Despite Georgia football’s recent dominance, Dan Mullen continues to take shots at Kirby Smart’s program. Unfortunately for Florida, the gap between them isn’t close enough for this to end well for the Gators.
Death, taxes and Florida fans getting ahead of themselves. As usual, Twitter has been set ablaze with hot takes between Georgia and Florida fans.
Despite Georgia football winning the SEC East twice and beating Florida by a combined 54 points the past two seasons, Florida fans seem determined to prove that the gap between the two programs is closing.
Many of the recent hot takes about the subject can be attributed to Dan Mullen’s recent comments.
"“I’d think we did a poor job recruiting if guys were coming in and then immediately walking out the door because it was something different than what they thought it would be and we lied to them during recruiting, or we sold them on a dream that wasn’t true,” Mullen stated."
The comment was presumably a shot at Georgia over the Justin Fields situation. Then Mullen made a snide remark about the Bulldogs playing Florida State in 2027-2028.
"“We play Florida State every year, right? Georgia is playing them,” Mullen commented. “They’re trying to catch up to us, I guess. Toughen their schedule.”"
Mullen may not want to start a conversation about recruiting. When he said “I’d think we did a poor job recruiting if guys were coming in and then immediately walking out the door…”, he could have stopped after saying “We did a poor job recruiting.”
For Georgia, Justin Fields was a luxury. Head coach Kirby Smart has locked up three consecutive top three recruiting classes and looking to make it a fourth with the 2020 class. While Florida has yet to have a class ranked higher than 9th in that same span.
Additionally, Florida hasn’t signed a five-star recruit since 2015. Dan Mullen and the Florida program as a whole has not been able to recruit on Kirby’s level.
Mullen was off-base once again with his “catch up to us” comment about Georgia’s schedule.
Florida has refused to leave the state for an out-of-conference matchup. The Gators have played just regular season out-of-conference game outside the state of Florida since 1991, and they lost to Michigan by three scores.
They have not won a regular season out-of-conference game outside the state of Florida since 1989 when they beat the elite dynasty known as Memphis State. The last time Florida beat a winning team in a non-conference regular-season game outside of Florida was 1947.
As for Georgia, the Bulldogs have more out-of-conference wins outside of their state in the last two years than Florida has in the past three decades. So no, Dan Mullen, Georgia not trying to “toughen their schedule” to “catch up” with Florida.
The gap between the two programs has never been more significant. Georgia still leads the series by eight, they have beaten the Gators by a combined 54 points over the past two seasons, and Kirby Smart is recruiting circles around Dan Mullen. Talking about Kirby Smart and his program is dangerous, just ask Gus Malzahn.