A race with no finish line

Sporting News, The, Feb 4, 2002 by Matt Hayes

The words are frantically flying as they always do. One thought overrunning the next, each begging for a hint of hesitation in Ron Zook's gotta-have-it, gotta-get-it world. This is high energy. The calendar is loaded, the meter is ticking and that damn clock has to be fast, doesn't it?

"Hectic" Zook says of his new job. And it's only beginning.

It was less than a month ago that Jeremy Foley, the Florida Gators' highly successful athletic director, looked at Zook and summed up a move that shocked the senses: "I just put my career in your hands."

The new football coach at Florida never has been a head coach at any level. The new football coach in the best job in college football--with its combination of facilities, money and recruiting base--wasn't the first choice to replace Gators icon Steve Spurrier. Or the second choice.

And in many minds, shouldn't have been third.

The new football coach at Florida--drum roll, please--makes less money than the basketball coach.

"Everyone has their opinion" Zook says. "Thank God, Jeremy has his."

This can't be easy for Zook. He is chasing a legend, and there is no finish line. The man he replaces turned the stodgy, stoic Southeastern Conference sideways for 12 seasons, then left on a whim to become the highest-paid coach in the NFL.

Meanwhile, Zook's best friend hired him after two very public no thank yous from Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops and Broncos coach Mike Shanahan. The reaction in Gator Nation was not all positive. Foley received hate mail, and hours after the hire, this website sprang up: www.fireronzook.com. People were dancing in Baton Rouge and Knoxville and all around the SEC.

Ding, dong! The witch is dead.

"An inconceivable hire" says one former SEC coach.

Then this from Spurrier, on Zook's chances for success: "Time will tell."

There goes Ron Zook, the whirling, spiraling, never-in-neutral coach who can't understand the forecasts for doom. He is assembling an impressive staff, including former Marshall offensive coordinator Ed Zaunbrecher, who--get this--likely will throw the ball more than Spurrier's pass-happy offense did.

Zook is recruiting and landing blue-chip high school stars like he did when he was an assistant at Florida in the early 1990s. Even Spurrier once said no one recruits like Zook; that if recruiting won games, Zook would have several Sears trophies in his possession. But recruiting and coaching are separate entities (see: Mack Brown), and conventional wisdom says career assistants can't take over top five programs and win big.

But why should Zook be any different from Phillip Fulmer or Lloyd Carr or Larry Coker--three former career assistants who took over major programs and flourished? All three have won national titles, including Coker's championship this season in his first year as head coach at Miami.

Zook's resume includes stops at Murray State and Ohio State and a few others in between, then a rocky trip under Spurrier in the early '90s, when Zook was demoted from defensive coordinator to special teams coach after the 1993 season. Two years later, Zook left for the NFL. After stops in Pittsburgh and Kansas City, he became the Saints' defensive coordinator in 2000.

The Saints quit down the stretch this season, and Zook eventually found himself face-to-face with his friend interviewing for the job of a lifetime.

"I have fired friends because I was putting this university first," Foley says. "I would not make a hire that I know wouldn't be successful."

There goes Ron Zook, once a skinny kid who took a beating from his brothers while growing up and playing a football game they called Cry and Bleed. The object: winning through unreasonable adversity.

Sounds familiar.

Get our take on the stories that are taking shape in the major conferences for the 2002 season at www.sportingnews.com/cfootball.> RELATED ARTICLE: inside dish

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