New details finally emerge wrt McElwain’s struggles with running UF program

[jbcarol]

Tuesday, more somewhat bizarre details surfaced regarding McElwain's final year in Gainesville and the status of the Gators strength and conditioning program

Andy Staples delves into part of what went wrong for McElwain

"McElwain talked about having a similar organizational structure to Saban's, but he didn't [inherit] Saban's attention to detail," Staples writes. "During McElwain's final year at Florida, some Gators were paying their own way to be trained elsewhere in Gainesville by former Olympian Tim Montgomery. That should have been a glaring red flag with regard to the Gators' strength program, but nothing was done to correct the issues that caused the players to seek help outside the program."

With that situation occurring this past year, it's now no surprise at all that one of Dan Mullen's primary goals that he outlined upon being named the Gators new head coach was the necessity of an overhaul of the strength and conditioning program.

"I told them to rest up over the month of December," Mullen said the day he was introduced. "Because when they come back in January, it's probably going to be something they have never even experienced in their life before, our offseason conditioning program."

And Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin backed his new coach's plan.

"I think it's critical," he said. "It's the backbone. I think any successful program has a really strong strength and conditioning program that builds accountability, and I think programs that aren't as successful usually are lacking in that area."

And earlier this month, Mullen took one of the first steps on that road, reportedly hiring Mississippi State strength coach Nick Savage...