Before there was anything, it was an empty stretch of land.
Fans passed it on their way to baseball games at McKethan Stadium, past the football practice fields that flowed into a wide expanse of grass.
Now, there’s a building.
Florida’s indoor practice facility is a mammoth of a complex, with ceilings 60 feet high and two yellow goal posts hanging on either end.
On an early morning in March, it hosts UF’s annual Pro Day for the first time in the program’s history.
Jim McElwain watches from the 25-yard line.
Today is huge, he says. It isn’t Florida’s season opener, and it isn’t the Southeastern Conference Championship. And yet, he admits, it’s one of the most important days of the year.
Scouts from the NFL stand behind him, scribbling notes on clipboards as they watch 18 Florida athletes run, jog, jump, catch and throw for a chance to make a professional team.
“Having this facility is great,” McElwain says with a smile.
“You know, a lot of really good players come to the University of Florida.”
Six months removed from Florida’s Pro Day, McElwain enters his second year as coach of Florida, and the $15 million facility still looks new.
It stands as a monument to Florida’s football team, designed to flirt with high school recruits and provide a sanctuary to UF’s players on days when the Florida sun beats too menacingly on the practice fields outside.
But, in many ways, UF’s indoor practice facility is also a symbol.
The structure’s construction was finished in September 2015, coinciding with the re-emergence of Florida’s football program under McElwain.
Florida finished that season 10-4, its most wins since 2012.
This year, McElwain expects Florida to be better. After all, the coach has everything he needs to succeed.
He has a defense, expected to be one of the best in the country.
He has a running back group, one of the most impressive he said he has ever been around.
And, finally, he has what he thinks is a reliable quarterback after a year of uncertainty at the position.
Even so, McElwain can’t relax.
“No,” McElwain says, his head shaking. “You never feel comfortable. The day you feel comfortable is probably the day I’m fishing for a living.”
• • •
McElwain has the number memorized — $4,723.
That was his salary while juggling work as a clerk at JC Penney and bartending in his early 20s.
Now, he makes $4.25 million per year following a raise last March.
But he doesn’t seem to care that it’s nearly a 1,000 percent increase from his first paycheck.
“I’m not real good at math,” he said.
He is good at his job, though — one that saw him start off as a graduate assistant on Eastern Washington’s football team in 1985.
After several years coaching at various colleges, including a four-year stint as offensive coordinator at Alabama, he was hired as head coach of Colorado State in 2012.
Then, in 2014, Florida Athletics Director Jeremy Foley showed up at McElwain’s home, looking for someone to bring national attention to a program that has desperately lacked it since Tim Tebow left in 2009.
“There’s times I just walk out to practice,” McElwain said, “and it’s hard for me to sometimes imagine I’m at the University of Florida.”
His first year was a resounding success — Florida advanced to the SEC Championship before losing to Alabama.
McElwain coached his team to the postseason despite an offensive line that was the worst in the country in 2015 — it allowed 45 sacks, more than every Football Bowl Subdivision school in America.
And its quarterback play was inconsistent at best.
Former quarterback Will Grier fit well in the offense until he was suspended for taking performance enhancing drugs after Week 6, later transferring from the school in December.
Treon Harris took over and was undeniably worse.
He finished the season with nine touchdowns and six interceptions, completing just 50.6 percent of his passes, not even good enough to rank in the top 100 passers in the nation.
Harris transferred over the summer.
But Florida’s defense was its saving grace.
It was the No. 11 scoring defense in the country, allowing just 18.3 points per game.
And running back Kelvin Taylor was solid, becoming just UF’s second 1,000-yard rusher in the last 11 seasons.
This year, things are different.
McElwain thinks his offensive line is better, a quality he said comes with experience.
He’s confident in UF’s running game, where four to five competent backs are prepared to carry the ball.
And the coach thinks he has found an answer at quarterback for a school that suffered so many years with question marks at the position.
The Gators have had seven different quarterbacks transfer from the school since 2010.
But, even so, they won 10 games last year.
How much improvement can they realistically see?
“I would challenge us to be dramatically better,” McElwain said.
And yet, since Spring practice started in early March, distractions have muddled McElwain’s blueprint for his second year.
Harris and star receiver Antonio Callaway were accused of sexually assaulting a woman in December, although Callaway was found not responsible in a university-sanctioned Title IX hearing in August.
Freshmen receivers Tyrie Cleveland and Rick Wells were arrested on charges of criminal mischief and firing a missile into a dwelling after they shot BB guns at a UF residence hall in July.
Standout cornerback Jalen Tabor and tight end C’yontai Lewis were suspended for the season opener against Massachusetts after the two reportedly fought during a preseason practice.
Somehow, McElwain turns all of that into a positive.
“One of the things I enjoy is the chaos,” the coach said.
“You can’t simulate the chaos that goes on in a game. And yet, you can use distractions — uncertainty — and use that to help strengthen you in those times when you’re in those games.”
McElwain is impressed with how his players have dealt with some of the distractions during the offseason, especially the veterans, a group McElwain said is more invested in this year’s team than last.
During a late August practice, McElwain removed the upperclassmen from an informal scrimmage, but kept the youngest players in the game.
As play resumed, McElwain heard shouting and clapping from the sidelines.
He thought it was the veterans fooling around, as they sometimes did last season.
But as he turned, McElwain saw UF’s older players coaching the younger ones from the side.
“It might not seem like much,” McElwain said, “but to me that shows these guys are really into this team.”
They are. And, in his second year, they’ve all bought into McElwain.
“He’s a heckuva coach,” running back Mark Thompson said.
“He told me a lot of real things. Things outside of football. Obviously, after football you have to lead a regular life. Football will be done with you before you’re done with football.”
Sophomore defensive lineman CeCe Jefferson agrees.
“I was sold from the time the man walked in my house,” Jefferson said.
“The way he carries himself, I knew he was a good dude.”
McElwain constantly preaches that his main job is to teach lessons in life, not in football.
He tries to instill in his players the notions of right and wrong, choices and consequences, and to teach them that football will inevitably end before they’re ready for it to end.
And yet, while all those things may be true, McElwain knows he isn’t being paid to teach life lessons.
His job is to win games.
And he thinks he has the players to do it.
“I think every player on our team — to a man — has such love and belief for coach McElwain,” defensive coordinator Geoff Collins said.
“The buy-in factor is at an all-time high.”
• • •
McElwain likes this year’s team. He says it repeatedly.
But he also said, as Florida began its first practice of preseason camp in early August, “everybody in the country right now feels pretty good about themselves. Everybody’s undefeated.”
But McElwain has high expectations, expectations that trickle down to every member of the team, from starting quarterback Luke Del Rio to defensive back Marcell Harris.
But where do those expectations land?
“Honestly, win a national championship,” Harris said.
“That’s the main goal, that’s the main focus.”
That’s McElwain’s goal, too.
Even though it’s only his second year, Florida’s goal is to reach the College Football Playoff.
But, as McElwain said after another string of preseason practices, only time will tell.
“There’s some really good leadership on this football team right now,” he said.
“And we’ll see where that takes us.”
Contact Ian Cohen at icohen@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @icohenb.
Jim McElwain talks with players during stretches before a fall practice at Donald R. Dizney Stadium.
