Our former coach Steve Spurrier took his turn today with the SEC Media and was in his typical form as a quote machine:
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Defense is certainly a lot stronger in our conference than back in the early '90s. Obviously when we started in the early '90s at Florida, nobody threw it around the way everybody does now.
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We finished I think ninth in offense last year. That was the lowest I've ever had a team in the conference, but that's just where we are. If we get up in the top half this year, that would be very good for us.
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I don't know who's going to be the best quarterback this year. I have no idea. Hopefully our guy will be considered. Hopefully Blake Mitchell will come around and play better. Played pretty well last year, but he certainly can play better.
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Certainly teams are more innovative now than in the early '90s. Every team tries to have a pretty strong passing game compared to back then. If you could just run the ball and play defense, that was the old saying to win the SEC. Now, it was interesting
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We got a big stadium. Seats a little over 80,000. We hope to add about 8,000 or so the next couple or so, double-deck the other end zone. We sell all of our tickets. We have a capital campaign fund going. We're going to have to raise ticket price as little bit to get in line with the other conference schools.
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I guess my background is a little different than most of these college coaches. My first head job was the USFL. We had 18 games, actually three little pre-season scrimmages. Most years we stayed healthy all the way through. It wasn't that big a deal. I think it's easy to play 12 games. The Division I-A A guys, when they get in playoffs, I think they play 14 or 15. It's no problem at all for them. I watch basketball, girls basketball, they'll play four straight nights at the SEC tournament. I don't hear them bitching and complaining that they're playing too much (smiling).
So I think it's easy to play 12 games. Obviously, two of our teams will play 14 because two of them will play in the SEC championship and the Bowl game. That's not too many.
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I found out with those eight or nine months off after the NFL deal that coaching was a lot more fun than being retired.
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We know that we had an extreme amount of good fortune with all the teams ahead of us losing to get in position to play FSU again to win the national championship. Of course, the only one in school history. Those players are special did me and to all Gators. Certainly I feel responsibility to go back and see those guys since we're not playing and we do have a little time off that Saturday.
Myself, some of the coaches that were down there, we're just going to fly in and out that day, probably leave after the first quarter of the game, something like that.