Actually, this is just my gratuitous lets-get-round-the-camp-fire-and-sing-songs-about-Zook backlash post. The one that goes against the grain to end this incessant love-fest, and of course, to spread the Christian gospel to the heathen savages in this New World.. To: those who find any kind of solace in this anti-Spurrier, “we never recruited” sentimentality and the other “it’s not Zook’s fault” sympathizers, Can I cuddle with you guys? Please? I want your cute little pudgy arms wrapped around my trembling body. Your soft breath against my neck soothes the blood rushing to the gapping lacerations in my heart. F&%k off!! Your sniveling is making me sick. In case you guys are wondering, Spurrier accomplished a lot while he was our head coach. Zook has accomplished next to nothing in his entire career. To say, in whatever tone-of-voice or in whatever logical argument, that Zook’s problems are a result of Spurrier’s regime is an intensely pathetic and sad one. It’s like blaming the car manufacturer for your 90-mph collision when you were coming home drunk. Spurrier gift-wrapped Rex Grossman, Taylor Jacobs and an entire football team that were more than capable of being competitive in every game last year. Spurrier may have not had strong recruiting years at certain positions, but it is impossible to even address any argument of the sort due to a lot of factors. Anyone who points at numbers is a fool. Offensive and defensive linemen are the hardest positions to assess on the high school level. Recruiting also runs in cycles from one year to the next. Those coaches, whom you like to mock so well because they left “the cupboard bare”, had recruited for over a decade and knew what kind of players were good and who were hype. They were seasoned. You want to blame Spurrier for recruiting? Fine. Take every single player who was not signed last year and hand them their walking papers. That’s right. Go ahead and do that. Had Spurrier recruited OL and DL the past two seasons, they would have been redshirt freshmen, freshmen or true sophomores right now. Don’t pin your hopes on the last two years and stop pointing at numbers. These kids can and have played better than they are right now. So you’re going to blame a seasoned head football coach for the problems a rookie, first-year, head coach is facing? Idiots. Is it that hard to blame Zook? Does it defy your core-values to face the probable reality that Zook might not know exactly what he is doing? Maybe? Perchance? That possibility is more likely than preaching that Spurrier said on a radio station that “the team would lose five games this year.” Oh, so you’re going to base your hopes on something a former coach might have said to maybe help lower the fan-expectations and pressure off a first-time coach? I guess that is when pre-season chatter should be taken seriously? The reality is, this team is/was capable of being competitive in every game this year. It is time for you people to deal with the fact that maybe the problem with this Windows XP system, to use the previous analogy, is user error. Keep in mind that Zook took over the University of Florida, not South Florida in Tampa. To: those who want to spout off about their fandom and shun those who are asking for Zook to be fired. I completely agree with your “positions”. I think those who were fans before 1990 understand something that maybe the rest of us don’t. I’m willing to look at this season as a learning experience for a first-year crew. When I started my job at the Star-Banner, it took me 4 hours to do then what I can now do in 30 minutes. All the intelligence in the world does not make up for real game-coaching experience. Spurrier never started his head-coaching career at UF. He started back in the mid-80s with a professional team, and then went on to a Duke team with no talent. Had Spurrier started his coaching career in 1990, maybe he would have only lasted 2-3 years. His polishing didn’t take place in front of 85,000 people. More like the 85 duke fans who came to the game for free pizza. On the other hand, Shut the F&%k up with the arrogance you have to condemn anyone else. You’re pious and conceited in how you deal with our fellow board members. I’m sick of this love-fest and pilling on with people who are doing nothing more than venting. Ghost Gator, he’s a nice guy and he’s stuck with us in the past, longer than any bandwagon fan on this board. So why the venom? PC Gator too. They’re good guys. They’re fans like the rest of us. I’m tired of this, “If you don’t support Zook, go and get your baby bottle and poo-poo in your pants because you’re not a good fan.” To: those who want Zook or any of the coaching staff fired. What happens if you get what you want? When does the revolving door of coaching stop? At some point you have to grin-and-bear these growing pains. Maybe Zook wasn’t the best hire in the world. So what. Life sometimes sucks that way. The jury is still out. I’m wondering if he had spent a couple years as a head coach, whether we would be more competitive. After all, he is a new guy. He may be smart and know the fundamentals, but that doesn’t mean he’s really good at teaching those things or expressing what he wants. I think he’s trying things out, some things aren’t working, some are. He’s learning and wisdom only comes from experience. So yeah, it’ll be a couple years. It’s like the laundry list of QB’s for the Bucs during their franchise. How many great QB’s started their NFL careers in Tampa by sucking? They came off to a terrible rookie years, so they got traded and BOOM, they light it up somewhere else. I think a lot of that is because they were learning in Tampa, but the Bucs never cashed in their later years. How pathetic is it that Steve Young could still be wearing a Bucs uniform, but someone hit the panic button early on? I wish I had that back. No, I don’t think Zook is going to be a great head coach somewhere else if we lose him, but I do think the same principle applies. If we keep hiring and firing guys, we’ll only be creating seasoned head coaches who never really got to give us their full potential. That would suck. Is he pissing away talent? Right now, I would say most definitely. Is that drawback worth the risk? We’ll all find out in time.