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Gator Duo Best in the Country?

By FLATigersFan

Larry Vettel of GatorCountry.com posted an article today discussing why he felt that Billy Donovan and Urban Meyer make up the best basketball/football coaching tandem in the country. This, of course, is just another non-quantifiable discussion, debate, argument (whatever) you can have regarding college athletics, but Larry did a fairly good job of breaking things down among some of the best coaches in the country...despite the fact that I don't really agree with some of the spots he has certain schools.

To start off, I'd like to just present his list, starting from #10 all the way down to #1:

  1. Notre Dame: Charlie Weiss & Mike Brey
  2. Tennessee: Phil Fulmer & Bruce Pearl
  3. LSU: Les Miles & John Brady
  4. North Carolina: Butch Davis & Roy Williams
  5. Southern Cal: Pete Carroll & Tim Floyd
  6. Oklahoma: Bob Stoops & Jeff Capel
  7. Texas: Mack Brown & Rick Barnes
  8. Louisville: Bobby Petrino & Rick Pitino
  9. Ohio State: Jim Tressel & Thad Matta
  10. Florida: Urban Meyer & Billy Donovan
Larry's deciding factor in this debate would be the age of the coaches:
And both Florida mentors are young. Donovan is just 41 and Meyer is ten months older. That indicates the Gator programs could be in the same great hands for another decade or more.

It's tough to argue against Donovan and Meyer as the best coaching combo, although the Buckeyes have a very strong argument on their side.  Matta is building an extremely strong program at Ohio State in only his third season at the helm, and Tressel already has several wins and a national title on his resume.  Overall, I don't know if I could say one is better than the other...even though I would lean towards Billy D and Meyer because of a minimal amount of homerism.

The one change I would make to this list would be to push UNC forward to #5, putting them ahead of Oklahoma and USC.  Butch Davis is an incredible program builder based on his tenure at Miami, and should be able to recruit his way to a pretty successful program in the ACC in years to come.  And of course you have Roy Williams, who has proven himself to be one of the best college basketball coaches in a long time.  Not to take anything away from Oklahoma or USC, but I think those combos are being carried by the two football coaches (Carroll and Stoops).  A couple schools that probably deserve some recognition as well would be Georgia and West Virginia, as well.

Fun conversation to have, even though it is just so tough to decide how these rankings would end up.  There are just so many to choose from, and it really depends on how you define success in many situations.  Either way I'm very happy to see Meyer and Donovan get recognition, as I feel they deserve it.