Imagine if one of your professors called you over after class for a little chat and basically said this: "Dude, you haven't really been impressing me this semester. Whenever it seems like you turning things around, you miss class or fail a quiz. So I've decided I'm going to give you an F for the semester now. But, don't worry, you can still come to class and do the rest of the semester's work."

And, even stranger, you say, "yeah, sure, sounds good." That's pretty much what happened to Florida head coach Ron Zook on Monday. He was fired as Gators head coach and was asked to finish out the rest of the season.

Man, I don't know, but if I knew I was guaranteed an F, I don't think that 20 page, semester long assignment would get a whole lot more attention.

What has it been like this week in the Florida football office as they prepared to play archrival, Georgia, this Saturday? I wonder if Zook really felt it was necessary to haul out some of that extra game film that might make a difference come gametime, but at that moment was only making him late for Game Four of the World Series.

Or do you think that a Gator assistant coach, most likely gone along with Zook, made himself late for his wife's lasagna dinner to put in that extra call to a recruit that he will never coach?

Maybe they did. Maybe they're such upstanding, professional guys that they just did their jobs for pride and because they were getting paid to do them.

But it's probably pretty unlikely that anyone on that staff is going to kill themselves to improve on Florida's current record of 4-3.

What the Gators did by firing Zook in October was give up on a season that was barely halfway done. Which raises the question, if you're in charge, and you know that you're going to fire the head coach sooner or later, when is the best time to do it?

By firing Zook now, the Gators actually did him a favor. They didn't fill him with any false confidence or hope that maybe he'll get to stick around only to trample it out in December.

But at the same time, they didn't do themselves too much good in the process. Sure, maybe it would've been sort of mean, but a hopeful Zook and staff might have produced a few more wins and accordingly a better bowl game, more money and so forth.

The timing of the firing also upset the Gator players who, despite struggling by Florida standards with Zook, had taken a liking to their coach.

"He basically just ripped the heart out of the team," saftey Jarvis Herring said on ESPN.com of Athletic Director Jeremy Foley.

He added that some of his teammates are now thinking about leaving the program due to the decision.

Recruiting isn't helped that much either. All a potential recruit knows now is that Ron Zook won't be his head coach. And even if Florida names the replacement soon, Zook is still the coach, and presumably runs the operations of the football team, until the end of the season, which might not be until late December or early January, eliminating for the new coach a prime recruiting period.

Firing Zook now may only provide Florida with one advantage, and it might be enough. Now that Zook is officially gone, the powers that be can research and interview new coaches, guilt free. And, I know there have been some pretty big names thrown out there already, Bob Stoops or maybe Urban Meyer from Utah, but come on. There's really only one name that needs to be mentioned: Steve Spurrier.

If there is anyone that can get the Gators to regain their swagger its Spurrier. He may have flopped with the Redskins, but there is no doubt that he's in his element on Saturdays, in the Swamp, throwing his visor and running up the score on Vanderbilt.

In fact, if the Zook era proved anything, it's that Spurrier was an exceptional college football coach. Under Zook, the Gators went from dominant and intimidating to a team that chronically threw games away or lost their stomach for competition late in the game. And while he may not be everyone's favorite football coach, no one knows how to rip the heart out of Mississippi or Arkansas or Kentucky late in a game like Spurrier.

The chance to gain extra time to lure Spurrier back to his old stomping grounds might have been the only reason for Florida to cut Zook loose in October and put the Gators team through six weeks, or more, of misery.

But, if Spurrier says yes in the end, it will probably be worth it.