I'm sure Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley doesn't really love having to quell grumblings about Will Muschamp just 10 games into his tenure as the Gators' head coach, but, hey, here we are:
"I hate this for Gator Nation. I hate it for our coaching staff. I hate it for Will," said UF athletic director Jeremy Foley. "The guy is a competitor. He's got a fire in his belly. I've had to tell him, 'Will, I can't help you. It's unfortunate, but I can't help you get through this. The future only comes one day at a time.'
"For successful coaches, and I've been around them, the Billy Donovans of the world, the Kevin O'Sullivans of the world, the Urban Meyers, it's always one day at a time. We can't just fast-forward tomorrow and it will be next year. We'll go back to work. And we'll be okay. We'll be fine."
...
"He's going to keep working. He's going to keep grinding. There is no woe-is-me," Foley said. "He'll probably be back in his office tonight. When you work that hard, you have a chance to be really special."
All of this comes in response to St. Petersburg Times columnist John Romano, who writes "It may be way too soon for a referendum on Muschamp's fortunes as a head coach" and proceeds to case his own ballot.
We've discussed how short-sighted it is to write off Muschamp partway through a first year that is on track to be worse than the 8-5 marks that were the Gators' worst under Ron Zook and Urban Meyer. (It's convenient how we forget that Meyer was 8-5 last year, isn't it?) We'll probably continue to discuss that after the Gators finish 8-5 or 7-6 or 6-7 or 5-7; five losses is too many to overlook for most fans who got used to a team that lost seven games and won two national championships over four years in the recent past.
All I'm going to say on Muschamp's status, though, is this: Jeremy Foley hired Billy Donovan, and Urban Meyer, and Kevin O'Sullivan, and Tim Walton, and Becky Burleigh, and Amanda O'Leary. His misses are Ron Zook, Carolyn Peck, and maybe Andy Lopez. I'm going to trust Foley on this one.
Via Only Gators.