Thomas GoldKamp seems to think so.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- After a wild start to Florida-Georgia week, GatorBait.net tries to put into perspective exactly what happened and why the answer to a seemingly innocuous question on Monday caught fire the way it did.
Jim McElwain has his team 3-3 in his third season on the heels of back-to-back SEC East division titles. And yet somehow his seat is absolutely on fire.
How?
The relationship between McElwain and the higher-ups in the University Athletic Association has been strained since the early days of his tenure. And that relationship largely has failed to improved even with a new athletics director taking over last fall.
McElwain inherited a program that was lagging far behind in the college football facilities arms race. It took all of a few weeks for him to shell the administration, going public to Pat Forde in a piece for Yahoo! Sports that essentially bombed the state of the facilities and pushed for immediate upgrades.
Florida was already in the process of updating some of its facilities. An indoor practice facility was already in the works when McElwain took over. However, the plan was not for a full-length indoor practice field, and McElwain went to bat for an immediate overhaul to the plans to do it the right way. It worked.
But while McElwain was right to push for facilities overhauls and the administration really needed that healthy push at the time, his aggressive nature with the administration extended beyond just a healthy push for change.
His repeated snipes at athletics director Jeremy Foley's spending habits both on camera and off were not well received. Again, there's some level where a football coach pushing for spending for his program is healthy, but repeated shots in public were excessive and even somewhat detrimental to the program's recruiting unnecessarily.
As far back as the spring of 2015 there were several sources within the UAA that indicated to GatorBait.net that there was already a sense of "buyer's remorse" when it came to McElwain.
He simply never fit the culture at Florida, a culture of every program supporting the others and working together toward a common goal of high-level success across the board in athletics. A culture where championship-caliber coaches in many sports shared ideas about how to get their athletes to perform at the highest level.
McElwain sometimes sent staff proxies to meetings of the program's head coaches, something that rubbed many the wrong way. At one point in his first year, sources told GatorBait.net that he commandeered the soccer facilities for a practice without informing anyone.
Little things like that, demonstrating that McElwain felt he answered to no one, continued to happen to create a growing divide between the coach and others within the UAA.
Things didn't improve when Foley retired and new athletics director Scott Stricklin took over.
As Matt Hayes of Saturday Down South noted, McElwain's questioning of the administration never stopped despite a change in leadership. He openly questioned the administration's commitment during a press conference at the Outback Bowl in 2016, despite the fact that a plan for around $100 million in facility upgrades had already been announced and Stricklin was looking at ways to tweak the plan for the best long-term outcome for the football program.
Compounding the issue, McElwain is not the type to take advice from others, generally speaking. He struggles to take blame when things go wrong.
The outward signs of the rift between McElwain and the administration surfaced Monday in that oddly worded statement from the UAA about a meeting following the death threat allegations. "He provided no additional details."
The university was certainly covering itself from liability to some degree, but even so the comments caused more than a few to wonder exactly what was going on.
And McElwain did little to mend fences Wednesday when he questioned what that statement even was.
The bottom line is that the relationship between McElwain and the administration is extremely strained, and having a team on the verge of falling below .500 with no obvious solutions for the offense in Year 3 and a seeming unwillingness to change methods doesn't help. Add in a fanbase that seems ready to throw him out with the bath water and the picture isn't pretty.
The rub, of course, is that McElwain still has five years left on his contract and Florida would owe him $2.5 million per year remaining. $12.5 million and change to fire him now, if it can't find cause.
It seems clear at this point that McElwain isn't the long-term solution at Florida. He's not a good fit and he has, much through his own doing, put himself in a position where recruiting to fix the problem areas will remain a gigantic uphill climb.
Winning back the fanbase after throwing it under the bus in one fell swoop on Monday seems an even taller task.
So the real question is how Florida and McElwain part ways. Can they find an amiable solution or work a reduced buyout? Did that out-of-the-blue suggestion from Dennis Dodd about McElwain getting fed up and taking the Oregon State job have something more to it?
That remains to be seen.
But with his comments on Monday, McElwain lifted the curtain on an ugly relationship and a poor fit that has been masked by just enough winning in a bad SEC East over the last two years. The winning is gone and now the relationships are all that is left to fall back on.
And as McElwain found out Monday evening, there aren't many warm and fuzzies for him in the administration.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- After a wild start to Florida-Georgia week, GatorBait.net tries to put into perspective exactly what happened and why the answer to a seemingly innocuous question on Monday caught fire the way it did.
Jim McElwain has his team 3-3 in his third season on the heels of back-to-back SEC East division titles. And yet somehow his seat is absolutely on fire.
How?
The relationship between McElwain and the higher-ups in the University Athletic Association has been strained since the early days of his tenure. And that relationship largely has failed to improved even with a new athletics director taking over last fall.
McElwain inherited a program that was lagging far behind in the college football facilities arms race. It took all of a few weeks for him to shell the administration, going public to Pat Forde in a piece for Yahoo! Sports that essentially bombed the state of the facilities and pushed for immediate upgrades.
Florida was already in the process of updating some of its facilities. An indoor practice facility was already in the works when McElwain took over. However, the plan was not for a full-length indoor practice field, and McElwain went to bat for an immediate overhaul to the plans to do it the right way. It worked.
But while McElwain was right to push for facilities overhauls and the administration really needed that healthy push at the time, his aggressive nature with the administration extended beyond just a healthy push for change.
His repeated snipes at athletics director Jeremy Foley's spending habits both on camera and off were not well received. Again, there's some level where a football coach pushing for spending for his program is healthy, but repeated shots in public were excessive and even somewhat detrimental to the program's recruiting unnecessarily.
As far back as the spring of 2015 there were several sources within the UAA that indicated to GatorBait.net that there was already a sense of "buyer's remorse" when it came to McElwain.
He simply never fit the culture at Florida, a culture of every program supporting the others and working together toward a common goal of high-level success across the board in athletics. A culture where championship-caliber coaches in many sports shared ideas about how to get their athletes to perform at the highest level.
McElwain sometimes sent staff proxies to meetings of the program's head coaches, something that rubbed many the wrong way. At one point in his first year, sources told GatorBait.net that he commandeered the soccer facilities for a practice without informing anyone.
Little things like that, demonstrating that McElwain felt he answered to no one, continued to happen to create a growing divide between the coach and others within the UAA.
Things didn't improve when Foley retired and new athletics director Scott Stricklin took over.
As Matt Hayes of Saturday Down South noted, McElwain's questioning of the administration never stopped despite a change in leadership. He openly questioned the administration's commitment during a press conference at the Outback Bowl in 2016, despite the fact that a plan for around $100 million in facility upgrades had already been announced and Stricklin was looking at ways to tweak the plan for the best long-term outcome for the football program.
Compounding the issue, McElwain is not the type to take advice from others, generally speaking. He struggles to take blame when things go wrong.
The outward signs of the rift between McElwain and the administration surfaced Monday in that oddly worded statement from the UAA about a meeting following the death threat allegations. "He provided no additional details."
The university was certainly covering itself from liability to some degree, but even so the comments caused more than a few to wonder exactly what was going on.
And McElwain did little to mend fences Wednesday when he questioned what that statement even was.
The bottom line is that the relationship between McElwain and the administration is extremely strained, and having a team on the verge of falling below .500 with no obvious solutions for the offense in Year 3 and a seeming unwillingness to change methods doesn't help. Add in a fanbase that seems ready to throw him out with the bath water and the picture isn't pretty.
The rub, of course, is that McElwain still has five years left on his contract and Florida would owe him $2.5 million per year remaining. $12.5 million and change to fire him now, if it can't find cause.
It seems clear at this point that McElwain isn't the long-term solution at Florida. He's not a good fit and he has, much through his own doing, put himself in a position where recruiting to fix the problem areas will remain a gigantic uphill climb.
Winning back the fanbase after throwing it under the bus in one fell swoop on Monday seems an even taller task.
So the real question is how Florida and McElwain part ways. Can they find an amiable solution or work a reduced buyout? Did that out-of-the-blue suggestion from Dennis Dodd about McElwain getting fed up and taking the Oregon State job have something more to it?
That remains to be seen.
But with his comments on Monday, McElwain lifted the curtain on an ugly relationship and a poor fit that has been masked by just enough winning in a bad SEC East over the last two years. The winning is gone and now the relationships are all that is left to fall back on.
And as McElwain found out Monday evening, there aren't many warm and fuzzies for him in the administration.
