Jim McElwain’s Florida exit was somehow even weirder than his really weird Florida entrance

Jim McElwain is out at Florida, three scant weeks after he was still in contention for a third straight SEC East title. Florida seems to have used his “death threats” comments to convince him he should take $9 million less in buyout money, which ends up being a fortunate development for the Gators, as bizarre as this sentence is, all around.

That’s a really strange exit, even by recent SEC standards. But let’s recall that Florida’s McElwain era began at least as strangely.

Do you remember when Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley pretty publicly courted Colorado State head coach McElwain, at one point standing near a front window in McElwain’s house as media members camped right outside?

At the time, that appeared to be an intentional negotiating tactic, to try and reduce CSU’s leverage by making it clear to all CSU recruits that McElwain was absolutely interested in leaving.

The whole thing got CSU $3 million in straight cash from the Gators, plus a $2 million payout for a 2018 game in Gainesville (a really large payment for a non-power opponent) and $2 million from McElwain himself. CSU declared it “the largest such buyout [from one school to another] in college football history.” That came in handy as the Rams began paying cost-of-attendance stipends to players and wrapped up a new stadium construction project.

(And then CSU replaced McElwain with fellow former SEC assistant Mike Bobo, who’s doing just fine. If there’s one winner of the entire McElwain experiment, it’s Colorado State.)

So in short, Florida bought Colorado State about 2 percent of a $240 million stadium, and about all the Gators got in return were two SEC Championship beatdowns, a shark meme, and a second weird buyout situation in 34 months.