Devoe had been fired by Tn the season before and was sitting at home enjoying a big payout.  He had been a crud at Tn and I had disliked him for years.  I sit just behind the visitors' bench and had watched him abuse Tn players for years.  It took a while for him to dismantle the strong program left to him by Ray Mears, but he succeeded.  He had only one desirable quality when he was hired, he was unemployed.

Norm Sloan was an SOB,  not a dirty cheat like Charley Pell, but Arnsberger had a mandate to run a squeaky clean program.  That mandate is the reason Monty Towe didn't get the job and is one reason Devoe would not have been hired if he had been on staff.  The other assistants were Kenny McCranie and Norm's son-in-law whose name I don't remember.

Devoe was hired at Navy a year or so after being dumped at UF.  Some people said he'd do better with the sort of guys who attended the Academy, but it turned out he also mistreated players who had good discipline before they met him.

Arnsbarger was a successful coach, but never coached a single win for any Gator team.  Archer was his protege who followed him at LSU and turned a strong team into a consistent loser.  He has been a mediocre assistant at several poor programs since then.  Before Spurrier was hired here, he had more experience than Archer as a head coach and much more success.  By the end of the '89 season, LSU under Archer was beginning to fail, Duke under Spurrier was an exciting success.

From the very first moment, events have shown that Arnsbarger's judgment was 100% dead wrong about Archer and Devoe.  Arnsbarger was clean and relatively successful as AD, and he hired Lon Krueger, a wonderful man who had good short term success as coach.  I'm not as hard on Arnsbarger as some of the critics here, but Devoe was a terrible mistake and Archer would have been a stinker.  It doesn't matter what Arnsbarger did elsewhere, but it's OK to say he was decent as AD.  After all he did step aside to let Foley take over.  Just don't pretend Devoe can be excused and don't suggest Spurrier wasn't what UF badly needed.