It appears that, in at least one aspect, Mark Richt has a kindred SEC East spirit.
The Georgia head coach has had a long-standing policy that, if one of his Bulldogs is unhappy in Athens and wants to transfer elsewhere, he won’t stand in that player’s way of moving on, even if it’s to another school in the conference. Enter Jim McElwain.
The first-year Florida head coach acknowledged Tuesday that several current Gators have come to home about potentially transferring from the football program. If any of those players, who McElwain didn’t name specifically, do pull the trigger on a move out of town, the Gainesville Sun writes, “McElwain said he would not limit transfers on what school or conference they want to go to.”
“I’ll help them do whatever,” McElwain said a Jacksonville Gator Club event yesterday. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m a pretty open book. If they don’t want to be here, I don’t want to keep them here. It’s totally up to them.
“We have a lot of great things here and a lot of great things are going to happen. So, it’s an exciting time to be a Gator.”
What an enlightened, refreshing attitude. Too bad it’s not a pervasive one in a game where a coach can just pick up and move on to another job with no penalty other than a financial one that’s usually paid by his new employer.
Then again, when you take over a program that won just 10 games the past two seasons combined and whose talent cupboard you claim is essentially bare, you can afford to be magnanimous toward the very players who helped you land your new job in the first place.