Paul Finebaum offers brutal truth about the Florida head coach job

Dan Mullen finished his four-year tenure at the University of Florida with a 34-15 overall record, and his .694 win percentage is the third-highest of any Florida coach since 1924, trailing only Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer. But it wasn’t enough to keep him at the helm of the Gators, as Mullen was fired on Sunday.

Florida is a one of the most difficult jobs in the country, ESPN college football analyst Paul Finebaum argues. Given the university’s track record, Finebaum seems to have a point.

“The Florida people are cannibalistic. They do eat their own. And what I’m about to tell you, you already know, but I’ll say it anyways: outside of Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer, Florida is where coaches go to get fired,” Finebaum said Sunday on The ESPN College Football Podcast. “Ron Zook, who followed Spurrier got fired. He wasn’t a bad coach. He beat FSU his last year there, which used to be the decider. And then, Muschamp turned out to be a very expensive disaster, and McElwain was even worse. And now Mullen. So, since Urban Meyer, we have now seen Mullen, Muschamp, McElwain and Mullen all fired. The three musketeers.”

Zook was hired by Florida in 2002 to take over for Spurrier, as Finebaum noted, and he amassed a 37-23 record at the helm. Florida made a bowl game in each of his three seasons, but Zook was fired before the Gators’ 2004 Peach Bowl loss. Years later, Florida hired Muschamp to take over for Meyer; Muschamp lasted four years, finishing with a 28-21 overall record and just two bowl game appearances, both losses. His $6.3 million buyout, at the time, was one of the largest that college football had seen, but that figure hardly compares to Mullen’s.

Florida’s decision to fire Mullen cost the university $12 million in buyout fees, excluding both the price of buying out the rest of his staff and hiring an entirely new staff.

Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin held a press conference shortly after Mullen’s firing, and in his discussion, he only contributed to Finebaum’s point: the Florida head coaching job carries immensely high, perhaps unreasonable expectations.

“It goes back to — this is a place where we want to win championships. We’ve won 251 SEC championships in our history as a university. That’s nearly 100 more than the next-closest SEC school,” Stricklin said. “We won 41 national championships across all sports, three in the sport of football. We want someone that has high expectations and big aspirations that match the University of Florida, a place that’s a top-five public university. I think it’s easily a top-five athletic program. We want someone who wants to be a part of that and feels like they have a plan where they can come in and achieve at a high, high level and do so for a long period of time.”

Stricklin in his opening statement also revealed details of his initial conversation with Mullen. He said that he offered Mullen the opportunity to coach Florida’s upcoming rivalry game against Florida State, a game in which both teams are looking to claim bowl eligibility, but Mullen declined, saying he didn’t want to be a distraction for the team.

Mullen’s tenure ended with a 24-23 overtime loss to Missouri, a game in which the Tigers upended the Gators with a game-winning two-point conversion. Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz proceeded to troll Mullen in the postgame press conference, using the same costume that Mullen did just one year ago, when Florida beat Missouri.