Multiple outlets have now reported that Will Muschamp is out at Florida. No huge surprise there after he had been on the hot seat really all year and blew a late lead against South Carolina on Saturday.
Some quick thoughts on how it relates to UT (feel free to chime in with any of your own in the comments):
Even though the Vols were never able to knock Muschamp off, I think it’s a bad thing for Tennessee overall. Coaching transition generally hurts a program on some levels, but I’m not sure that’ll really be the case for the Gators. Overall roster talent was never the issue with Muschamp. He recruited at a high level and there were athletes all over the field. Muschamp was just never able to put it all together.
He’s another example of a talented coordinator who lacked the overall skills to run the entire organization. I never really blamed Florida for the the hire. He had a lot qualities you look for in a HC, but it obviously never worked out.
I don’t know who Florida’s going to hire – Mullen, Freeze, Gundy, Patterson, Harbaugh, Stoops and many others have been thrown out there. But, regardless, I’ll bet he’ll be better than Muschamp and a lot of the pieces will already be in place. The recruiting base and the support system will be there the second the new coach walks in the door. As long as they don’t pull another Muschamp/Zook hire, Florida should be back very soon. They’re not even that far – just a few plays from competing in the SEC East this year. It wouldn’t stun me to see the Vols and Gators seriously competing for the East again in the near future.
From a recruiting standpoint, not a ton of immediate fallout involving the Vols. Tennessee has offered Florida commitment Mike Horton, an offensive linemen, so we’ll see if they involved more there. One other intriguing option is offensive lineman George Brown Jr. from Cincinnati, a Florida commitment who doesn’t have a UT offer at this point. He’s a 6-6, 260-pound range prospect from an area that Jones is familiar with.
With the Vols looking for offensive tackle-types and having a good history of putting weight on and developing them, it’ll be interesting to see if the Vols re-visit his recruitment any. They may have already completely passed, but expect the staff to leave no stone unturned in looking for more o-linemen to finish out this class.
This is the time of the season that the coaching carousel starts changing and recruiting is always changing. The new Florida staff may get involved with some of UT’s guys as well, so it’ll be a fun couple of months as the East gets shook up a little bit.
