SDS: Did anything from Florida’s 38-20 win against Georgia on Saturday change your evaluation of the Gators this season, and if so, what?

Mike Bianchi: It was certainly a shocking result. I don’t think anybody thought that Florida was going to go into Jacksonville and run over the 11th-ranked rushing defense in the country.

Did anything from that game make me change my mind about the season? Yeah. The team didn’t quit. With all of the noise going around Will Muschamp and how he was playing for his job and the awful performance against Missouri, you’ve got to give Muschamp credit for convincing those players and convincing those coaches to keep playing. Everybody expected the guy to get fired after the game on Saturday, especially if they got blown out, and I think a lot of people were expecting to get blown out. They played for their coach. They played for each other. They played for their true freshman quarterback.

They just seemed to play harder. I don’t know why that is. Maybe it was the fact that they rallied around Will Muschamp, or maybe they rallied around Treon Harris and the fact that he was starting his first game as a true freshman. That’s what a few of the players and Muschamp said after the game.

SDS: What have we learned in the last year or so about Will Muschamp as a human being?

Bianchi: Last week was unbelievable for him. He gets booed off the field at the Missouri game. They get blown out, 42-13. It’s embarrassing. Fans are chanting for him to be fired.

He goes home and the first thing his wife tells him is, ‘You need to talk to Witt, your 9-year-old son here, and tell him why the fans were chanting for you to be fired.’ So he has to have that talk with his son and explain to him about college football and about how fans pay good money and they have the right to express their opinion. So he goes through that and then he has to get his team ready.

He goes to the press conference on Tuesday. He’s getting asked about his job security. He handled it like a pro. He didn’t snap at anybody. He answered all the questions. So you’ve got to give him credit for that, and the fact that he got his team ready to play the game of the season against Georgia.

You learned a lot about how he deals with adversity. That team could’ve given up on him. They could’ve quit, but they didn’t. They played the game of their lives. Give Will Muschamp credit for that.

SDS: What about Jeremy Foley?

Bianchi: A lot of fans and even some media members said that Muschamp should’ve been fired after the Missouri game. I talked to Foley early in the season and he maintained that hey, were going to evaluate after the season, or at least late into the season, and then we’re going to make our decision on whether Will Muschamp returns.

He’s sort of stuck to that. He could’ve easily fired Muschamp after the Missouri game and everybody would’ve applauded him, but he didn’t. He stuck with Muschamp.

I think he wants to give Will Muschamp every chance to try to save his job this year. I compare it to the guy who’s at the blackjack table in Vegas and he starts with $10,000 and he’s down to his last $5 chip. He’s hoping he can turn that $5 chip back into the $10,000 he started with. I think that’s what Foley’s doing with Will Muschamp. He had that $5 chip sitting on the table before the Georgia game. Now it’s probably up to a couple hundred dollars.

SDS: If you’re Foley, how do you evaluate Will Muschamp down the stretch and what does he need to do to keep his job?

Bianchi: When you look at their schedule, good grief, they’ve got Vanderbilt and they’ve got a South Carolina team that’s been more disappointing than the Gators this year. They can certainly win those two games. The South Carolina game’s at home. Then they have Eastern Kentucky and then Florida State at the end of the season.

Obviously I don’t think they’re going to beat Florida State, but they could win those other three very easily, and if he wins three of four and looks decent against Florida State, I think he probably saves his job. He’d be 7-4, would’ve been 8-4 if they hadn’t gotten the game canceled at the beginning of the season against Idaho. Everybody said if he could win seven or eight he could save his job.

Although I will say I don’t think it’s just how many he wins. I think it’s how he wins those games. I think the offense obviously needs to look better. Gators fans love offense. You know that. Florida fans, at least the modern Florida fan, was raised on Steve Spurrier and watching the ball go up and down the field. Will Muschamp’s offense has been abysmal since he came to Florida. If they can muster some offense in the last four games and he can win three of four, I think he saves his job.

SDS: We’ve seen one-dimensional styles from programs like Arkansas and Florida. Is that a viable strategy to win in the SEC, or does that limit a team’s margin for error too much?

Bianchi: Obviously you can win like that. Nick Saban has done a good job of it, although he always has great wide receivers. It’s not like he just runs the ball. But that’s Will Muschamp’s mentor. (Muschamp) wanted to build his program in the model of Saban.

Will Muschamp always says the SEC is a line of scrimmage league. Which it is. Maybe you can do that in Alabama, Arkansas. The SEC may be a line of scrimmage league, but Florida is not a line of scrimmage state. Florida is a state of fast guys and lots of running backs and lots of wide receivers.

I think you have to take advantage of that when you’re the coach of Florida. I don’t think you can just try to play an overpowering style of football. You have to have really good wide receivers. You have to have really good running backs. Because that’s a strength of the state of Florida when it comes to recruiting.

So no, I don’t think Will Muschamp’s style of play, the idea that he brought into Florida, I don’t think that works at the University of Florida. Because of the recruiting I just mentioned, and secondly, because I don’t think that’s the style of play that Florida fans want. Florida fans came of age with Steve Spurrier and the Fun ‘N’ Gun offense. Even when Will Muschamp was 11-1 that second season, Gators fans were complaining about the style of play. It was painful to watch. They weren’t selling out their games and they were barely winning games when they should’ve blown out teams.

I remember Louisiana-Lafayette that season. They won the game on a blocked punt the last play of the game. Otherwise Louisiana-Lafayette had a chance to upset them. The margin of error that Will Muschamp has created with the style of play has been a mistake.

SDS: We’re barely into the first season under the new four-team playoff format, but what are your initial impressions? How has it impacted college football?

Bianchi: I think it’s great for college football. When the first poll came out last week, I’ve got ESPN on, I’m watching and reading all the websites. Saturday Down South, every place, is talking and debating about why there’s three SEC teams and what SEC teams are being left out, and I’m thinking to myself, what a media creation.

The first poll doesn’t matter in the least. It’s almost like college football fans and the college football media were pretending that the first poll mattered. The debates on ESPN and the Twitter back and forth, it was unbelievable. I’m thinking, ‘You know it doesn’t really matter, guys. There’s going to be six or seven more of these things and it’s going to change from week to week.’

But I think it’s a boon for college football. Any time people are discussing and debating and talking about who’s in and who’s out, I think it’s great. It’s almost like Selection Sunday in the NCAA Tournament except you’re going to have it seven times. Every week everybody’s coming out with their top four. I think it’s great for the sport.

SDS: The term ‘SEC bias’ isn’t new, but it seems like it’s as prevalent this year as ever. Does it exist? Where does the SEC fit with the rest of the country?

Bianchi: Yeah, I do think there’s an SEC bias, just like I think in the NFL there’s a Peyton Manning-Tom Brady bias. I think the media and the fans talk about teams that are good. They talk about the best of the best. The Peyton Manning-Tom Brady game over the weekend, that got much more publicity than the Tampa Bay Bucs playing the Cleveland Browns.

The fact of the matter is the SEC has earned the media bias, if you will. The media talks about the SEC because it’s been the best. Does the NFL have an SEC bias? Because they draft more SEC players than any other league every year. I think it’s been eight straight years that the NFL has drafted more players out of the SEC. I heard somebody say the other day with five-star recruits. Do the recruiting analysts have an SEC bias? Because there’s been more five-star recruits signing with SEC schools than any other conference over the last several years.

So yeah, there’s a bias when you’re the best. The SEC has seven of the last eight national titles. They draw the most fans. They have the most NFL draft picks. They get the best TV ratings. So yes, there is an SEC bias, but it’s well-earned.

SDS: You wrote something before the season related to NCAA autonomy and conference realignment suggesting the SEC get rid of the Mississippi schools in favor of UCF and USF. I’m guessing you’ve heard from a fan or two in that state? And what have you made of their seasons?

Bianchi: If I were a football fan in the state of Mississippi, I would’ve been upset with what I wrote earlier this summer too.

Essentially what I wrote was, if they’re going to realign college football, they need to realign the conferences too and take out teams that haven’t been that deserving over the years and put in maybe some new teams that would bring more to the table. I brought up UCF and USF, two teams from the state of Florida. It’s a rich recruiting base. They’re from big TV markets and all of that.

And I said take out Ole Miss and Mississippi State, because really, what have they done for the SEC over the last few decades? Of course then they come out and have the Mississippi renaissance this year, and the Mississippi fans are all over me. But my point of that was, just because schools were around 100 years ago when the SEC was formed, and the ACC was formed, that doesn’t make them the best candidates for the conferences today.

Yes, Ole Miss and Mississippi State have had great years this year. But the reason they’ve had great years is that over the last 10, 20 years, they’ve been getting all of this SEC exposure. They’ve been getting all of this SEC money. They’ve been getting all these SEC type of recruits. If you put two other schools — my example was if you were to put UCF and USF in the SEC and give them all of that exposure, all of that SEC TV money every year and all of those SEC recruiting advantages, within five to 10 years, those two schools would be as good if not better than Ole Miss and Mississippi State.

And you know what? I stand by it.