Like all of the great painters, inventors and adventurers before them, they came here in search of something new _ a new world, a new challenge and a new landscape in which to create their eternal masterpieces.
They are the great athletic artists and architects of Florida football history; the men of mastery who had the inspiration and imagination to create something where there was nothing before. As the great Michelangelo once said, "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
And, so, too, did Don Shula and Bobby Bowden and Steve Spurrier and Howard Schnellenberger and so many others. They had the vision to sculpt Super Bowl and national championship seasons out of bereft and bankrupt programs.
"We came to the State of Florida like Rembrandt," says Schnellenberger, the former University of Miami coach who won the state's first national championship. "We had a blank canvas in which to create our own works of art."
"It's more like architecture," says former UCF coach George O'Leary, who drew the plans that transformed UCF into the youngest university in history to ever win a BCS bowl. "You have to design the building, lay the foundation, build the structure and then figure out how to decorate it with the right furniture. But the most important part is building the foundation because if that's not done right, everything else crumbles."
