Tennessee’s supposed one-time savior coach is in the job market. The Vols should root for Jon Gruden to be the next coach of the Florida Gators.
Now, let’s address two things. First, Florida’s current head coach, Billy Napier, still holds the head coaching position that Gruden would love. In fact, Napier is riding a bit of a wave after beating Mississippi State soundly on Sept. 21 and having a bye last week. The Gators will play Central Florida on Saturday. Then, things get tougher.
The Gators will play Tennessee, then Kentucky (which upset Ole Miss) on Saturday, followed by Georgia, Texas, LSU, Ole Miss and Florida State. Despite what the Gators did in Starkville last week, Florida will be underdogs in at least four of those games and possibly five. Kudos for the win against the Bulldogs, but Florida is still going to be looking for a football coach sooner rather than later.
Jon Gruden would love the Florida job and has a name in the state after leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl win in 2003. Gruden recently expressed fascination with coaching in college on The Dan Patrick Show, saying he’s been enamoured by NIL and the transfer portal. In other words, “Please hire me.” The ties to Florida are loose, but so were the ties to Tennessee. Remember all that mess?
There were a litany of asinine reasons why Gruden would take the Tennessee job. He was a graduate assistant at Tennessee. That’s where he met his wife, who was a Vol cheerleader. He owned land in Sevierville, Tenn. However, the biggest reason that Gruden’s name stayed in play for the Tennessee job is that he flirted with the Vols and liked to keep his name in play. He was never a real candidate to become Tennessee’s head coach.
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There are a couple of things at play before Florida fans act like drunken fools, as Tennessee’s fans did, over the thought of hiring Gruden. First, he still has a pending lawsuit against the NFL concerning leaked emails that – here’s the most important part – contained racist and homophobic slurs. Florida, nor any another school, needs that mess. Neither did Tennessee, even before reports of Gruden’s questionable character came to light.
As of now, Gruden is still labeled a racist and homophobe. He did that on his own and that’s not going to just fade into the past unless something completely unforeseen comes out of the NFL lawsuit. Even if it did, Gruden shouldn’t be considered a candidate for any top coaching job like Florida or Tennessee. Remember that, despite his shortcomings as a coach, there were some media types that chased him around McGee-Tyson Airport like stalkers with an addiction to the notion that Gruden was coming to Tennessee, which was never realistically in play.
There’s no reason to think Gruden would have even been a success at Tennessee or any other school in the NCAA. Gruden only coached in college for four seasons, which included two as a graduate assistant at Tennessee. Florida, however, won’t have much leverage.
That sounds familiar to Tennessee fans. The Gators, much like the Vols in the 2010’s, have an extremely poor infrastructure, which could make Gruden a name worth watching if Florida starts getting desperate for a coach. No, I don’t think Florida would ever hire Gruden, but Tennessee fans should root for it just like they rooted for the 61-year-old to become the Vols’ head coach during one of the many times Tennessee was looking for a new coach to head up its meandering program. Why?
If Florida ever hired Gruden, it would show that the Gators were desperate to make a “splash” hire, have no long-term direction and are facing many more years of mediocrity. Tennessee fans wanted the same thing, even though they didn’t know it. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Now, perhaps Florida will give Gruden a chance to be a savior in Gainesville. Good luck with that.
