Florida Gators' Scott Stricklin Named 2020 AD of the Year

Florida Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin brings home quite the honor.

Florida Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin has earned quite the honor, being named the 2020 Athletic Director of the Year at the Sports Business Award Show on Wednesday night.

Congratulations to Gators Athletic Director @ScottStricklin - @SBJSBD Athletic Director of the Year! #GoGators #SBJAwards #sportsbiz
🔗 : https://t.co/X72lQLh6oQ pic.twitter.com/i3dK2OM2cI

— Florida Gators (@FloridaGators) September 30, 2020

Stricklin was one of five finalists for the award, joining Boise State's Curt Apsey, Texas Tech's Kirby Hocutt, Oregon's Rob Mullens, and Baylor's Mack Rhoades. The nominated ADs were determined from the period of March 1st, 2019 through February 28th, 2020. In that span, the Gators captured won conference championships across athletics and finished third in the 2018-19 Learfield IMG College Directors Cup.

"I can't imagine a more deserving recipient of this award than Scott Stricklin," said UF President Kent Fuchs in a release from the university. "He is an exceptional athletic director who has guided UF's student-athletes to new heights athletically and academically, significantly strengthened our athletic program and is proving remarkably adept at leading the Gators in overcoming all the difficult challenges of COVID."

During Stricklin's tenure, Florida has graduated 587 athletes, 246 of those having earned a national or conference championship during their UF careers, along with 341 earning Academic All-SEC honors.

Specifically pertaining to the coronavirus pandemic, Stricklin and the university as a whole have done an admirable job containing outbreaks of COVID-19 cases, that were bound to happen, since athletes began returning to campus in late May. Partnering with UF health, the university has administered 2,470 tests among athletes on campus since May 26th.

Florida has seen two spikes in cases, the first coming in June with Sports Illustrated-AllGators reported the first 11 cases across UF-athletics and the second as students returned to campus for the fall semester. 

Both times, UF has quickly slowed the spread with effective quarantining and contact tracing. More recently, Florida football reported its first case in nearly two months on September 9th, that number rising to seven in the next update on September 15th. The football team appeared to get things under control quickly, reporting three new cases on September 22nd and no new cases on September 29th.

In the latest testing update, only two positive tests had arisen across athletics between September 21-28. In the month of September as of the 28th, UF conducted 1,273 tests.

Florida had to postpone its September 19th season-opening soccer game due to three positive tests, as well as pause all activities for the across and baseball teams in mid-September due to an outbreak. Florida soccer successfully began its season about a week later on September 27th, drawing with Georgia by a score of 1-1.

In a year where the sports world stopped spinning and had to fight an uphill battle to get back on track, Stricklin and UF have led by example in the SEC. On top of athletic accomplishments, those merits are arguably deserving of Stricklin's nomination, and earning, of the award on their own.