Florida cancels media availability after contentious press conference
Something strange is going on within Florida’s athletic department. On Monday, coach Dan Mullen took the podium like he would any other week to talk about the Gators’ upcoming game against the South Carolina Gamecocks.
But very quickly, you could tell Mullen was not happy with the line of questioning. The first question from Gators Breakdown’s David Waters asked Mullen about recruiting and if the team needs to change things up. Mullen quickly cut him off.
“We’re in the season now,” Mullen responded. “We’ll do recruiting after the season – when it gets to recruiting time we can talk about recruiting.”
It’s pretty obvious, or at least should be, that Mullen was trying to say he doesn’t want to talk about recruiting until after the season is over, not that he doesn’t recruit during the season. But the fact remains that for a coach who has struggled tremendously on that front, the optics of this answer aren’t great.
And the optics only got worse from there.
Florida’s communications team ended the press conference prematurely and without much warning at around just the 15-minute mark, and no players were made available immediately after. As someone who covered the team as a beat writer during the 2019 season, I can tell you that it’s unusual for players to not be made available after Mullen’s Monday pressers.
Things got even weirder, though, as the University Athletic Association released a statement later that day announcing that no players or coordinators would be made available for the rest of the week. Mullen would still be available on the Wednesday SEC Coaches Teleconference, but that would be the only media availability this week.
This is a strange step, and it has naturally welcomed quite a bit of speculation as to what may be going on. As the Tampa Bay Times’ Matt Baker wrote on Twitter, this is a step the program didn’t even take following Jim McElwain’s midseason firing in 2017.
I went and double-checked. #Gators made four players available the Monday after McElwain was fired. I've been in this role since 2015 and don't remember a game week where the only access was the head coach on Monday. It's possible I'm forgetting something, but I doubt it. https://t.co/8N6kp2BrVC
— Matt Baker (@MBakerTBTimes) November 1, 2021
Barring access to media is a drastic move, and it’s one that usually backfires on whoever is trying to attempt it (see Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley’s handling of the quarterback controversy between Spencer Rattler and Caleb Williams).
It’s hard to speculate what exactly all this means, but something strange seems to be going on in Gainesville.
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