A familiar face is back with the Florida football program after a few years away from Gainesville.
According to the Gators’ updated website, longtime college football assistant Chuck Heater has joined Dan Mullen’s staff in an off-field role described simply as quality control. If that name rings a bell to some fans, that’s because the veteran coach has been around the block a time or two -- including a lengthy stint at UF at the height of the team’s success.
Heater, whose first foray in college football was as a running back at Michigan under Bo Schembechler in the early 1970’s, has a stellar resume over the past four decades. He was a secondary coach for the 1988 title team at Notre Dame and then later hooked up with Urban Meyer in a similar role at both Utah and Florida, eventually earning a co-defensive coordinator title with the Gators after they won two BCS championships.
Most recently, Heater served as defensive coordinator for Marshall for several years and spent the 2018 season as Maryland’s safeties coach.
Needless to say, that’s a pretty solid amount of knowledge of the game helping out Mullen’s defense and a good resource to lean on for corners coach Torrian Gray and safeties coach Ron English.