The course of history is often changed by the most subtle and well-intended decisions. In the case of football at the University of Florida, the decisions and events of 12 days over a 92-year period have impacted and shaped the Gators’ pursuit of championships. Here is a look at the 12 days that had the greatest impact on Florida football history.

1. Tennessee 13, Florida 12 (December 8, 1928): The Gators went into this game 8-0 and the nation’s highest scoring team. Tennessee was 8-0-1, the tie a 0-0 stalemate with Kentucky just 10 days before. Both teams thought they had a shot at the Rose Bowl. Little did they know that a deal was in place for Georgia Tech to go to the Rose Bowl with a win over Georgia in its final regular season game. East Tennessee was mired in a drought that had lasted for months but as legend has it, when the Gators showed up for the game on Saturday morning the field in Knoxville was a muddy mess, The Gators were said to be the nation’s fastest team but they arrived in Knoxville minus the long cleats needed to play effectively in the mud. And wouldn’t you know it, Colonel (he didn’t become a general until World War II) Bob Neyland didn’t have any cleats he could spare, plus all the local sporting goods stores were closed. Florida’s speed advantage was neutralized and the result was a slog it out game that Tennessee won, 13-12, when Bobby Dodd blocked the extra point. Neither the Gators nor Tennessee got the Rose Bowl bid because Georgia Tech beat Georgia, 20-6, to finish undefeated (9-0) in the regular season. An unbeaten season could have changed the course of Florida football forever, but things were never the same after that loss to Tennessee. Four years later Charles Bachman left to become head coach at Michigan State. There were only pockets of success and never any championships won until Steve Spurrier became Florida’s head coach 62 years later.

2. Bob Woodruff hired by Dr. J. Hillis Miller, December 1949: Before he got his name on the first University of Florida med school, Dr. Miller was the president of the University of Florida. In the years following World War II, UF’s student population exploded as veterans took advantage of the GI Bill. Legend has it that Florida’s 28-7 upset win over Georgia in 1949 convinced Dr. Miller that UF was capable of far more than what Raymond “Bear” Wolf (13-24-2 from 1946-49) was delivering as the head football coach. When Wolf was fired, Dr. Miller turned to Bob Woodruff, the Baylor head coach who had worked as an assistant to General Bob Neyland at Tennessee, Col. Earl “Red” Blaik at Army and Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech. Woodruff took Florida to its first two bowl games (1952, 1958) and only posted two losing seasons in his 10 years as head coach. Six of his assistants went on to become head coaches including Hall of Famer Frank Broyles. Doug Dickey, a quarterback on that first bowl team, would later become head coach at both Tennessee and UF. Woodruff’s football style can best be described as boring since third-and-7 usually meant Florida would punt. He won just enough (53-42-6) to raise expectations, not only of the Gator Nation but of UF president Dr. J. Wayne Reitz, who believed Florida could do better. In the summer prior to the 1959 season, Reitz told Woodruff his contract would not be renewed. So while Woodruff was a lame duck coach in 1959, Dr. Reitz was busy seeking a replacement who was capable of awakening the sleeping football giant he perceived Florida to be.

3. Dr. Reitz hires Ray Graves, December 1959: When first choice to replace Woodruff – Ara Parseghian – elected to stay at Northwestern amid promises to upgrade facilities, Dr. Reitz turned to Ray Graves, the brilliant defensive coordinator for Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech. This was a potentially volatile situation since Graves and Woodruff were teammates at Tennessee and close friends. When Dodd, who had been a Tennessee assistant when both Graves and Woodruff played for the Vols, gave Graves his blessing to take the Florida job the deal was sealed. Woodruff, who would go on to become the athletic director at Tennessee who hired Douglas Adair Dickey away from Frank Broyles at Arkansas, also gave his okay. Dr. Reitz hired Graves for the princely sum of $19,000 a year to become both the head coach and athletic director.

4. Steve Spurrier signs with the Gators, 1963: Spurrier was an athletic legend in the state of Tennessee where he was the MVP of the state championship game in football, basketball and baseball during his prep career at Science Hill High School in Johnson City where his dad was a Presbyterian minister. The Gators knew all about Spurrier because the postmaster in Johnson City was Marvin Graves, Coach Graves’ brother. Graves was a passing quarterback at a time when the Vols were still running the single wing under Bowden Wyatt, who was General Neyland’s hand-picked successor. Before recruiting Spurrier, Graves sought Wyatt’s approval. Because (a) Wyatt wasn’t going to change offenses even for a stud like Spurrier and (b) Florida wasn’t on the UT schedule for years to come, Wyatt was all too happy to give Graves the okay. It was a cold, snowy day in Tennessee when Spurrier made his official visit to UF. It was warm and sunny in Gainesville where people were out playing golf. That was all Spurrier needed to make the decision to sign with Florida and the moment he signed the scholarship papers, Florida football changed forever.

5. Florida 10, No. 3 Alabama 6 (October 12, 1963 in Tuscaloosa): Florida was unranked. Alabama was unbeaten, playing at home where Bear Bryant teams just didn’t lose and had Lee Roy Jordan playing both sides of the football and Joe Namath at quarterback. Nobody gave the Gators a chance, which is exactly what Gene Ellenson was telling the Gators in the locker room before the game. It fired up Jack Katz (you know him now as Panama Jack) to smash his helmeted head through the blackboard. There was only one problem. There was only a single door leading out of the locker room and there was a logjam of players trying to rush out onto the field. Alabama won the toss and elected to receive. All-SEC running back Benny Nelson caught the ball at the four and took one step before he was de-cleated by Hagood Clarke. Nobody heard Nelson’s gasp. That’s because everyone in the stadium let out one of those “Oh my gosh!” gasps. Florida took a 3-0 lead on a 42-yard Bobby Lyle field goal and a fourth-quarter touchdown run of 42 yards from Dick Kirk made it 10-0. Alabama got a late touchdown but missed the two-point conversion. Florida held on, beat the Tide and the Gators carried Graves off the field on their shoulders. As the Florida buses got ready to drive to the airport, Namath climbed on the bus and congratulated UF on a deserving victory, a very classy move.

6. The kick heard ‘round the world (October 29, 1966): Etched into Gator lore is Steve Spurrier’s 40-yard field goal with 2:12 left that not only gave Florida a 30-27 win over Auburn but pretty much sealed the Heisman Trophy for Spurrier. The story that most people don’t know is that the game should have never been close. It should have been a blowout win by the Gators, who outgained Auburn 442-138. Throughout the game, the Gators kept shooting themselves in the foot with fumbles like the one an Auburn player ran back 91 yards for a TD or the 15-yard penalty that put the ball back on the Auburn 23 with 2:12 to go, necessitating the field goal attempt. Forty yards was beyond the range of Wayne “Shadetree” Barfield, who was 1-2 all season, having made one from 26 and missed from 34. Spurrier had actually kicked two field goals including one from 41 yards earlier in the year. He had his square-toe kicking shoe ready to go so during the time out before the kick, Spurrier told Coach Graves to give him a chance to win it. When he trotted out on the field for the field goal attempt, Auburn assistants were in Shug Jordan’s ear insisting the Gators were going to fake it. Jordan just shook his head and told his coaches, “If Spurrier tries it, he’ll make it.” Spurrier made the kick to complete a day in which he threw for 259 yards and one TD, ran 18 yards for another and averaged 47.4 yards per punt. It was an afternoon that put Spurrier over the top among Heisman voters.

7. Graves out, Dickey in, 1969: In a move that resembled the one Dr. J. Wayne Reitz made in 1959, UF president Dr. Stephen C. O’Connell told Coach Graves in August that this would be his final season. Dr. O’Connell told Graves he could remain as the AD but not as the head coach. Nobody knew at the time that Dr. O’Connell and Tennessee coach Douglas Adair Dickey had verbally agreed that Dickey would be the Florida football coach in 1970. Behind the All-America pass-catch duo of John Reaves and Carlos Alvarez, the sophomore dominated Gators went 8-1-1. In a cruel twist of fate, Florida was paired with Dickey and SEC champ Tennessee in the Gator Bowl. Two days before the game Jack Hairston of the Jacksonville Journal and Buddy Martin of Cocoa (now Florida) Today broke the story that Graves was out, nearly causing a player revolt. The Gators played the game under protest but beat the Vols, 14-13. Graves finished on a 9-1-1 note, the best season in Florida football history. Dickey took over in 1970 but never once won the SEC nor did his teams ever come close to matching the excitement of the Super Sophs in 1969.

8. Charley Pell hired as head coach, 1979: When Dickey was fired after a 4-7 season in 1978, all eyes turned to Lou Holtz at Arkansas. It seemed that UF and Holtz were about to strike a deal when communication broke down. When he didn’t hear from UF in what he thought was a reasonable amount of time, Holtz backed out completely. SMU coach Ron Meyer was thought to be the focus, but UF quietly turned its attention to Clemson coach Charley Pell, a former All-SEC player and assistant coach for Bear Bryant at Alabama. Pell agreed to come to Florida for the astounding sum of $75,000 a year. His first team went 0-10-1 but the Gators went 33-16-1 including a remarkable 8-win season in 1980 after that. When Pell fell on the sword for NCAA violations in 1984, he left UF with what amounted to an NFL team. He never coached again. Pell never blamed anyone else for the NCAA sanctions and there is still a large contingent of Gator fans who are bitter about one of the stiffest probations in history, but without Charley Pell, the Florida athletic program would have never become one of the best in the country. Pell organized the Gator boosters and turned them into a fundraising juggernaut. He got facilities upgraded substantially. The probation will always hang over that era, but it wasn’t completely negative.

9. The conquering hero returns, 1990: Pell’s successor, Galen Hall, was fired midseason in 1989 when the men in blue suits from the NCAA came calling. UF limped home with a 7-5 record that concluded with five consecutive losses. The offense was Emmitt (Smith) left, Emmitt right, Emmitt up the middle. Zero in the way of creativity or imagination. Up at Duke, Steve Spurrier was doing the impossible and winning the ACC championship. Despite the Gator Nation’s cries to bring Spurrier home where he belonged, UF athletic director Bill Arnsparger wanted Mike Archer, the man he had hand-picked to succeed him at LSU. Depending on who you believe, Arnsparger either decided Spurrier was a better choice or had a Ben Hill Griffin-induced change of mind when BHG told him, “Bill, Steve Spurrier is going to be the football coach at Florida next year. You don’t have to be the athletic director.” Spurrier went 9-2 in his first season in 1990, went 122-27-1 in 12 years, won the first six Southeastern Conference championships in UF history and the 1996 national championship. When he took the job, all the so-called experts in the media and plenty of coaches – present and former – said the Spurrier offense would never work in the SEC. Not only did the offense work, but it changed the way football was played in the SEC and nationwide forever.

10. The Zooker and the frat house (September 16, 2004): On the evening of September 16, Florida football coach Ron Zook got a call from athletic director Jeremy Foley telling him to get over to the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house where a brawl seemed ready to break out between frat boys and three UF football players. There had been ongoing harassment from the frat boys and UF players that escalated that night when one of them sucker-punched Steve Rissler. When Zook arrived, he engaged in a verbal shout-down with the frat house president. Police arrived and prevented anything further from happening but the media turned the dispute into a nationwide negative. Thirty-seven days later, Zook and the Gators lost 38-31 to unranked Mississippi State in Starkville, dropping Florida’s record to 4-3. On October 24, Zook was fired although he was allowed to coach out the season. At the press conference on October 25, UF president Bernie Machen was asked how much the frat house incident had played into Zook’s demise. Machen replied, “Not much,” but to admit anything different would have empowered any frat house on campus that it could take down a Florida coach. On December 4, to no one’s surprise, Utah coach Urban Meyer was announced as Florida’s football coach. Meyer had been hired by Machen at Utah in 2003 and from the moment Zook was fired, it was thought to be only a matter of time before he was named the UF coach.

11. Tim Tebow picks Florida over Alabama (December 13, 2005): The entire Alabama coaching staff spent 12 hours at the Tebow family’s west Jacksonville compound the day before Tim was to announce at a nationally televised press conference where he was going to play college football. In the early hours of December 13, Tebow was on the phone with former UF offensive coordinator Larry Fedora, then the OC at Oklahoma State. Fedora and Tebow had grown close when Ron Zook had targeted Tebow as a must-get recruit. Fedora told Tim to look at whose poster was on his bedroom wall (Danny Wuerffel), what color was the family mailbox (orange and blue) and to remember whose games he started going to (Florida) when he was just a kid. Even so, it was still a struggle. Tebow and his entire family were particularly fond of Alabama coach Mike Shula, plus they had a great visit to Tuscaloosa on the weekend when Bama destroyed the Gators, 31-3, on October 1. Two hours before he was supposed to announce his decision on ESPN, Tebow was still torn but Fedora’s words resonated. An hour before decision time, Tebow informed his parents he was going to be a Gator. Twenty minutes before the announcement, the call was made to Shula. Then came the call to Meyer but before Tebow could say “I’m a Gator” the battery of his cell phone died. Meyer couldn’t bear to watch the ESPN announcement so he was pacing outside his Haile Plantation home when he heard Shelley and the kids yell. Only then did he know Tim had chosen the Gators. During his four years at UF, the Gators went 48-7, 35-6 with Tim as the starter. He won the 2007 Heisman Trophy, was a key contribor on the 2006 national championship team and the MVP of the 2008 national championship game when the Gators beat Oklahoma, 24-14.

12. Urban Meyer resigns, not once but twice: In the early hours of the morning of December 6, 2009, following Florida’s loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, Meyer thought he was having a heart attack. Taken by ambulance to the Shands ER, it was determined that Meyer hadn’t suffered a heart attack. It turned out he was having esophageal strictures, a condition in which the esophagus narrows to the point that only small amounts of food and liquid can pass but it was a scary enough incident that 20 days later, just before the Gators were to depart for New Orleans and a Sugar Bowl date with Cincinnati, Meyer resigned. A day later, Meyer rescinded his resignation with an agreement that he would take a leave of absence. He really needed a year off but allowed himself to be talked into coaching again. The attempt to balance coaching with dealing with the esophageal strictures meant neither the Gators nor Meyer’s health got quite the attention they needed. The result was an 8-5 season, the most losses ever suffered by any Meyer-coached team. On December 8, 2010, Meyer announced he was retiring for a second time and this time there was no turning back. The Gators closed out the Meyer era at Florida with a 37-24 win over Penn State in the Outback Bowl. Meyer spent the fall of 2011 working as a studio and sometime game analyst for ESPN. Without the concerns of recruiting, practice and everything else that goes into being the head coach at the University of Florida Meyer’s health returned to a reasonable enough condition that when Ohio State offered its vacant head coaching job in late November he accepted. There will never be any way to know for sure, but had Meyer taken 2010 off and come back to coach the Gators in 2011, it’s highly unlikely that he would have taken the Ohio State job and he might have been Florida’s coach for much, if not all, the next decade. Meyer was 65-15 in his six years on the Florida job with two national championships. In the 10 years since his second resignation, there have been no SEC or national championships. The three coaches who have followed Meyer – Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen – have combined for a 79-42 record.