GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Steve Spurrier named the stadium, revolutionized college football and built a cult of personality that made his name synonymous with the program he ran.

        Even though Spurrier no longer roams the sidelines in The Swamp, the impact he had at Florida is as permanent as the orange on the Gators' helmets or that sneaky little grin on Albert the Alligator's face.

        That's where the new guy, Ron Zook, has to try to fit in.

FLORIDA

Aug. 31 UAB, 6 p.m.     Sep. 7 Miami, 5 p.m.     Sep. 14 Ohio, 6 p.m.     Sep. 21 at Tennessee, 3:30 p.m.     Sep. 28 Kentucky, TBA     Oct. 5 at Mississippi, 2 p.m.     Oct. 12 LSU, TBA     Oct. 19 Auburn, TBA     Nov. 2 at Georgia, TBA     Nov. 9 at Vanderbilt, 2 p.m.     Nov. 16 South Carolina, 1 p.m.     Nov. 30 at Florida St., 8 p.m.

        Zook, a career assistant who always dreamed of being coach at Florida, got his wish when athletic director Jeremy Foley phoned him less than a week after Spurrier suddenly resigned in January.

        An impossible coaching assignment?

        “I don't think so,” said quarterback Rex Grossman, one of 10 returning starters for the Gators this season. “I'd say it's easy because you've got a great program here, you've got great players. He's a great coach. Nobody on this team is really thinking about Coach Spurrier anymore.”

        That may be true inside the Florida football facility, but outside, everyone wants to see how the new guy will handle the job. The season begins Aug. 31, when Florida, ranked sixth in the preseason Associated Press poll, plays host to UAB.

        Although Zook calls it his dream come true, many people look at this as a no-win situation for the 48-year-old coach. Win and he gets credit for taking the players Spurrier recruited to a destination they might have reached anyway. Lose and the unflattering comparisons start.

        Remember Ray Perkins? He went 32-15-1 over four seasons at Alabama — not bad, but not nearly good enough to gain acceptance in the years immediately following Bear Bryant.

        Since Bryant, no coach has had a bigger impact on the Southeastern Conference — or maybe college football — than Spurrier.

        “You just can't worry about that stuff,” new offensive coordinator Ed Zaunbrecher said about replacing Spurrier. “If you do, all that does is distracts you from what you have to do.”

        Since Zook's hiring, testimonial after testimonial has poured in, all proclaiming that nobody will outwork the new Florida coach.

        Stories of his thousand-mile road trips, his visits to 80 high schools in the month of May, his feeling that food and rest are overrated, are becoming legend throughout the state.

        “I'm not a workaholic,” he insists. “I sleep. I've always felt that sleeping and eating are a waste of time, but you have to do them.”

        Spurrier made his ingenious work look and sound so easy.

        His nasty scowl and the flying visors were for gametime and a couple hours each day on the practice field. The rest of the time was for the ol' “Head Ballcoach” to do what he pleased. The golf course. The beach.

        He made it sound as though coaching football wasn't much more taxing or time consuming than learning to hit a sand wedge out of a greenside bunker.

        For Zook, nothing looks, or actually is, effortless. He was a walk-on defensive back at Miami of Ohio — no Heisman Trophy for this guy — and unlike Spurrier, Zook never wooed a receiver or quarterback to his school based solely on his name.

        By all accounts, Zook is a meticulous planner, a good habit he picked up from six years as an assistant in the NFL (1995-2001).

        His knack for recruiting became legend during his first stint with the Gators (1991-95), when he served as defensive coordinator for three seasons before Spurrier demoted him to special teams coach in 1994.

        The new coach is great on the banquet circuit, delivering his speeches and stories with rapid-fire, stream-of-conciousness platitudes that make Gator fans gush.

        “He's as energetic as any coach I've seen,” Florida fan Ken Overstreet said at a recent booster gathering. “I've been pretty impressed with what I've seen so far.”

        Still, Overstreet acknowledged what every football fan and coach knows: In the end, head coaches make it on wins and losses. The real question with Zook is whether he'll be able to motivate and lead his players, then learn how to handle the pressures of gameday.

        “It obviously comes down to wins or losses,” Zook said. “It makes no difference what people say now. It's over the course of a season. And, as I told our football team last night, we're going to take on some water. We'd be foolish to think this boat is just going to sail right on smoothly.”

        It's adversity, and how teams handle it, that ultimately defines the teams, Zook says.

        He's been preaching that message since he got the job, and he will undoubtedly fall back on it himself in this, a season in which the Gators head into the unknown, without Spurrier for the first time since 1989.

        “There's nothing we can do about that anymore,” offensive lineman Shannon Snell said. “We wish him good luck. It was his time to go, and now we've got to believe that Coach Zook is going to take this program to an even higher place.”