GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The story goes that the first time the Gators needed an interim football coach to finish out a season, they had the men’s golf coach to thank for having a good one handy.

A different route led to Sunday when Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin let Billy Napier go and replaced him with interim coach Billy Gonzales with five regular-season games remaining. Gonzales has long ties to the Gators and a good reputation in the industry, so Stricklin had a reliable scouting report, although JC Deacon is a football fan.

But let’s get back to Galen Hall, Florida’s original interim coach. In 1984, after 11 seasons at Oklahoma, Hall received a call from then-UF men’s golf coach Lynn Blevins, an OU graduate who had come to Florida from Oklahoma. Blevins had gotten to know Hall in Norman, and when Mike Shanahan left as UF’s offensive coordinator after the ’83 season, Shanahan mentioned to head coach Charley Pell that Hall might be a good candidate to consider.

Hence, Blevins was called upon to ring his former Sooners colleague and gauge Hall’s interest.

Meanwhile, Sooners football coach Barry Switzer made his feelings known about Hall’s credentials.

“If you want to hire a flashy coach, go to Hollywood,” Switzer told reporters. “If you want to hire a coach who can get the job done, hire Galen Hall.”

Hall was interested, took the job in February, a few weeks after getting married to his wife, Elaine, and after three games at Florida that fall, found himself as Pell’s replacement when an NCAA investigation hit the program.

Switzer was right. Some said Hall resembled rumpled PGA golfer Miller Barber, Captain Kangaroo, or the team bus driver more than a head coach, but Hall’s promotion delivered immediate results as the leader of a team that was honored last year at The Swamp.

Hall’s performance in that memorable ’84 season remains the best interim job in program history — one of the best in college football history — and earned him the permanent job.

Gonzales is taking over later in the season, but the Gators have an opportunity to turn their season around and finish with a winning record and bowl invitation if they can stack some wins.

For now, no one knows what will happen. What we do know, as Hall proved, is sometimes the most darned things happen when you least expect them.

 

CHARTING THE GATORS

Billy Gonzales, the veteran Florida receivers coach, is the seventh interim UF head coach in the program’s history and fourth in the past 11 seasons. Here’s how the previous fared:

 

COACH	YEAR	REPLACED	RECORD	BUZZ
Galen Hall	1984	Charley Pell	8-0	Steamrolled to the program’s first SEC title, which was eventually vacated by the league because of NCAA violations under Pell.
Gary Darnell	1989	Galen Hall	3-4	More NCAA issues —minor ones in retrospect under Hall —paved the way for the hiring of Steve Spurrier on Dec. 31, 1989.
Charlie Strong	2004	Ron Zook	0-1	Like Gonzales, a veteran Gators assistant before being named interim head coach. He took over preparations heading into the Chick-fil-A Bowl, an eventual 27-10 loss to Miami.
D.J. Durkin	2014	Will Muschamp	1-0	Defeated East Carolina 28-20 in Birmingham Bowl; later became head coach at Maryland in 2016-17.
Randy Shannon	2017	Jim McElwain	1-3	His only win was 36-7 over UAB at The Swamp the week before losing to FSU in the regular-season finale.
Greg Knox	2021	Dan Mullen	1-1	Led Gators to a feel-good win over FSU before a loss to UCF in the Gasparilla Bowl.
Billy Gonzales	2025	Billy Napier	TBD	Veteran UF assistant gets first shot at serving as a head coach in his 31-year coaching career.

 

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