Gator Talk - Coaching Transitions At Florida
Sunday, October 10, 2010 | Football
By Norm Carlson, Assistant Athletics Director/Gator Historian
The modern era of Florida football began in 1950 under burly Bob Woodruff, who learned his gridiron skills under General Bob Neyland at Tennessee, and built his teams around defense and the kicking game.
He inherited a mess. The Gators had finished 13-24-2 (.359) and managed only two SEC wins the previous four seasons. Looking back at the start of SEC football in 1933, the UF league record of 18-57-6 (.259) was exceeded in futility only by Sewanee, which dropped out after 37-consecutive defeats in eight years.
Woodruff, who described himself as the “oratorical equivalent of the blocked punt,” didn't have a grand relationship with the state's tough media delegation, but he produced gritty, physical teams that finished 29-32-2 (.476) in the conference over 10 seasons. He also put the Florida program on sound footing as its Director of Athletics.
Gator fans and the media clamored for more excitement out of the Orange and Blue, and it finally cost Woodruff his job after the 1959 season. Ray Graves, assistant head coach at Georgia Tech the previous 13 years, took over in 1960.
Graves installed a wide-open offense and won the crowd over in the third game of that first season by going for two points to beat 10th-ranked Georgia Tech, 18-17. That Florida team won a then-school-record nine games and earned a bid to the Gator Bowl.
In 1969, he coached a gangly 185-pound end out of Monticello who went on to become an All-American and then an All-Pro defensive end with the Los Angeles Rams. Jack Youngblood is now one of two former Gators enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Graves had an outstanding 10-year stay at Florida, winning 70 games, including four of the five bowl contests in which the Gators participated. He finished the decade with a 14-13 victory over SEC Champion Tennessee and then retired to concentrate on his duties as athletic director.
Ironically, the man he had beaten in that bowl game became his replacement. Doug Dickey, a bright rising star in coaching at Tennessee, returned to his alma mater in Gainesville, where he once quarterbacked the Gators in the early 1950's. Dickey took UF to four bowl games and within a game of winning SEC titles in 1974, 1975 and 1976. His nine-year record was 58-43-2 (.573).
Dickey's replacement was Charley Pell, who came from Clemson and energized Florida football facility funding and recruiting. He was 33-26-3 (.556), but was relieved of his duties three games into the 1984 season due to an on-going NCAA investigation. Galen Hall took over as the interim coach and earned the permanent job after the Gators won their next nine games.
Hall's team finished the season in first place in the SEC, but the title was vacated by the conference presidents the following May after the school was placed on probation. Hall coached midway of the 1989 season, compiling a mark of 40-18-1 (.686). He resigned in the midst of an NCAA investigation and Gary Darnell finished the season as Interim Head Coach with a 3-4 (.429) record.
