Jack Sells
KNOXVILLE – The pages came popping out of the fax machine in the Florida football office. There it was in black and white: page after page of Tennessee plays, many of which included handwritten notes along the border.
The coach who received those pages in 1991 was then-Florida defensive coordinator Ron Zook. The coach who sent them were his good friend, Jack Sells, a Tennessee assistant coach who had just gotten fired for recruiting violations.
Florida won the game, 35-18. Zook received a game ball.
It wasn’t until a few days later that an employee at the Knoxville Kinkos, from where Sells had faxed the plays, saw what was on the pages and notified the Tennessee athletic department.
Zook initially denied receiving the documents, but several days later then-Florida coach Steve Spurrier confirmed it. Sells, who played for the Vols in the ’80s, became the most despised man in Tennessee, not including politicians and actual criminals.
There you have it, Faxgate, a scandal that has been revisited by reporters in Gainesville and Knoxville this week because Zook, now the Gators’ head coach, led Florida (2-1) into Neyland Stadium yesterday to face SEC rival Tennessee (2-0).
When reporters in Florida made like Sergeant Joe Friday and asked Zook about the fax, the first-year Gators coach offered a terse response. “It has nothing to do with the game,” Zook told the Orlando Sentinel. “Had nothing to do with the game in ’91.”
