The Florida Gators — in basketball as well as in football — might still be great again, and perhaps without missing very much time.
If Jim McElwain turns out to be another Urban Meyer-level gem from the Mountain West Conference who can turn around a program in two seasons, the folks in Gainesville will be very happy. Similarly, if athletic director Jeremy Foley can land Archie Miller or another similarly credentialed head basketball coach, Florida could continue to be a national power on the hardwood in the SEC.
Yet, it is impossible to deny that with the departure of Billy Donovan to the NBA and the Oklahoma City Thunder, a special chapter — in fact, the greatest chapter in the history of the University of Florida’s athletic program — has come to an end. If Steve Spurrier was the man who made Florida football and put it on the map, Billy Donovan was every bit that same figure for Florida basketball.
They’re both gone — not from hearts or minds or memories in Alachua County, but from the jobs that made them as head coaches and local icons in their respective sports. (Spurrier, it is reasonable to claim, is a national icon in college football. Donovan merits iconic status, but he might not be viewed that way in comparison with Coach K, Tom Izzo, or Rick Pitino.) Accordingly, this is weighty moment, a poignant point of passage in the life of Florida athletics.
One cannot look at everything Steve Spurrier did for the football side and then fail to conclude that Donovan’s tenure was any less influential in basketball. Though very different in temperament, accent, and in their ability to make instant headlines with a quote or press conference, Spurrier and Donovan will be forever linked as the men who changed the way Florida athletics is perceived… both within and beyond the SEC.
The story of Spurrier’s and Donovan’s runaway successes in Gainesville begins with the fact that Florida had achieved precious little in either pigskin or hoops before the 1980s, and when prosperity began to emerge, storm clouds still lingered.
In the 1980s, both programs began to slowly move forward — the football team won its first SEC title in 1984; the basketball team made its first-ever NCAA tournament appearance in 1987 under former national champion head coach Norm Sloan (North Carolina State, 1974). Yet, those successes were short-lived and, moreover, tainted. In football, coaches Charley Pell and Galen Hall both committed NCAA violations; the 1984 SEC title had to be vacated. In basketball, Sloan also committed NCAA violations and was given the boot. As an added basketball note, Lon Kruger made the school’s first Elite Eight and Final Four in a magical 1994 season, but he left three seasons later without improving recruiting to the point that the Gators could simply reload.
The point is plain: When Spurrier and Donovan both arrived on the scene, Florida football (on the last day of 1989) and basketball (in the autumn of 1996) yearned for take-charge coaches who could usher in a long period of steady and enduring excellence. Today — 25 years after the hiring of Spurrier and nearly 19 years after Donovan’s initial go-round in Gainesville — it is easy for everyone to see how magnificent both coaches were.
Steve Spurrier is, quite simply, one of the five best football coaches the SEC has ever produced. He belongs on the conference’s Mount Rushmore with the Bear, General Neyland, Johnny Vaught, and Nick Saban. He officially won six SEC titles, but unofficially claimed seven, given that Florida’s 1990 team conquered the SEC without any scandal-related taint attaching to the Head Ball Coach. His three consecutive 11-win seasons plus an SEC East title have made his South Carolina tenure — while not a home run — certainly a long double into the power alley. He captured a national title.
Donovan has won more national titles than Spurrier (2-1). It’s true that it took him a decade to attain greater postseason consistency and forge truly legendary accomplishments, but Donovan did indeed grow into the job as he accumulated more experience. When his not-as-good teams failed, they failed in big ways, but when he got his hands on coachable recruits, Donovan produced a body of work which deserves to be seen as on par with the very best in his profession.
Spurrier won four straight SEC titles from 1993 through 1996.
Donovan made four straight Elite Eights from 2011 through 2014.
Spurrier made back-to-back national championship game appearances in 1995 and 1996.
Donovan won back-to-back national titles in 2006 and 2007.
Florida football reached seven of the first nine SEC Championship Games under Spurrier.
Florida basketball won three straight SEC tournament titles from 2005 through 2007 under Donovan.
Spurrier produced Florida’s only unbeaten and untied regular season in 1995. (The school went 5-0-1 in 1911. Urban Meyer’s two national championship seasons involved regular-season losses in 2006 and 2008.)
Donovan coached Florida to the first 21-0 SEC basketball season (18-0 regular season, 3-0 conference tournament) in league history last year. Kentucky, of course, matched that feat this year.
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Who knows what the future will bring for Florida athletics? Before the Gator Nation worries about what’s ahead, it ought to realize that after so many decades of athletic poverty, two men transformed expectations for the Orange and Blue.
Steve Spurrier is a larger-than-life figure because of his personality, shaped by passions and hatreds that linger in the public memory when college football is discussed in the American South. Billy Donovan doesn’t have the same penchant for the easy quip or the calculated troll job, and since he coaches at a football school, his legend simply doesn’t cast as large a shadow over the rest of the college basketball world. Yet, while Spurrier and Donovan are remembered in different ways — and on different levels — at Florida, the fact that their Gator tenures are now both relegated to the past makes this weekend the end of the greatest chapter Florida athletics has ever known.
It gives one pause in GatorLand.
