Regardless of sport, every coach ultimately fits neatly into 1 of 2 categories – Relentless Opponent Praise or Brash Truthfulness.
One or the other. Pick a side when you pick up a whistle for your first practice.
Perhaps Relentless Opponent Praise’s most loquacious representative over the years was former college football coach Lou Holtz, who would praise the other team so generously it often made observers wonder how his teams ever won a game.
Those coaches on the Brash Truthfulness side, well, think Bobby Knight in a bygone era or perhaps Lane Kiffin in the present day – not afraid to tell you exactly how they see it, and surely never wrong about anything.
For a few years now, I considered Todd Golden to be a card-carrying member of Relentless Opponent Praise. That is the much safer bucket to assimilate into, alas. Why give anyone anywhere bulletin-board material, especially in an era where the bulletin boards are instantaneous and in everyone’s back pocket?
I considered Golden just that way – safe, conservative, no chance of ruffling feathers – until a couple weeks ago… when he suddenly metamorphosized into college basketball’s Mouth of the South.
Golden, all of 40, surprised pretty much everyone in the college basketball universe when he waded into the deep end of the pool in the Charles Bediako Drama that enveloped the sport as the calendar changed to 2026.
For those who haven’t followed along, Bediako returned to Alabama after declaring for the 2023 NBA Draft and playing in the NBA-sponsored G League – testing the limits of the NCAA rulebook and the gumption of the NCAA to actually enforce it.
And Golden, well, he didn’t like that one bit – apparently tearing up his Relentless Opponent Praise membership card and lighting it on fire by declaring the following a little over a week before Florida played Alabama:
“The reality is, I don’t agree with it, and I don’t think he should be playing. I also don’t fault (Alabama coach) Nate Oats because this is a very competitive space, and it’s our jobs to win games and do everything you can to be the best program in our specific league,” Golden said.
“We are going to beat them anyway. If (Bediako) plays, we’ll beat them anyways.”
Welcome to the Brash Truthfulness club!
That statement was so unlike Golden, the erstwhile fourth-year Florida coach who pretty much quietly went about his business ever since ascending to the Gators throne by way of San Francisco in 2022. Taking over a middling program after Mike White bolted for Georgia, Golden was tapped to be the second coming of Billy Donovan – the wunderkind who came to Gainesville from Marshall and constructed a dynasty that won back-to-back national titles in 2012-13 and 2013-14 before heading to the NBA.
Those banners were getting a bit dusty in the O’Connell Center rafters when Golden came to town, and after an inauspicious 16-17 first season it appeared those Final Fours were only going to recede even further down the memory hole. But Golden righted the ship in 2023-24, going 24-12 and getting back to the NCAA Tournament after a 2-year absence.
Then came 2024-25. Loaded with a great team led by guards Walter Clayton, Jr., Will Richard and Alijah Martin, Golden first had to overcome a highly publicized Title IX investigation that accused him of sexual harassment and stalking by an unconfirmed number of women that included UF students. Florida concluded their investigation of Golden in January of 2025, finding no evidence of any Title IX violations after a “thorough investigation that included dozens of interviews.”
With that mess behind him and his team, Golden’s Gators marched through an insanely tough SEC Tournament field en route to cutting down the nets in Nashville to earn the No. 1 seed in the West Division of the NCAA Tournament. Wins over Norfolk State, UConn, Maryland and Texas Tech put the Gators back in the Final Four for a sixth time – and victories over overall No. 1 seed Auburn in the national semifinals and fellow No. 1 seed Houston in the national title game put the Gators back on top of the mountain for a third time.
Through it all, Golden remained steadfast in the Relentless Opponent Praise club. The Spartans were a tough first-round matchup. UConn was the 2-time defending champs and a tough out. Maryland was way stronger than an 11-seed usually is. Wow, Texas Tech was a beast. How did we ever beat a team as good as Auburn? And Houston, well, Houston deserved to win it all maybe even more than Florida.
That was the sentiment, just as it is for all coaches who reside in the Relentless Opponent Praise club. Why make waves, right?
Which is why Golden’s declaration, albeit at a Florida-centric radio show called “Gators Talk,” was so clearly out of character. Why kick the Crimson Tide’s proverbial hornet nest? Why douse a simmering rivalry with straight kerosene and gleefully toss a match at it?
The answer, as it turns out, is simple: Because Golden was right. One hundred percent right. Amid chants of “G League dropout” from Florida’s Rowdy Reptiles student section every time Bediako touched the basketball, Florida ran Alabama clear out of the O’Dome with a 100-77 victory that also sent a message that the Gators were not resting on their net-cutting laurels this season.
And Golden? He had plenty of chances to fire up the megaphone Jimmy Hart-style and deliver another Mouth of the South soliloquy on the virtues of amateurism – and pretty much anything else he wanted to sermonize about, as 23-point wins allow for such indulgences.
Instead, it was back to the other club, a reversion to Relentless Opponent Praise for Golden… onto the next game, the next challenge, the next opportunity against the next tough opponent.
His mouth had served a purpose. One can only wonder, hope and dream when Golden might break it out again.
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