As college sports change, can Florida football and basketball regain championship standard?
As another academic year begins at the University of Florida, so do the hopes of its athletic programs.
The banners inside the Heavener Center display the rich championship history of UF’s recent past. From 1990-2014, a golden age in Florida athletics, the Florida Gators won eight SEC titles in football and six more in men’s basketball. It included a dominant stretch from 2006-2008, in which Florida – under head coach Billy Donovan in basketball and Urban Meyer in football – won a combined four national championships.
Florida football and Florida basketball were the championship standard in both major revenue sports in the conference.
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But much has changed since Meyer left UF in 2010 for health reasons and Donovan left in 2015 to pursue his NBA coaching dreams. Florida hasn’t won an SEC title in football since 2008, and basketball since 2014. As the rest of the conference gained strength, investing increased television revenues in coaching hires and facilities, Florida stuck to its formula of hiring young, up and coming coaches, looking for the next Meyer and Donovan.
There have been some high points in both sports since. Mike White led UF basketball to an Elite Eight in his second season as coach in 2017, and Dan Mullen guided the Gators to three straight New Year’s Six Bowls from 2018-20. But with first-year coaches in both sports in 2022-23, Florida slipped to mediocrity. Billy Napier guided UF to a 6-7 record in his first year as UF’s football coach, while Todd Golden went 16-17 in his first season at UF men’s basketball coach.
It was the first year since 1979 that UF posted losing records in both major revenue sports.
Golden and Napier will be given time to build under UF athletic director Scott Stricklin, even as a rabid fanbase wants more instant results.
“It’s more about building a program that’s sustainable,” Stricklin said. “You’ll see signs of that, I think, naturally in the performance. Are you continuing to build the roster? Are you continuing to get buy-in? Are the people that you’ve selected to be a part of your team, the staff, do they seem like they’re continuing to be good fits?
“Pushing forward, are you continuing to recruit well and bringing more talented people into the program? Those are the kinds of things – you keep doing that, and you’re going to wake up and run into a trophy at some point.”
Florida still excelling in non-revenue sports
SEC Network talk show host Paul Finebaum, who has covered the league since the end of Bear Bryant era in the late 1970s, has found UF’s drop from the pinnacle in both major sports somewhat perplexing.
“There is just this perception that Florida is the standard bearer in athletics, and I think a lot of it goes back in time,” Finebaum said. “And I’m not sure that it’s trickled down to everyone else.”
Overall, Florida’s athletic department enjoyed some notable successes in 2022-23 as the major revenue sports lagged. Men’s golf and men’s outdoor track and field won national championships. Women’s gymnastics won an SEC title and came within .15 points of a third national title. UF’s baseball team won an SEC title and made a run to the College World Series Finals.
“Normally when you see problems in athletic departments there is a specific reason and it normally starts with poor leadership,” Finebaum said. “But I can’t say that because I believe Scott Sticklin has an impeccable reputation as an athletic director.”
Has UF finally caught up on facilities?
The $85 million Heavener Center, which opened in August of 2022, gives UF a state-of-the-art, stand-alone football facility it lacked the past decade when recruiting against its competitors.
Florida built its indoor football practice facility seven years earlier in 2015. The prevailing thought before then was UF didn’t need an indoor facility because of the weather. But calls for change began when star defensive lineman Dominique Easley tore his ACL on a rainy day and wet practice field in 2013.
In 2014, in head coach Will Muschamp’s final season, heavy thunderstorms in October forced UF to move three of its practices inside to walk throughs at the O’Connell Center before its homecoming game against Missouri. The Tigers proceeded to rout UF 42-13 in a nationally televised, Saturday night game, a game in which Missouri returned both a punt and a kickoff for a TD.
“Florida was slow to change, from a facilities standpoint,” Finebaum said. “I think that’s self-evident, that it took Florida way too long to get all the things that it now has.”
In basketball, Florida built its joint men’s and women’s basketball practice facility in 2001, at a $10 million price-tag. It attracted the 2004 recruiting class of Joakim Noah, Corey Brewer, Al Horford and Taurean Green that led the Gators to back-to-back national titles. But the facility, now 22 years old, is showing signs of age. Florida is in the planning stages of a renovation to the building, with funds coming from a record $12.6 million donation that booster Hugh Hathcock made in April of 2022.
“It would be total redo of all the team/player areas, locker rooms, adjustments from offices, total refresh, the courts, the whole thing,” Stricklin said. “A lot of work in the training room in those areas that touch the players every day.”
Can UF stay competitive in a changing NIL landscape?
Name, Image and Likeness became state law and took hold across college sports in July of 2021. Two collectives emerged to support UF athletes, the grassroots Gator Collective and the more well-heeled Gator Guard.
Communication at times broke down between the two entities. State law at the time also prohibited UF athletic administration from direct NIL involvement. The dysfunctional setup resulted in a botched NIL deal to prized 2023 quarterback recruit Jaden Rashada, who asked out of and was granted release from his letter of intent last January. Rashada, named Arizona State’s starting quarterback last week, was reportedly offered $13 million, only to have the contract voided weeks later.
A change in state NIL law in February has now given schools more latitude in arranging NIL opportunities for athletes and communicating with collectives. In April, Florida Victorious took over as UF’s exclusive NIL arm, streamlining opportunities for athletes in one organization. Founded by Costa Farms owner Jose Costa and run by Harvard Business School graduate Nate Barbera, Florida Victorious has restored confidence in UF’s ability to compete in the NIL arena.
“We’ve had a significant uptick in support since the public launch,” Barbera said. “We’ve got really positive feedback. We’ve had great attendance at events and activities that we’re doing, fundraising is going well. We are nowhere near where we want to be but we’re a lot further than where we were. So, I’d say we’re on a great trajectory.”
For basketball, the impact was immediate. Florida Victorious signed promising All-SEC freshman guard Riley Kugel to an NIL deal last April, which convinced Kugel to return for his sophomore season rather than start a professional basketball career. In football, Florida Victorious sponsored UF’s spring game and an open practice last August at The Swamp, capped by a meet and greet event and autograph session with players after the practice ended.
“I like winning and Gator Nation likes winning and Jose Costa, our chairman and founder, likes winning,” Barbera said. “We get into things because we know we can win. We don’t get into things to do things halfway.
“So, we’re in it to win. And what does win mean? Build the best organization to create the best opportunities for our student athletes, the most impact we can in the community.”
For decades since NCAA sanctions were leveled against Florida football and basketball in the 1980s, UF was a model for NCAA compliance. Espousing the motto “a championship experience with integrity” Florida ran a tight ship under both former athletic director Jeremy Foley and current AD Stricklin. Florida's football program went more than 30 years without being sanctioned by the NCAA until Mullen received a show cause for Level II recruiting violations in 2020.
Now encouraging boosters to provide financial opportunities for student-athletes has represented a significant culture shift.
“There’s a lot of education, a lot of conversations and in many cases, it’s two to three to four conversations before people kind of wrap their head around the new norm,” Barbera said. “And not it’s not just bad, it’s needed. We need to be creating significant and exciting NIL opportunities for student-athletes in order for us to have a chance to compete and win at the highest level.”
Are Billy Napier and Todd Golden the right coaches to lead UF forward?
A strong argument could be made that both Napier and Golden didn’t inherit the most complete rosters from Mullen and White. It’s never easy when holdover players need to adjust to new standards and new systems. Basketball suffered a tough break when All-SEC forward Colin Castleton, UF’s best player, suffered a season-ending injury in February against Ole Miss. Florida went 2-5 in the final seven games without him.
In football, Napier inherited a talented but inexperienced and erratic quarterback in Anthony Richardson. There was little depth on both sides of the ball. As injuries mounted in November, UF struggled to stay competitive, dropping its final three games.
“I don’t think he inherited a complete disaster of a program,” Finebaum said. “I don’t think he inherited a program that was heading to probation and had been decimated across the board. I mean, he got a mid-level program that could have won a few big games and lost a lot of games and he made the least out of it in his first year.”
As the youngest SEC men's basketball coach last season at 37, Golden endured some growing pains. UF lost by 29 points to West Virginia in the final game of the PK85 Tournament in Portland, Ore., and 21 points to eventual national champion UConn at home.
In conference play, Florida was a respectable 9-9, with the high point coming in a 67-54 upset of No. 2 Tennessee. Golden had a strong record against first-year coaches in the conference, going a combined 5-1 against LSU’s Matt McMahon, South Carolina’s Lamont Paris, Missouri’s Dennis Gates and Mississippi State’s Chris Jans. But against more established coaches in the league, Golden went 1-5 against Kentucky’s John Calipari, Tennessee’s Rick Barnes, Auburn’s Brice Pearl and Texas A&M’s Buzz Williams.
Golden is bright, personable and with his staff uses analytics as a significant tool in gameplans and personnel decisions. He added nine new players during the offseason, including a promising transfer portal class that 247 Sports ranked 12th nationally.
“When you get an opportunity like this, it’s gonna take a little time,” Golden said. “Rick Barnes has been here seven or eight years. Bruce has been here seven or eight years. Cal’s been here double-figure years. And even those guys, specifically, with the exception of Cal — I think they had a great team his first year —but those other guys, it took them a little bit to get to the tournament, to build a program.”
Napier has put together the nation’s third-rated recruiting class in 2024, with the jewel of the class being five-star dual threat quarterback D.J. Lagway from Willis, Texas. Florida will open the season Thursday at No. 14 Utah with Wisconsin transfer Graham Mertz at quarterback. Ultimately, Napier will need Willis and much of the 2024 class to pan out to build sustainable success. Lagway passed for 425 yards and 7 TDs and rushed for another touchdown in his high school season opener last Friday.
“It’s going to come down to what he does on the field,” Finebaum said. “Momentum-wise Florida has a lot of things going for it, but I’m a realist. I’ve covered a lot of teams that always won in the winter time, in recruiting, and never could make it happen when it really mattered in the football season.”
The SEC will expand from 14 to 16 teams next season with the addition of two more storied, complete athletic programs in Oklahoma and Texas. That will make the path to a league title even tougher. Still, Stricklin said he’s confident in support from both the UF’s Board of Trustees and Gator Boosters Inc. to stay patient and give coaches the time that’s needed to build championship-caliber programs.
“With those of us who are in the UAA, we focus on the job at hand and trying to support our teams, our coaches,” Stricklin said. “All the other stuff is, I think, fun for fans. It’s part of what makes it enjoyable to follow the sports and express frustration when things aren’t going well or excitement when things are going well. But internally, you kind of focus on the job.”
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Florida Gators football, basketball trying to reclaim championship form
