Colorful "feel good" article, but sorry, I don't buy it. I agree that Zook was one of the best, if not THE best recruiter we've ever had, and he was even a half-way decent DC, but head coach? Nah, he was in over his head and he knew it. Yeah, Meyer inherited Zook's stellar recruits, but at least he knew what to do with them. They would've been mediocre if the Zooker had been coaching them in '06.
If Mikey is making a pitch to get the Zooker involved in Florida athletics, I hope it is STRICTLY as a recruiter and not as one of the assistants. Randy -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jeannene Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2012 4:26 PM To: GatorNews Subject: [gatornews] Ron Zook on Will Muschamp: 'I don't want to see happen to him what happened to me' Ron Zook on Will Muschamp: 'I don't want to see happen to him what happened to me' Former UF, Illinois coach enjoying life on the lake Mike Bianchi SPORTS COMMENTARY 4:52 p.m. EST, March 10, 2012 LAKE WEIR - Ron Zook is sitting on his back porch, looking out over one of the most beautiful lakes in Central Florida with his little dog Francis at his feet. "It's a different sunset every night," says Zooker, the former head coach at the University of Florida. "It doesn't get much better than this." It's just Zook and his wife, Denise, now living in the dream house they built in the middle of paradise. Their two daughters - Jacquelyn and Casey - both got married over the summer, one of them in a little country church right down the stretch of two-lane blacktop that takes you through the middle of orange groves and past a roadside stand advertising collard greens and farm-fresh eggs for sale. For the first time in more than a decade, there are no recruits for Zook to pursue, no boosters to glad-hand, no media to rip him, no fans to flame the message boards and no websites to call for his job. The negativity - or the "noise in the system," as he used to call it - has finally been muted, and Zook is loving the sounds of silence. He hasn't decided yet whether he will coach again, but you know he will. He's a young 57 and looks like he's in better shape than some of the players he used to coach. He water-skis regularly, works out at a local YMCA and makes the drive to Tampa every so often to watch tape and talk schemes with his good friend: ESPN analyst and former Tampa Bay Bucs coach Jon Gruden. He has a state-of-the-art computer system on order that will allow him to watch high-def football video in the confines of his own home. When I knocked on this door a few days ago, he was on the porch going through a notebook filled with ball plays. Check out pictures from the 2012 NBA All-Star game. "I don't know if I've ever had this much fun just studying football," he says. "When you're a head coach, there are so many other responsibilities." Zook was most recently fired after seven up-and-down years at Illinois - a coaching graveyard where everybody eventually gets fired. This was his landing spot after 21/2 of the most overly criticized, overly scrutinized seasons in college-football-coaching history. As the years have passed since he was run out of Florida, I've often wondered whether Zook got a fair shake - from fans, from administrators and from those of us in the media. When you see where the program is now after Urban Meyer left it in a mess, the Zook years are starting to look pretty good. Zook's teams were never as pathetic as UF has been the past two seasons, when the Gators won just 15 games and trotted out offenses that were unwatchable. As the years roll by, UF fans more and more seem to appreciate what Zook did for the program. Even though he didn't even make it through three seasons, he recruited his tail off, restocked the cupboard and left Meyer the nucleus of a national-title team. Meyer, in turn, left Will Muschamp the nucleus of the Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl team. Zook even reached out to Muschamp, who naturally took some criticism from spoiled Gator fans after he went 7-6 in his inaugural season. "Will is a good guy and a good football coach," Zook says. "You just have to give him a chance to recruit and get his people in there. The program is not where it should be from a talent standpoint. Anything I can do to help him, I'll do because I don't want to see happen to him what happened to me." Maybe it's time to rewrite the book on Zook at UF. He had the misfortune of succeeding the iconic Steve Spurrier, who left an incredible legacy but not an incredible amount of talent. It didn't help that Zook, then the defensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints, had never been a head coach before and was viewed as a compromise hire by his good friend Florida AD Jeremy Foley. By the time he left New Orleans and landed in Gainesville, the first website of its kind - FireRonZook.com - had already been booted up. After his first year on the job, a former boss - Pittsburgh Steelers coach Bill Cowher - came to visit him in Gainesville. As he sat in Zook's office, Cowher said, "Zooker, you've really screwed up this profession. Now they've got a FireBillCowher.com up in Pittsburgh." Zook just shakes his head. "That's my legacy to the profession," he says. "I'm the first guy who had a FireTheCoach.com website. I had no chance. From the day I walked into the introductory press conference, I was fired." Two years after Zook was axed, Meyer won the national title with 21 of 22 Zook recruits starting for the team. Zook still wonders what might have happened if he had been able to survive longer than 21/2 years at UF. Would he have won a national title? I don't know," he says, "but I sure would have liked to have had the opportunity to try." Meyer, of course, quit at Florida after things started going bad because he claimed he wanted to spend more time with his family. He took a job at ESPN weeks later and then took the Ohio State job within months. In contrast, Zook wouldn't even quit on the Gators after they quit on him. Even though he was advised against it by his friends in the profession, he insisted on finishing out the 2004 season even though he was fired midyear. In his final game, he did something not even Spurrier had done: He beat FSU in Tallahassee and got carried off the field on the shoulders of his players. "I was at the right place at the wrong time," Zook says of his tumultuous tenure at UF. But the other evening, he was at the right place at exactly the right time. His wife was inside the house when Zooker came running in. "Denise! Denise!" he said excitedly. "You've got to come out and see this. It is the most incredible thing you've ever seen." It was a brilliant sunset turning the blue sky into orange. Orange and Blue. And you know the best thing about it? Listen, can you hear it? No noise in the system. [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @BianchiWrites. Listen to his radio show every weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. on 740 AM. Copyright C 2012, Orlando Sentinel -- GATORS: ONE VOICE ON SATURDAY - NO VOICE ON SUNDAY! 1996 National Football Champions | 2006 National Basketball Champions 2006 National Football Champions | 2007 National Basketball Champions 2008 National Football Champions | Three Heisman Trophy winners: Steve Spurrier (1966), Danny Wuerffel (1996), Tim Tebow (2007) - Visit our website at www.gatornet.us -- GATORS: ONE VOICE ON SATURDAY - NO VOICE ON SUNDAY! 1996 National Football Champions | 2006 National Basketball Champions 2006 National Football Champions | 2007 National Basketball Champions 2008 National Football Champions | Three Heisman Trophy winners: Steve Spurrier (1966), Danny Wuerffel (1996), Tim Tebow (2007) - Visit our website at www.gatornet.us
