all be miserable watching all the attention, hype and hoopla going to our two biggest E rivals.
That would be a big mistake. The WLOCP is a big deal.
Yeah. another game every other year in Athens would be nice, but there’s a flip side to that..every other year in the Swamp at Gainesville…ugh.
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Excellent point. And Kirby often cites Alabama having LSU at home….. but if Bama fans had 86yrs of annually descending on the French quarter to play LSU in the sugar bowl stadium / later superdome, they probably wouldn’t be keen on ending that tradition either. Plus, there’s simply more to do surrounding Georgia Florida, whatever your interests are…….and you can do most of it inside the state of Georgia.
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I would also describe Mullen and UF as a perfect fit.
FTMF.
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I will say that UGA makes the greater sacrifice and deserves a bigger payout than does FL.
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Since Jax covers both teams travel expenses in full, I’d say that’s already part of the deal.
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That is true. But it doesn’t cover the difference in time away from campus that can be a factor in recruiting and preparation.
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Assuming for the sake of argument that’s true, how do you quantify that with a dollar amount?
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I would think by monetizing the total time away from campus for both teams and then compensating for the difference.
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That just begs the question. How do you monetize the time away from campus?
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By dividing the total payout by the total minutes away from campus.
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You multiply the number of hours each player is away from campus by their hourly rate, they get time and a half for more than 40 hours … oh, maybe that way won’t work…
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I was thinking along similar lines…
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Moot point. $0.00 times anything is still $0.00 🙂
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That is the exact point I was making above.
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This is in response to ant’s post above–i.e. that Georgia deserves a bigger cut.
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My vote – because some of my fondest memories are forever hooked to Amelia Island Plantation and the game – is NEVER move the game.
I think the recruiting angle is a straw man. Using the game as a carrot (essentially a mid season bowl game) has to have more pluses than negatives for a recruit.
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