updated 9:13 p.m. ET Dec. 13, 2006

Ron Zook never quite fit in as Steve Spurrier’s successor at Florida.

He was roundly ridiculed from the beginning to the end of his tortured three seasons with the Gators. Before the ink was dry on his contract, a Web site devoted to his ouster was up and running.

Turns out, Zook was more of a success than anyone gave him credit for. The former Florida coach, fired in 2004, recruited all but one of the starters who will be playing for the national title next month.

“I’m thrilled for the Florida football team,” Zook said Monday, while on a recruiting trip for Illinois, the team he now coaches. “I’m thrilled for the fans. I still care a lot about those players.”

It’s one of the oldest articles of faith in college football — that a new coach’s success or failure can be largely credited to what kind of program, and players, the guy before him left behind.

When Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley shocked everyone and hired Zook in 2002, the biggest selling point for the lifetime assistant was that he was one of the best recruiters around. And indeed, as a Florida assistant from 1991-95, Zook brought in many of the players that helped Spurrier keep the Gators atop the Southeastern Conference.

Now, it’s Urban Meyer bringing the Gators back to the top. But it was Zook who sat in most of those players’ living rooms and locked up their commitments to Florida.

Meyer concedes as much.

“I think that’s a tribute to the previous staff,” he said. “This coaching gig is overrated. It’s players. It’s a great tribute to coach Zook and his staff that there are Ray McDonalds and Jarvis Mosses and Chris Leaks and Dallas Bakers and Jemalle Corneliuses running around. Obviously, you can’t get it done without some great players.”

Leak. Reggie Nelson. Brandon Siler. They, and all the others Meyer mentioned, believed in Zook’s vision — that Florida could be every bit as good in the future as it was under Spurrier.

Zook recalled standing on the field before a game against defending national champion Miami in 2002, talking to one of his assistants.

“I said, ‘We’re going to look like them in four or five years,”’ Zook said.

His vision was impeccable.

It was his coaching and public-relations skills that weren’t as solid.

Behind in the court of public opinion from the day he arrived, he lost too many games (14) and alienated too many fans with moves like barring spectators from sitting down on the sidelines during practice, to the fraternity fight he injected himself in the middle of toward the end of his tenure.

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It didn’t help that the Gator Nation was skittish about his hiring from Day 1, the same day fireronzook.com went live on the net, becoming the first of the now-ubiquitous Web sites that plead for the ouster of unpopular coaches.

“No matter what you do, there are some things you have no control of,” Zook said. “The wheels started turning before I landed in Gainesville.”

When Foley made the difficult decision to sack his coach and good friend — two days after a numbing loss to Mississippi State — he conceded that “in the final analysis, it was apparent to me that something’s not working here,”

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It took Zook all of a month to land another job, at Illinois, where he is in the middle of a more extensive rebuilding project.

The Illini are 4-19 in Zook’s first two seasons, but it is widely believed he is bringing in better players. His 2006 recruiting class was ranked 28th in the nation by Superprep.com — heady stuff for a program that has long languished in the back of the pack in the Big Ten.

Zook, of course, prefers to look ahead and not behind. He had a rough time at Florida, and there’s no sense masking that.

But maybe his true feelings came out Sunday when he cast his ballot in the coaches’ poll.

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Zook was the only Big Ten coach to vote Florida ahead of conference member Michigan, which played a part in the Gators jumping to second in the BCS standings and making the title game.

He says he has “gotten ripped” for that from some fans in his new conference.

“Believe me, it’s no slight to Michigan at all,” Zook said. “I thought you were supposed to vote the way you feel. One vote wasn’t going to make the difference. A bunch of people turned and flipped and voted Florida ahead of Michigan. For me, it was the fact that they played a 13th game,” a conference title game that Michigan didn’t have to play.

“And obviously,” Zook said, “I did know those kids.”

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