Following a 20-17 loss at the hands of Ole Miss at The Swamp in Gainesville, Fla., Ron Zook is feeling the pressure that comes with being the Gators’ football coach.
“As I told the team, we have backed ourselves into a hole,” Zook said Tuesday at his weekly press conference. “We let one slip away and now we have to go get one. LSU is a very talented team and in a lot of areas one of the best teams we have played. It will be a great challenge for us and our guys are excited about going out there.”
Zook has faced criticism from the media and fans since he was hired before the 2002 season. A Web site, www.fireronzook.com, called for Zook’s immediate dismissal before he ever coached a game for the Gators. Zook’s record so far at UF is 11-8 (3-3 this season), and the Gators find themselves unranked in either poll for the first time since 1989.
The Gators have already lost to two ranked teams this season, No. 3 Miami and No. 12 Tennessee. The schedule does not get any easier for UF with three consecutive games against ranked teams, at No. 6 LSU, at No. 7 Arkansas and No. 8 Georgia in Jacksonville, Fla.
Zook said he thinks the Gators will prove their character throughout the rest of the season.
“I was really impressed last night with practice,” Zook said. “When times get tough you really find out what kind of football team you really have.”
Gators senior linebacker Reid Fleming said the criticism of Zook is unfair. He said the players should take some responsibility.
“It’s terrible, it’s not his fault,” Fleming said. “Nothing has changed since I’ve been here from coach [Steve] Spurrier to coach Zook. If the players go out there and execute what the coaches call, with the game plan we have, then we have a great chance to win, but we haven’t been doing that.”
Freshman quarterback Chris Leak said Zook has not changed his approach to the game despite the pressure.
“Coach Zook has always been an energetic guy,” Leak said. “He would have the same attitude as he does now if we were 5-0.”
Senior linebacker Matt Farrior said that many people on the UF campus have lost faith in the UF football program. He said the players need to rally around each other with this time of difficulty.
“There is a lot of noise out there saying we are not very good, that we’re not the Gators of the past,” Farrior said. “You just need to block that out and stay focused.
“We can’t get down on ourselves. It would be easy but we just need to stay together as one.”
LSU senior offensive tackle Rodney Reed said he remembers a similar experience when former Tigers coach Gerry DiNardo was under fire during the 1999 season before he was eventually dismissed.
“It’s bad when you’re playing in Tiger Stadium and you’re not playing very well,” Reed said.
Reed said the team tried to overcome the conflict by depending on one another.
“I thought that year it was more just the players really focusing on each other and that didn’t really affect us a whole lot,” Reed said. “We just lost a lot of close games in the fourth quarter and just couldn’t finish games.”
From a coaching perspective, LSU coach Nick Saban said that a team shows its strength by overcoming adversity. He said coaches have to control what they can control.
“I’ve been criticized for lots of things in the past whether it was here or some place else,” Saban said. “You can’t always control every circumstance that you’d like to control, but I think the key thing is that you try to control and focus on the things that you can affect.”
Saban said when a team has failures it has to overcome them by blocking out the outside world and relying on each other.
“As coaches we depend on the players and as players they depend on each other,” Saban said. “Bad things are always going to happen at some point and time in a football game or during the course of a season, and I think your ability to overcome adversity and adapt to those things is a real key to being successful.
“You’re expectations have to stay the same. You can’t doubt yourself.”