John Parker Wilson on Pruitt

Honest question:

How many years / teams did Fulmer have the horses / schedule to play for, if not win a NC, and didn’t?

He gets immense credit for 98, and rightfully so....but that might not have been his best team, or the best chance he had to win the NC.

If true, then the full truth might be to say that he won one, but bungled others....perhaps one, a few or multiple.

95-96, 96-97, 99-00, 00-01 seem like good candidates for “misses”, purely off the top of my head.

 

National championships are hard to win.


Unless you're Nick Saban and Alabama.

 

Spurrier was better than Fulmer. Fulmer did piss away a lot of talent, but in the end, Spurrier was just better than he was too.

What pisses me off is letting Richt come in and take over the SEC East while Spurrier moonlighted in Washington.

 

The only one that really ticks me off is 2001, even though a killer Miami team was waiting at the end of the road. There's no reason that team shouldn't have been in the Rose Bowl. 1995 was a really damn good one, too. That half in the rain in Gainesville hurt as much as anything in the Swamp.

 

I still think we have the best chance against them in '01.

 

Difference is Florida’s QB play in 98 was atrocious.

 

Defense had a bit to do with that. However, they were missing the going down, off the wrong foot, wounded duck, bounced off a defender, caught for a conversion or touchdown plays.

 

Spurrier was certainly better, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have won one of those years.

 

We did beat him in one of those years listed.

 

I should have been more specific. We should have beaten him in one of the Peyton years.

 

95 and 96

 

The 99 team was loaded and failed to get to the SEC Championship game.

01 team was super loaded, too, and just failed against a backup QB in the SECCG.

After that, it was all meh.

 

That '99 team was full of early draft picks.

 

99 was an egregious waste of a roster

 

I don't fault the '99 team on Fulmer because I was there on campus that year and they seriously gave two [uck fay]s about everything once the Florida game ended. Well, other than doing something about Alex Brown. At that point, it was all about draft status.

 

One could reasonably fault Fulmer for that. Saban has about 10 guys every season that are going to be drafted in the upcoming draft, and he still manages to keep his teams focused.

 

Saban is himself insanely focused (one could even argue too much so [I wouldn't], as he nearly has a heart attack if there is a minor misstep in the final minute of a 49-3 victory in the midst of an undefeated season). Fulmer never had it like that and certainly didn't have anything close to that in the 2000s.

 

Fulmer works like heck though.

 

Saban, Osborne, Neyland and Bryant are the group that didn't get lazy after a few national championships.

Fulmer was a good, not great, coach

 

95 wasn't ready.

96 we didn't have the o line play.

97 should have been the year.

99 was a disaster

01 we don't win, but we should have been in rose bowl.