Never be the one who replaces the legend.

It’s a sports tale as old as time. Ask Ron Zook, Ray Perkins, Mike Davis and Phil Bengston about that. Why would those coaches know about that phrase? They replaced Steve Spurrier, Paul “Bear” Bryant, Bob Knight and Vince Lombardi. All of them lived in the shadows of their legendary predecessors and ultimately watched sky-high expectations fall short. Those expectations expedited their firings.

Mike White knows plenty about replacing a legend. Billy Donovan was a legend, which is something that Florida fans have come to realize even more since he left for Oklahoma City 5 years ago.

As White heads into the SEC Tournament, the discussion about his future isn’t going anywhere. There are plenty of Florida fans who want him out in Gainesville after leading what college basketball insider Jeff Goodman called “the most disappointing team in college basketball.” The preseason No. 6 team is now backing its way into the postseason seemingly destined for a spot on that dreaded 8-9 line.

Gators fans have every right to be frustrated, and not just because their team blew an 18-point home lead against Kentucky and gave away a double-bye in the SEC Tournament. We know the pessimism about White has been brewing for a bit now. There was already some buyer’s remorse throughout last season when he got an extension before the start of the 2018-19 season (he’s under contract through 2024-25).

And if White fails to get to the 2nd weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the 3rd consecutive year, well, he’s sure to push even more Florida fans away from believing he’s capable of living up to the Donovan standard.

Any fan base is going to be skeptical of what the legend’s successor has for a ceiling, especially when said legend delivered the sport’s best 2-year stretch in the 21st century. Look at what he did from 2000-15 compared to coaches like Jim Boeheim, Roy Williams (at Kansas until leaving for UNC in 2003) and Tom Izzo:

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For that stretch, Donovan was clearly one of the 4-5 best coaches in the sport. Of course that’s going to raise the expectations of a fan base. Gator fans aren’t simply going to be impressed by 20-win seasons, which White is 1 win from notching for the 5th time in as many seasons at Florida. If he does that, he’ll be the 2nd Florida coach to ever accomplish that feat. Donovan, of course, was the first. Donovan’s 5 consecutive seasons of 20-plus wins didn’t start until his 3rd year.

If you actually compare the start of Donovan’s 5-year streak of 20-plus wins (1998-2003) to White’s, which would have happened in his first 5 seasons, it’s not as lopsided as you’d think:

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So what’s the issue there? Well, Donovan’s 20-win season streak lasted another 11 seasons after that. When a program rattles off 16 consecutive seasons of 20-plus wins, it obviously loses some punch.

The other problem with that was when White’s Elite 8 season happened. It was Year 2 of the White era. Even though leading scorer KeVaughn Allen and starting forward Justin Leon committed within a month after White was hired, the anti-White narrative is that he had some help from the Donovan era … and that the season still ended with a loss to an inferior South Carolina team in the Elite 8.

Fair or not, 2019-20 was a massive year for shaping public perception about White. It was entirely his team. The fact that he got the eventual-preseason SEC Player of the Year Kerry Blackshear to transfer from Virginia Tech and he had a pair of incoming 5-star freshmen in Scottie Lewis and Tre Mann was supposed to take a good 2018-19 team and make it great. That, up to this point, obviously hasn’t happened.

It’s interesting to think about how that conversation would have changed had Florida closed out Kentucky on Saturday. We’d perhaps be talking about a dangerous team that, finally, could be figuring things out at the right time. Instead, Blackshear got hurt, Florida lost and it’s suddenly no guarantee that White reaches that 20th win at all in 2020.

Granted, even beating Kentucky could have been spun as “a team without its point guard had already clinched the conference, so I’m not giving White credit for that.” Understood.

You see, when you’re the person who replaces the legend, there’s this constant angst that you’re ruining something that someone else built. Take Mississippi State football with Joe Moorhead replacing Dan Mullen after he left for Gainesville. That became the growing concern among MSU fans who couldn’t stomach the thought of taking a step back to how things once were in Starkville.

Before Donovan showed up in Gainesville, Florida had 5 NCAA Tournament appearances and 7 tournament victories. Two of those appearances (1987 and 1988) and 3 of those victories were later wiped off the board from the NCAA after it found that Vernon Maxwell took money from an agent. Much like Spurrier did with the football program in the 1990s, Donovan elevated the standard of Florida basketball to a near-blue blood level.

It seems rare in sports that we see a successor to a legend continue that standard. In the NFL, we saw coaches Bill Cowher and George Seifert win Super Bowls after replacing legends like Chuck Noll and Bill Walsh. In college football, we saw coaches like Dennis Erickson and Jimbo Fisher win national titles after replacing legends like Jimmy Johnson and Bobby Bowden. In college basketball, we saw coaches like Bill Self and Joe B. Hall win national titles after replacing Williams and Adolph Rupp.

These successful successors, however, are the exception, not the rule. More often we see cases like Frank Solich, who went 58-19 with 5 top-20 finishes in 6 seasons at Nebraska, but he was fired because he wasn’t on the level of his legendary predecessor, Tom Osborne.

White was always going to be in the shadow of Donovan’s accomplishments no matter how much Florida fans told themselves that they were going to turn the page. That’s how our brains work. Spend the better part of 2 decades in the same place and yeah, you’ll leave a mark.

It remains to be seen what the future holds for White. For all we know, his team is about to go on a deep March run and play like the preseason Final Four candidate it was billed as. But if his days in Gainesville are indeed numbered like some are hoping — whether that’s this year or next year — we can be sure of one thing.

His successor won’t be tasked with replacing the legend.