Adams: Replacing a legend ... Zook never had a chance

Zook never had a chance. Guys replacing legends rarely do.

Not since Ray Perkins replaced Bear Bryant at Alabama has an SEC football coach had a tougher act to follow than Zook, who was fired Monday as Florida's head coach. Zook had to replace Steve Spurrier, who won a Heisman Trophy as a player and a national championship as a coach at Florida. How do you beat that parlay?

Spurrier wasn't just the best coach in Florida history. He was the only Florida coach ever to win an SEC championship in football. And he won six.

Competing against a coaching legend was tough enough. Then came the legendary candidates. Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley first tried to hire Bob Stoops, who had just won a national championship at Oklahoma, and then pursued Mike Shanahan, who had won two Super Bowls at Denver.

Stoops, Shanahan, Zook: Who's the odd man in that threesome?

Foley offered the job to two of the best coaches in the country, then offered it to someone who had never been a head coach. What about all the coaches in between?

No wonder Zook had a legion of detractors long before he lost his first game. Fireronzook.com was off and running the day Foley made the biggest mistake of his administrative career.

Florida is no place for a rookie head coach. Neither is any other upper-echelon SEC football program.

Never mind what Phillip Fulmer has accomplished at the University of Tennessee. He's the exception, not the rule.

Fulmer had been an assistant coach and player at UT before he became a rookie head coach at the same school. He also had the support of the players and the fans after succeeding as an interim head coach while coach Johnny Majors was recuperating from heart surgery.

Forget Fulmer and think of all the first-time head coaches who have failed at the other elite football programs in the SEC -- Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida and LSU -- in the past 25 years.

LSU hired two first-time head coaches, Jerry Stovall and Mike Archer. Each was fired after four years, which is how long first-timers Perkins and DuBose lasted at Alabama.

Galen Hall, who was a first-time head coach at Florida, was dismissed in the middle of his sixth season. Ray Goff, who lost more SEC games than he won, fared about as well at Georgia as Doug Barfield did at Auburn.

An SEC athletic director needs to know more than sports management. He needs to know history.

And if he wants to take his chances on a long-shot hire, he should do it in volleyball.

Zook worked hard and recruited well. He just didn't win enough games. Back-to-back five-loss seasons were bad enough. Losing to Mississippi State was worse. The Bulldogs were regarded as one of the worst teams in the country before they upset Florida on Saturday.

Two days later, Foley fired a coach who never should have been hired. Zook and his staff will finish out the season -- then leave their successors with a championship-caliber team. How ironic is that?

Zook didn't win enough games, but he won over enough talented players. Florida will lose only six starters from this team, and some of its top players, like quarterback Chris Leak and linebacker Channing Crowder, are sophomores. Spurrier could win a conference championship with the kind of talent Florida has returning.

But where do you find another Spurrier?

John Adams may be reached at 865-342-6284 or adamsj@knews.com.