SEC Media Days: Muschamp refuses to name Florida starter
The starting quarterback for the Florida Gators hasn’t been decided yet, according to coach Will Muschamp at the SEC Media Days.
He said in his press conference on Wednesday (Quotes from RedandBlack): “Offensively we obviously have a quarterback battle going on with Jacoby Brissett and Jeff Driskel….Two guys that are very even in their competition….They’re even going into fall camp….They’ll get equal reps I would like to name a starter before the season, but I’m not going to put a timetable on that. If we need to play both of them, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do what we need to do to win football games. Both guys have a similar skill set. So it’s not like there’s one offense we run with one and one with another, and there’s a possibility you could see both in the game at the same time. But they’re both guys that can contribute to our football team. Jeff and Jacoby have handled the competition very well. It’s been good for our football team. Their competition has made our football team better. I’m pleased with how that has worked.”
He added that he doesn’t feel under pressure to succeed at The Swamp in the second year of his tenure. “The pressure is what you put on yourself, and I put an awful lot on myself whether it’s year one or year 10,” he said. He added: “As far as from a job standpoint, I feel like I’m much more prepared just from the day-to-day operation of the things that come across your desk as a head coach. No different from year one as a coordinator to year two. Mack Brown said something to me when I was at Texas, had the opportunity to be the next head coach at Texas. I said, What makes you think I’m ready for this job? He said, You’re not. I’ve been a head coach at North Carolina for ten years and Appalachian State for one year and Tulane for four years, and I wasn’t ready for this job at Texas. Every job is different. Every job has its own set of circumstances, its own positives, its own negatives. That always made a lot of sense when he said that. You have to work yourself into the job when you get there.”
He added that he thought the play-off system was “fine”, as long as college football’s powers that be kept the bowl system going. “Really, the bowl system is a great reward for the student-athlete. It’s a great reward for the coach and his wife to go someplace for three, four days, stay in a nice hotel, have nice meals. A lot of our young people, they don’t get to do stuff like that. As long as they keep the bowl system within it, I think it’s fine. I think you have to go through it to figure out what you really like and don’t like.” He added: “Moving the games back to a reasonable time, not drifting all the way into January I think is really good. I’m fine with it. I didn’t have a whole lot of opposition to our previous system. Was it perfect? No. I was on both sides of that. At LSU we got into the game one time, fortunate enough to beat Oklahoma in ’03, and in ’08 at Texas we didn’t get in the game and we thought it wasn’t just. It is what it is. There are going to be arguments regardless in however they select the four teams. I’m fine with it.”