Mike Bianchi: Tennessee is McElwain’s biggest game.
Jim McElwain claims that Saturday’s game against Tennessee is no more important than other games he’s competed in as head coach of the Florida Gators.
In typical clichéd coachspeak on Wednesday, McElwain attempted to downplay the importance of not only winning the game on Saturday but of calming the waters that became stormy even before Hurricane Irma blew through town a few days ago.
“Every game is critical,” McElwain said. “I know where we’re going. I know the things we’re building.”
If Coach Mac wants to continue building in a positive, productive manner, he will win Saturday. While he’s partially right that every game is big at a school like UF, he’s either being naïve or coy if he doesn’t realize this game is probably the biggest since he arrived in Gainesville.
Not necessarily because of what a victory would mean, but because of what a loss would incite. And what it would incite is Gator Nation unleashing the most resounding, confounding
flurry of coaching criticism McElwain has ever endured.
It shouldn’t be this way because McElwain has, in my mind, done enough to build up some significant goodwill among UF fans. He has, after all, taken the Gators to the SEC Championship Game in his first two seasons as head coach and turned UF into the second-best program in a one-team league. Let’s face it, it’s no secret that SEC now stands for “Saban Enabling Conference.”
If you think the reaction was negative after Florida got pummeled by Michigan 33-17 in the season opener, think about what it will be like if the Gators start out 0-2 for the first time since 1971. That’s right, the Gators haven’t lost their first two games since the year Disney World opened and Janis Joplin was topping the charts with “Me and Bobby McGee.”
Before the season opened, I brought up a phrase — “noise in the system” — that perpetually embattled former UF coach Ron Zook always used to describe the noxious negativity in Gainesville when Gator Nation turned on its coach. If the Gators lose on Saturday and the offense continues to struggle, that noise will sound like a Metallica concert and drown out everything McElwain has done in his first two seasons at UF.
UF athletic director Scott Stricklin is one of the more active college administrators on social media and he admits his Twitter feed was not pretty during the second half of the Michigan game.
“One of the great things about social media is you get a chance to interact with fans in real time,” Stricklin said. “And, sometimes, one of the most unfortunate things about social media is the fans get a chance to interact with you in real time. … I see it [criticism], I absorb it and I don’t really respond to it in real time because I need some time to get away and let the heat of the moment pass.
“I encourage people if they’re active on social media to count to 10 before you hit the send button because there are some mean and hateful things said in the heat of moment about studentathletes and coaches. That’s unfortunate. … But we try to understand that the root of that passion is that people care about the Gators, and that’s what makes this place so special.”
The problem for McElwain is this passionate fan base isn’t always a rational fan base. For instance, the Gators are going into the Tennessee game with nine players apparently still suspended and under investigation for credit card fraud. In addition, the massive impact of Hurricane Irma, which has disrupted all of our lives, has no doubt hindered UF’s preparation for the game.
But grumpy Gator fans sitting at home with no electricity aren’t in any mood for excuses. This is why it’s imperative that McElwain’s offense start showing improvement Saturday against a Tennessee defense that yielded 41 points and 655 yards to Georgia Tech in the season opener. If the offense continues to struggle, coordinator Doug Nussmeier, who is moving up to the press box to call plays on Saturday, might just be relieved of his play-calling duties altogether.
Nussmeier’s last three offenses have been ranked 116th, 111th and 112th in the country. As I told Paul Finebaum on his TV show Wednesday, “If your ratings were as bad as Nussmeier’s offense, you wouldn’t be at the SEC Network, you’d be back in Alabama writing columns for the Montgomery Advertiser.” Florida-Tennessee. It’s not just a big game. It’s the biggest game Jim McElwain has ever coached.