Steve Spurrier entered one game with a losing season record while he was head coach at the University of Florida. Urban Meyer never had to coach a sub .500 team and neither did Ron Zook or Jim McElwain (he was fired before Florida fell below .500). Will Muschamp had to do it four times. Next week when the Gators host Samford Dan Mullen will coach a sub .500 football team.

That's due to an unfathomable loss on the road to South Carolina. Florida was favored by 18.5 points when the line opened up. The Gamecocks, coming off a bye, were a team looking for an identity. They have a new head coach and entirely new coaching staff and have looked like a program that hit the reset button.

Saturday night they set Florida back.

Is this rock bottom?

Can it get worse?

South Carolina's 40 points are the most any Gamecock team has posted against Florida. The Gamecocks rushed for 284 yards, the most they've gained in a single game this season and more than their last two games combined.

Monday, Dan Mullen made it a point of emphasis that there was still a quarter of the season left. SEC bottom dwellers South Carolina, Missouri, Samford, and Florida State were supposed to be palate cleansers for a season that has turned a large section of the fan base against the head coach. Instead, the server dropped a musty plate of scallops, they rolled under the dirty oven, were picked up, and still served to Florida fans.

This loss joins a growing number of losses that are both unfathomable and unacceptable at the University of Florida.

A flu bug hit the Florida Gators football team this week. It forced the Gators to practice without a lot of guys throughout the week and even change travel plans.

To be fair to Dan Mullen, he did not bring this up as an excuse for the loss. Mullen was asked after the game about his team getting sick this week and he was answering a direct question.

"We had anywhere from 20 to 30 guys missing practice every day this week. I give some guys credit. I mean Emory Jones tested positive for the flu this morning. We had several guys not even come out onto the field on the bus. I don't want to make excuses for those guys, but I want to give our guys credit for battling, for facing adversity. We had a bunch of guys dealing with sickness. We had to fly some guys up separately from the team, keep everybody separated. You know, those guys, they still went out. Even though the large number of guys that missed practice, we had quite a few that our training staff tried to do a good job today of IV-ing guys and try to get them ready to be able to go out and perform. And so, that's what I love. I think our guys compete and they're going to work and they're going to fight and they're going to give everything they have. We as coaches have got to do a better job to put them in the positions for the effort they give, to put them in position to be successful."

That's a tough spot to be in and I'm sympathetic to having to adjust around that but at the end of the day this isn't an acceptable loss no matter what the circumstances were in the week leading up to the game.

South Carolina was playing a quarterback who transferred in from a Division II program. He had thrown 20 passes this season. Now he has a win over the Gators. Great story for the Gamecocks and Jason Brown. A nightmare for Florida.

It's hard to fathom that we're even talking about getting bowl eligible on November 6 but the Florida Gators need to win two of their final three games to earn a bowl bid.

That was the case prior to Saturday's catastrophe but now, after watching the product that was put on the field Saturday night, it might be an actual concern, which is wild to think about considering Florida was 29-9 under Dan Mullen and had made three straight New Year's Six Bowl games.

If the Gators miss out on a bowl game it would be the third time in the last nine seasons. That had not previously happened once without Florida being on probation since 1986.

That's Florida's record against their last 10 Power 5 opponents.

Context matters, so, two of those losses came to the eventual National Champion and defending National Champion in Alabama. Florida also lost to No. 1 Georgia, a team that has looked head and shoulders better than any team in the country thus far. The other losses are to LSU twice – the first coming to an LSU team decimated by injuries and departures in 2020 and the second to an LSU team that had fired its head coach earlier in the week. Add on Kentucky, a blowout loss to Oklahoma in a bowl game, and Saturday's embarrassment in Columbia.

The two wins came against Tennessee and Vanderbilt.