Dear Scott Stricklin and all associated with the search for Florida’s fifth football coach since 2011: No more messing around. Go get Lane Kiffin.
Or at least try.
And if you fail, go get Eli Drinkwitz.
Or at least try. And keep trying until you hire someone who is a proven winner at the power-conference level.
Put yourself in the minds of your rivals, such as the team you will play in two weeks. Think, if you were Georgia, who would you not want Florida to hire? And then do everything you can to hire that person.
You’ve tried the other routes. When Urban Meyer left, you went with the hotshot assistant who knew the SEC. But Will Muschamp just wasn’t made out to be a head coach.
Then you tried the former SEC assistant who had won at a lower level. But Jim McElwain wasn’t a good fit.
Lane Kiffin is 50-19 in five-plus years at Ole Miss. (Brett Davis / Imagn Images)
Then you went with the closest you’ve come to what you need to do now: Dan Mullen, who had been a Florida assistant and won at Mississippi State — seven out of nine winning seasons, and had worked for Stricklin there. But as it turned out, Mullen’s lukewarm approach to recruiting in the name of system and development, while successful at Mississippi State, did not work at Florida.
And so then you went the other direction and hired Billy Napier, a recruiting maven from his days in the SEC, who had won as a Sun Belt head coach. But while he did upgrade the talent level, the head coaching didn’t translate to the SEC.
And so now here you are. It’s time to stop messing around.
Kiffin may not want to leave Ole Miss. Or may not want to take Florida. He’s doing well where he is, where he has administrative and financial support to build a roster. He may wonder why four straight coaches have failed in Gainesville.
But he’s also ambitious. He came of age when Steve Spurrier brought Florida to the forefront of college football. He was a rising assistant when Meyer won a couple of national titles there — then battled Meyer in his one season at Tennessee.
Should Florida be wary of Kiffin? Maybe, but for all his quirks, he’s showing he knows how to win in the portal/paying players era. He still knows how to run an offense. He would bring attention to the Gators, make them must-see football again.
Make him say no.
And if he does, turn to Drinkwitz, who also likes to talk, is also an offensive-minded coach who knows how to build a roster in this era. And who is also winning in the SEC.
Ah, you may say, wouldn’t that just be going the Mullen route again? Drinkwitz is 44-25 overall and 24-21 in the SEC, versus Mullen going 69-46 overall and 33-39 in the SEC. It can be argued that it’s much harder to win at Mississippi State than at Missouri. You could even discount Drinkwitz’s one-year stint at Appalachian State (12-1), given he took over a strong program.
The counter-argument is that Drinkwitz is a stronger recruiter. He has leveraged NIL to bring talent to Missouri. His last two high school classes ranked 20th in the nation. He kept five-star receiver Luther Burden at home in the 2022 high school class. He’s managed the portal, bringing in quarterback Beau Pribula (Penn State) and edge rusher Damon Wilson (Georgia) this past offseason.
Give him Florida’s tradition and resources, and he should at least be able to recruit like Napier has. And the evidence is that Drinkwitz could outcoach him. Missouri has had two straight 10-win seasons and is 6-1 this year. It has the SEC’s second-ranked defense, doing quite fine two years after LSU hired away its defensive coordinator.
Of course, Drinkwitz may also like where he is. So what happens if you strike out with him?
Then maybe you go the Jon Sumrall (Tulane) route. Or you try to find the next Kirby Smart or Dan Lanning. Maybe that’s Will Stein, the 36-year-old Oregon offensive coordinator. But Florida, you’ve tried those routes before. And your athletic director has struck out twice on hires now.
It’s time for as close to a sure thing as you can get. It’s time to do your best to make a sitting, successful power-conference coach say yes to bringing Florida back to glory. Kiffin should be the first call. Drinkwitz should be the next. And there are some other names out there who deserve at least some back-channel talk.
You are Florida. Maybe it’s asking too much to return to the dominant days of Spurrier and Meyer, but nobody’s getting back to that level of dominance anymore, at least not in this SEC. What you can do at Florida is consistent contention for the College Football Playoff. For all their failures, Muschamp, McElwain and Mullen each had at least one 10-win season in Gainesville. It was sustaining it that was the problem. And the longer you go without hiring the right guy, the more people forget the Spurrier and Meyer glory days. The harder it’ll get to reclaim them.
This is a huge hire, Florida. No more time for gambles. Go get yourself the guy you know — and your rivals know — will win.