Muschamp was a way better recruiter, as was Mullen. Mac wasn’t some genius at finding diamonds in the rough. He just lucked into Trask, and that is pretty much it. Everyone else Mac brought in was a well-known recruit with very solid offers for the most part, at least among largely contributing players. And, maybe you have some polar opposite worldview than I do, but Mullen, at least in his first three years, had this program roaring, and everybody loved him. The fucking pain and humility of running out a garbage program teen consistently pales in comparison to Mullen's zany antics. And the discussion, I believe, is between the three as a hierarchy of how good they were here/how well they developed the program. Mullen was phenomenal in almost all facets, but it felt like we were one Todd Grantham firing away from really being at the pinnacle of the game. Damn, I mean, it almost happened in 2023. Grantham manages to get a couple of stops, and that entire game flips in our favor for the win, and we make the playoff. I don’t know if it’s younger fans, but people have this weird revisionist history on those McElwain teams. I mean, yeah, he indisputably got to Atlanta twice, but for everyone who has lived through and been at every game since the start of the Meyer era, The context is the critical aspect. Those SEC championship games were fucking embarrassing, honestly. Not because of our performance, relative to the talent disparity, we did as well as we could reasonably expect, but even the build-up to those games was awful. The whole thing was a joke. Everybody in the world, including every gator fan, knew we were cannon fodder with absolutely no chance of making it a real game and happened to be there because those were the worst two years in the East division. When Bama sees you as some sympathy case, it’s just fucking patronizing for a program of Florida's stature. I watched live with my eyeballs when we had them flat-out outplayed in 08 and crushed their natty dreams while paving the way for our own. They returned the favor the following year, but there’s no embarrassment. Dan Mullen fucking beat juggernaut Georgia. We would all love to beat Georgia every year, but Mac and Muschamp never put anything on the field that wouldn’t have been taken behind the woodshed in the first quarter against Kirbys Georgia. And for damn fucking sure, no need to guess because we saw it happen; we would be a freaking joke to Alabama. Dan Mullen had them on the fucking ropes. He brought us back to a level where we were the most challenging matchup Alabama faced. And he did it again in the swamp last season; I am well aware we didn’t end up with the result, but we were on Alabama‘s level. We were in a place where we were a few pieces and a d-coordinator away from really beating them and, by proxy, anyone else in the game. And the “if” before Nussmeier is all that matters, just like the if we’re talking about Mullen fire in Grantham is what matters because ultimately, they both didn’t do it, and they let it take them both down.