Todd Golden's Month To Remember As Florida's Hoops Coach Almost Never Was

It's been a hell of a calendar month for one Todd Raymond Golden.

The 39-year-old Florida Gators men's basketball coach won his first national championship a mere 31 days ago, vanquishing the Houston Cougars in a thrilling 65-63 classic and becoming the youngest coach to win a natty in more than four decades (Jim Valvano, 37, in 1983).

Then he followed that up by inking a six-year, $40.5 million contract, making him the fourth-highest paid coach in the country.

Mazeltov, Todd!

It's a four-week run that he may never replicate again, but it almost never happened.

For the uninitiated, Golden was implicated in a Title IX investigation of alleged stalking and sexual harassment back in November.

The details seemed damning, at the time, with accusations of Golden sending "unsolicited photos of his genitals" to one of the women.

The easy thing for embattled Athletic Director Scott Stricklin to do would have been to tuck tail and suspend Golden without pay or even fire him, and plenty of people were calling for both the AD's and coach's heads.

Luckily, we still live in a country where you are innocent until proven guilty, and Stricklin decided to stick by his guy until the investigation was through.

The Florida AD's patience and convictions paid off, as the case was dismissed and Golden was subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing.

Understandably, Golden and his attorney, William Shepherd, were both righteously indignant, with the latter claiming the accusations generated a "false narrative," and the former threatening legal action by means of a potential defamation lawsuit.

Todd Golden's story has a happy ending, but plenty of these tales of men being falsely accused of sexual assault don't have such a cheery outcome.

The most famous of these happens to be the Duke Men's Lacrosse scandal from 2006, where former stripper and current prison-lifer, Crystal Mangum, falsely accused three Duke players of raping her.

Lives and reputations were ruined, Duke had to cancel its lacrosse season, and Mangum received zero punitive action against her for fabricating her story.

Todd Golden has every right to pursue legal action against his accusers, if for no other reason than to start setting a precedent of punishing those who levy false accusations against innocent people with virtually no repercussions.

Here we are in May, celebrating Golden, a national champion with a new contract offering him generational wealth, but we could just as easily be talking about what could have been; a young coach with a bright future cut down in his prime thanks to the hateful actions of a select few.

Just ask those Duke players how much their lives have changed since that fateful night in March 2006.

For now, though, it's nice to see Todd Golden enjoying the fruits of his labor without looking over his shoulder for the Title IX boogeyman.