I too am a lifelong fan and Alum, Foley ended his career with Football in the toilet, he deserves scorn for that and his failure to keep up with facilities also was terrible, I’ll not argue that point.
I take the view that he had some major success at UF and some major failures, so I don’t dump on him for his overall performance, but it was his time to leave and I’m glad he’s gone.
The sad thing with Foley....I was really glad when he got the job after Arnsparger was rightly ousted. I don’t blame him at all for hiring Zook. We’d been rejected by Shanahan and Stoops, it was the 11th hour and he knew Zook could at least recruit. Getting Urban Meyer was a coup even if Machen had a hand in it.
Had he retired in 2010 or so he’d have gone down as a fantastic AD even if there were a couple decisions I disagreed with. But he hung around too long, dug his heels in on some really bad decisions like refusing to invest in football when our competitors were investing big in their programs, sticking with Muschamp even after it was obvious he was a busted flush.....yuck. He ruined his legacy by hanging around about 10 years too long.
P.S. about Muschamp....I totally agree about the whole power running thing. That’s not our identity and its not the kind of talent our state produces. All 3 of the big 3 won with wide open passing offenses. Duh.
Also...you want to be a power running team and you inherit a recruiting class with only 2 OL...then you only sign 2 the next year? OK, at this point I was SCREAMING to everyone “AT LEAST FIVE! (OL)” in that next class. He signs only 2 again for a total of 6 OL in three years! Then he runs Silberman and Dunker off! So we’ve only got 4 scholarship OL over three classes! How the hell are you going to be a power running team or even remotely competent on Offense with 4 guys over three consecutive classes to cover five positions???? I would expect better roster management from a Pop Warner coach. That alone set us up for years of futility.