There are many Florida State fans who worry that Saturday may have been Jameis Winston’s final game as FSU’s quarterback.
Sadly, there are many, many more Florida fans who wish that Saturday’s 37-7 loss to FSU was Will Muschamp’s final game as the Gators’ head coach.
Winston’s yet-to-be-determined football future is based on the decision of the Tallahassee state attorney; Muschamp’s future has already been decided by UF athletic director Jeremy Foley.
For what seems like the 945th time.
It’s never good when the athletic director issues more votes of confidence for his coach in the last month than the coach has victories. If you’re scoring at home, Foley sent out his third “Will Muschamp is not getting fired” directive on Saturday, and this time it actually came before the game with Florida State. Foley, like most everybody else at the Swamp on Saturday, must have known what was about to transpire. Thus, the pre-emptive vote of confidence.
“This stinks, it stinks for all Gator fans,” Foley told a horde of reporters before the Gators ended this historically bad 4-8 season with their seventh straight loss. “… But I have total confidence in Coach Muschamp. I’ve made that very, very clear. We’ve gotta fix some things. When you have seasons like this, that’s what you do. You evaluate, you analyze and you fix things. You don’t panic.
“Obviously, it’s not acceptable. It’s not who we are. It’s not what we’re about. We’re confident we can fix it.”
It’s almost like Foley is playing the Bill Murray role in “Groundhog Day,” and the script remains the same. He wakes up to his radio alarm clock playing Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe.” He then heads over to the Swamp to watch another dysfunctional offensive performance, an embarrassing loss and then issues his head coach an obligatory vote of confidence.
It seemed almost pathetic that this five-touchdown loss to their arch-rivals didn’t really even seem to sting Gator Nation. In the wake of unprecedented home losses to Vanderbilt and Georgia Southern, Florida’s beleaguered fans are numb to the losing. It was almost as if they expected FSU to beat them by 60 and were OK with only losing by 30.
Thousands of Florida fans actually broke out in a rendition of “It’s Great to be a Florida Gator” as the powerhouse Seminoles pounded their team mid-way through the fourth quarter. Was this Gainesville or Whoville? I’m telling you, it was eerily like the Seussian residents of Whoville congregating in the town square and joyfully singing after the Grinch stole all of their Christmas presents and food.
Even the most ill-tempered gridiron Grinch would have had hard time not feeling at least a tinge of sympathy for the plight of Florida’s battered and beleaguered team. Muschamp’s cursed buzzard’s luck continued Saturday when his offensive game plan went kaput during Florida’s second possession of the game.
In an attempt to administer defibrillator paddles to their comatose offense, the Gators worked all week in practice on versatile flanker Trey Burton taking snaps at quarterback against the Seminoles. It’s no secret starting quarterback Skyler Mornhinweg began the year as a lightly regarded third-teamer and was forced into duty only because of injuries to Jeff Driskel and Tyler Murphy. Because Mornhinweg has been severely limited running UF’s offense, the plan was to run half the plays with Burton in the wildcat. But after a 50-yard run up the middle in the first quarter, Burton sprained his shoulder and was out for the rest of the game.
What’s new, right? When Burton went out Saturday, he joined a list of a dozen UF starters who were lost to season-ending injuries this year.
“It was a frustrating, difficult day that ends a frustrating, difficult season,” Muschamp said. “… Trey’s injury was a microcosm of our season. … It crushed us.”
Which is one of the reasons Foley is giving Muschamp a mulligan. The Gators’ embattled coach guaranteed Saturday that he will quickly fix the program and said definitively, “We will have a good football team next year — I will assure you of that.”
After a 4-8 record and the first losing season in 34 years, he better be right.
If this downward spiral continues into the first few games of 2014, Will Muschamp won’t be coaching the Gators when they play the Seminoles next season.
Jeremy Foley just issued his last vote of confidence.
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