Ask Will Muschamp if he is Nick Saban's Padawan, as an as yet unnamed reporter did at his Monday press conference, and you will be rewarded with this look.
That look (which is, for my money, just as good a Muschamp stare as the ones meant to kill varmints) is only part of Muschamp's fantastic answer to a question about whether there's anything personal about facing Saban, his long-time mentor. Thank goodness the Orlando Sentinel's Rachel George took and posted video of it: It is as must-watch as must-watch video of a press conference gets. (It's not technically unembeddable — see SportsGrid — but their work-around doesn't work with our platform.)
Muschamp clearly doesn't get the reference — to the term for an apprentice Jedi, as Luke Skywalker was in the original trilogy and Anakin Skywalker was in Episodes I-III — deflects it with folksy charm, and then refuses to give the reporter anything resembling a valuable quote on principle.
I love you, Coach Boom.
SB Nation's Jason Kirk beat me to the transcription of Muschamp's whole "Padawan" exchange.
Excuse the Star Wars reference, but you kind of have a master vs. Padawan thing going on between you and Nick. I mean what's the sentiment in tha-
WHAT'S A PADAWAN?
You've never seen Star Wars?
HAAA?
You guys ...
I WATCHED STAR WARS 1 AND AFTER THAT I WATCHED EMPIRE STRIKES BACK AND I AIN'T SEEN NOTHING AFTER THAT.
Well, uh ...
I DON'T KNOW WHAT A PADAWAN IS. YOU DIDN'T CALL ME A BAD NAME, DID YOU? I DON'T SPEAK FRENCH, EITHER.
You guys have a kind of master vs. student kind of thing going on. Is there any sentiment in that? I'm sure you learned a lot from Nick Saban.
SURE.
Can you talk a little bit about the sentiment of what your mindset is ...
MY MINDSET'S TO DO A GREAT JOB FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA ON SATURDAY.
If you're a Florida fan and you haven't realized that Will Muschamp is the funniest Gators football coach since Steve Spurrier, you're doing it wrong. If you're a Florida fan and you don't realize that Muschamp's "I don't speak French, either" bit is lamentable pandering to a crowd that is liable to think speaking French is a bad thing ... well, you're not necessarily doing it wrong, but you're not parsing Muschamp's words like I do.
On these two points, I think we can all agree: Muschamp's "Haaa" — which is actually more like a Kanye West-style "Hanh?" (some language in the video) — really lets you know that something great is about to happen, and Muschamp pronouncing it Ensire Strikes Back is just sublime.