Tramel: Central Michigan's Jim McElwain has left the Gators and sharks of Florida

STILLWATER — Mike Gundy has coached 17 OSU football seasons and made just one Big 12 Championship Game. Of course, the Big 12 went without a title game for six years, 2011-16, and Gundy’s Cowboys would have made the championship game thrice during that time. 2011, 2013, 2016.

Not a bad ratio. Four title games in 17 years.

But the man across the field Thursday night at Boone Pickens Stadium has an even better ratio. Three seasons as head coach at Florida, two appearances in the Southeastern Conference championship game.

No, OSU is not playing the Gators. The Cowboys host Central Michigan, coached by 60-year-old Jim McElwain, who is feeding his football passion in the Mid-American Conference.

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McElwain was pushed out at Florida midway through the 2017 season, despite his Gators winning the SEC East Division each of his first two seasons.

Welcome to the concept of college football fit. Whereas Gundy, the OSU quarterback hero turned head coach, has been a sterling fit in Stillwater, McElwain, from the Pacific Northwest, was a salmon in the swamp at Florida.

Of course, sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s a good fit at SEC funhouses like Auburn and Louisiana State and Florida, where they quickly spit out coaches, often despite success.

“I was grateful for the opportunity, to be at a place like the University of Florida,” McElwain said the other day from his office in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

“Obviously, never in in my wildest dreams growing up in Montana did I think I’d have the opportunity to be a coordinator in the SEC.”

Much less head coach.

McElwain’s Florida teams went 10-4, 9-4, 3-4. His 2015 Gators lost to Alabama 29-15 in the SEC Championship Game. The next year in the Atlanta showdown, Bama blistered Florida 54-16.

That score probably helped do in McElwain. But ESPN reported that McElwain and Florida administration had a strained relationship from the start. He was hired after three seasons as head coach, after being Alabama’s offensive coordinator during the days, 2008-11, when Nick Saban turned the Crimson Tide into a superpower.

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In summer 2017, McElwain drew internet ridicule when photos surfaced of a similarly-looking man, naked and in a compromising position with a shark on a boat. McElwain denied he was the subject in the photo, and eventually the man with the shark was identified as someone who had not coached in an SEC Championship Game and likely never would.

Sometimes you can’t make up this stuff.

McElwain in October 2017 alluded to death threats against himself and his players, but Florida officials said McElwain offered no other details and soon the marriage was beyond repair.

McElwain spent a year coaching on Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan staff, then was hired as head coach at Central Michigan, where he’s 20-13 after three seasons.

“Great place,” McElwain said. “The people here, the administration, the people in town.

“I didn’t really know what to expect, to be honest. It’s turned out, my wife and I just love it here.”

There is lots to love about coaching in the MAC, where the football is good and the living is easy and slow.

McElwain said adjusting to the serenity of the MAC from the fishbowl of the SEC was no big deal. He spent 15 seasons as an assistant coach at either Eastern Washington or Montana State, Big Sky Conference schools far from the college football spotlight.

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“We have fun,” McElwain said. “Everywhere we’ve been, trying to make it fun for the people involved in the organization. Realize times in life, there are a lot bigger things than thir-and-6. It’s about family, it’s about those type of things.

“But the pressures are the same. You want to be successful. And your players be successful. That’s kind of what it’s all about.”

McElwain is not the first coach to find refuge in the MAC. Much is made of the MAC’s history of churning out great coaches. But sometimes, coaches come to the MAC on the down side of their careers.

Frank Solich at Ohio U. Terry Bowden at Akron. Dick Crum at Kent State. Bill Mallory at Northern Illinois. Gerry Faust at Akron. And a two-time SEC Championship Game coach at Central Michigan.

“Kind of carried that with us everywhere we’ve been,” McElwain said. “The thing you find out, you go into coaching because you care about these players. Those things don’t change, whether you’re at Florida or Central Michigan.”

McElwain knows what the MAC is about. A coach’s league. A conference that prides itself on upsets of bigger-budgeted programs. Players with a little bit of chip on their shoulder, who weren’t highly recruited. Weren’t quite tall enough or big enough or fast enough, but on any given Saturday can play a mean game of football.

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Just in 2019 and 2021 alone, McElwain’s Chippewas have played at Wisconsin, Miami, Missouri and LSU. Played Miami tough, losing 17-12.

Now Central Michigan is back in Stillwater, where the Chippewas pulled off a 30-27 stunner in 2016.

Somewhere in his stash of old clothes is an OSU T-shirt, courtesy of his sister, Mary, who was an athletic trainer for the Cowboys in the early 1980s. She retired from the University of Montana.

But McElwain himself never has been to Stillwater. He’s looking forward to it.

"It’s exciting,” he said. “We’ll be playing against one of the top programs in the United States when we go to Stillwater. They’ve done an unbelievable job building the program.”

OSU has done it with a good fit in Gundy. Maybe McElwain has found a good fit in the MAC, where the Gators and sharks of Florida are far away.

Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today. 

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Central Michigan football: Jim McElwain has left the Florida swamp