GAINESVILLE, Fla. – One of Jeremy Foley's favorite stories about Billy Donovan dates back to when the Florida basketball coach was 29 years old. Foley, the long-time Florida athletic director, had just hired Donovan and took him and some friends of the program out to a huge Italian family-style meal in Huntington, West Virginia, where Donovan had been the coach at Marshall. They all stuffed themselves and then at the end, when the plates were scraped and the napkins were folded up, someone gave Donovan a challenge.

Could he go to McDonald's right now and eat two Big Macs?

Donovan said he could. Foley interjected and asked why on Earth he would want to go to McDonald's after such an enormous meal.

The new Gators coach answered right away: "I don't like it when someone tells me I can't do something."

It's a vintage Billy The Kid story. He's young, aggressive, scrappy – a regular New York-bred point guard wearing a tie and pounding the floor boards in front of the bench. Foley was "blown away" in his interview with Donovan way back in 1996 and went to the school president to inform him he thought he found the right guy to change the culture of the basketball program. Except that, well, he was 29.

"If he's the guy," then-president John Lombardi said, "he's the guy. Go get him."

Donovan is still the guy, nearly 20 years later. But he's not still The Kid. He's 47 now – the same age Jim Valvano was when he passed away. And like Valvano did, Donovan now speaks much more about the meaning of life than the meaning of wins and losses.

"Being a young guy, getting hired at 29 years old, [I was] trying to chase building a program," Donovan said in his office last week. "And then I think, as we've won, that kind of changed. I'm trying to be able to put that a little more in perspective. What is this all about? Is it all about hoisting a trophy? Wearing a ring?"

The answer he comes up with is no.

When Donovan speaks like that, which is often these days, it becomes clear that he's entered a different level on the coaching continuum. Only one active coach, Mike Krzyzewski, has more national titles than Donovan's two. And Coach K is much closer to the end of his career than "Coach Billy."

Although Donovan is nowhere near 900 wins (at least not yet), he's very much like Krzyzewski in the way he's turned Florida into a March mainstay. The Gators have five SEC regular season titles under Donovan after only winning one in 77 years before he arrived. They've also been to three national title games, all since 2000, all under Donovan. In 17 seasons at Florida, he's won fewer than 20 games in a season the same number of times (two) as he's won more than 30. (And those sub-20 years were Donovan's first two.)

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If he never coached another game, he'd have a Hall of Fame career. And he's 19 years younger than Coach K, 15 years younger than Roy Williams, 21 years younger than Jim Boeheim, and 16 years younger than everyone's pick for national coach of the year, Jim Larranaga. Donovan has an entire generation of basketball left, if he wants it.

According to his father and his boss, there's a pretty decent chance the next generation of Donovan basketball will be in Gainesville. That was certainly not clear in the first generation, as the McDonald's eating kid kept his eye on basketball's top rung until finally landing he head coaching job with the Orlando Magic in 2007. Then came a week-long odyssey that still defines Donovan, for worse and ultimately for better.

The Donovan era at Florida was halted until Foley landed in Virginia with his eye on the next Florida head coach. Then he got a call from Billy's wife.









It's crazy to think all the Dwight Howard drama could have happened under Billy Donovan's watch. Donovan could have been the one to lead the Magic to the NBA Finals, could have been the one to try to coax Superman into developing better post moves, could have been the one called out by Howard, and (more likely than not) could have been the one shoved aside as the Howard era came down around him.

Of course it's certainly possible Donovan and Howard may have bonded, yet it's less likely Dwight would have been able to keep his Hollywood dreams shelved. The Magic have been decimated, Stan Van Gundy is out of work, and it's clear Billy D made the right choice.

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