Say what you will about Will Muschamp's tenure at Florida, but he's never been anything but direct and forthright. Deep into his fourth season in Gainesville, Muschamp is 25-19 at Florida and 15-14 in the SEC.
These are the facts of the situation, and Muschamp has not hid from them.
Two years of inexplicable yet familiar frustrations came to a head in the Oct. 18 loss to Missouri, where the Gators fell behind 42-0 and ultimately lost 42-13 despite allowing 119 yards of total offense.
"It's like I told the team after the [Missouri] game Sunday, 'As a fan, you buy a ticket and reserve the right to boo. They buy the ticket, they can come boo and chant and holler and scream and start a website and all that stuff.' As a coach or a player when you come to the University of Florida, that's something you've got to accept. It's all part of it," Muschamp said in a candid interview with the Orlando Sentinel.
Then Muschamp went home and had an even more painful conversation with his 9-year-old son, Whit.
"After the Missouri game, my wife, Carol, said that I needed to sit down with Whit and have a talk with him about why the fans were chanting that his dad should be fired," Muschamp says. "That's not an easy conversation or a fun conversation, but like I told Whit: 'Unfortunately, when you don't win, there's one person in charge and that's me. And when you don't win at a place like UF, people want to voice their opinion and you have to deal with that.' He [Whit] didn't like it, but it was a good teaching moment."
Football is a bottom-line business that richly rewards those who succeed and coldly spits out everyone else. Muschamp would be the last person to deny that. But it's a bottom-line business with real people living through incredible ups and harrowing downs.
Sitting at 3-3, Florida heads to Jacksonville Saturday for a date with No. 9 Georgia. Muschamp has famously never won the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, going 0-for-4 against Florida as a Georgia safety, and 0-3 against his alma mater as Florida's head coach. Muschamp wouldn't say getting a win over the Bulldogs would save his job, but a loss will almost certainly end it.
"I won't say save my job, but it would certainly help our situation. I'm not going to put everything on one game, but it's obviously a huge game for us."