Florida was not an elite program in 1969. It had gone to one Sugar Bowl in program history as a 3-loss unranked team and one Orange Bowl as an 11th ranked 2-loss team. Otherwise, it went to a handful of Gator Bowls as a decent but not elite team.

It's first conference championship was 1991. Up until the Spurrier hire, the coaches you would consider to be failures basically performed about as expected for the program's history. Spurrier greatly elevated the program's standing. It wasn't just a successful hire. It was a grand slam. I agree that it ought to be able to do better than it is now. But it basically followed the same formula Georgia did with Smart. Georgia just got lucky. And Florida got guys who started off okay and flamed out.