Florida football coach Ron Zook seems like a good guy.
He is a fiery, passionate coach who treats his players well and everyone around him with respect.
Unfortunately, nice guys don’t always win. And not winning at one of the most respected football programs in the country equals disaster.
Zook is obviously under some heat. The Gators are 3-3 on the season – a record that just does not sit well with the Gator nation.
But Zook receives some treatment that is just downright cruel.
As many people probably have heard of by now, an alumnus of the UF started a Web site fireronzook.com right around the time Zook took over for Florida legend Steve Spurrier, who bolted the college level after more than a decade of wild success for the NFL’s Washington Redskins.
Normally, a little Web site on the vast network known as the world wide web would not make a splash on the national scene.
But for some reason, the Web site has made waves.
It has been noticed by SportsCenter, Pardon the Interruption, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and several other nationally known publications.
It has a message board to vent frustrations, a sermon written whenever the editor feels necessary, a fun with Zook section, and more amazing than anything, has been visited by more than one million people according to the ticker on the Web site.
This all from a Web site that was started before Zook even coached a game.
In the Spurrier era from 1990-2001, the Gators lost a grand total of five games in the friendly confines on “The Swamp.”
Through a season-and-a-half under Zook, the once-feared Swamp has become more like a wave pool, with Florida already dropping four on its home field under Zook.
Another interesting tidbit is that Zook was defensive coordinator of Florida under Spurrier from 1991-93. In 1994, he was demoted to special teams coordinator and nickel back coach. Hiring a man as the head coach after he was demoted at that same school seems questionable.
Now back to the Web site.
After Florida squeezed out a victory over Kentucky on Sept. 27, Florida cornerback Keiwan Ratliff said something to the Orlando Sentinel that should alarm the higher ups at Florida.
“If we’d have lost this game, FireRonZook.com would have blown up.”
Unfortunately for Zook, a loss to Kentucky would not have made much of a difference. A lot of people in Gator land already have their mind made up, and it rests in the name of the now infamous Web site.