Buddy Martin Blog: In Athens, They've Found Their Steve Spurrier. For Halloween, He's Kirby Smart.

It was a lonely Gator bench sometimes, as Jacob Copeland discovered. (Chris Spears photo)

For Georgia, ever since Herschel Walker, Bulldog fans have been going to bed with the familiar whine, “wait ‘til next decade.” This could be it.

JACKSONVILLE – The Mighty Georgia Bulldogs, now the best team in the land, have found their Steve Spurrier. Maybe.

Come gather ‘round yon Gator Nation, young and old, battered and beleaguered – although maybe not yet bowed – striped with disappointment of unrealistic expectations. Take your medicine. Drink from the bitter cup of reality and defeat. Then try to remember what it was once like to sip and savor that sweetness of victory, because it may be a while before you taste it again.

Old time Gator fans will remember the mantra in the pre-Steve Spurrier days, embraced through those cruel winters of discontent: “Wait ‘til next year.” Next year finally arrived in 1996, and then again in 2006 and 2008.

For Georgia, ever since Herschel Walker, Bulldog fans have been going to bed with the familiar whine, “wait ‘til next decade.“ This could be it. Around Athens these days, 2021 has the makings. We all know it, but some of us just didn’t want to admit it. Saturday the Bulldogs made a down payment and has a natty on layaway.

Prodigal son Kirby Smart, mentored by the all-time greatest college football coach (name not needed) is no doubt going to be around for a while, inflicting pain on SEC teams, coaches and fans. After more than 40 years, it may be finally the Bulldogs’ turn.

In Halloweens to come, some Gator fans will no doubt dress as their worst nightmare, Kirby Smart, unless somehow a way can be found in Gainesville to produce a reversal of fortunes. The trajectory is favorable for UGA. (To be clear, Kirby has a long way to go before being anointed as Spurrier — including a bunch of SEC titles and his first natty.)

This Halloween Nightmare arrived a day early. It was pretty close to a beatdown of Florida, even though for about 21 minutes Saturday at TIAA Bank Field it was actually a competitive football game.

For a few minutes on a soft Indian summer Saturday afternoon, when autumn would occasionally cast a semi-cool wisp off the St. John’s River, Gator fans settled in briefly with a wild imagination of a path to some redemption. After all, they never want to concede hope against Georgia.

For the first time since 2009, two bitter rivals had fought to a scoreless draw in the first period. And it wasn’t until another 8-½ minutes that either team would squeeze a single point out of the big flashy video scoreboards at both ends of TIAA Bank Field.

This was almost enough to lull Gator fans into a false sense of hope. These Bulldogs weren’t steamrolling anybody! Yet.

Stetson Bennett scrambled down to the Florida 5, but without succeeding beyond that, settled for a 21-yard field goal by Jack Podlesny and a sparse 3-0 lead. They had played 21 minutes, 24 seconds and the best that the mighty Bulldogs could do was a 3-point advantage? Hey, maybe they didn’t deserve that lofty No. 1 ranking?

Trailing the best team in America by only three points at the half wouldn’t be too shabby. A little bit of juice right then surely would shift momentum and change the mood, getting these spunky Gators off the field and back to the locker room just in time, trailing by just a smidgeon. And here came to juice.

Although he finally got to start, it was a "School of Hard Knocks" for Anthony Richardson. (Chris Spears photo).

On a fourth down with 2 yards to go, the strapping 6-foot-4, 240-pound Anthony Richardson from Gainesville Eastside stuck his foot in the ground and powered through several Bulldog tacklers for the first down. It was enough juice to light up Mick Hubert (“Oh my”) on the radio broadcast, and Lee McGriff, who referenced “Bronko Nagurski” to portray Richardson’s style of power running. Honestly, it did feel like a momentum shift.

Then it began to rain. Not raindrops, like when Georgia shut out Ray Graves’ 1968 team, 51-0. This time it rained mistakes by Florida, and points for Georgia. In just over two minutes, beginning at 3:39 to play in the first half, the bottom fell out. It would prove to be a School of Hard Knocks education -- interceptions, fumble, sack -- for this splendid young quarterback, who would later give way to the loyal Emory Jones because of an undisclosed injury.

We could point to the absence of key wide receivers Rick Wells and Trent Whittemore, the fact that AR-15 had to go on an Easter Egg hunt to find separation by a wide receiver among the smothering Bulldog secondary. But injuries cannot blamed for a 34-7 ass-kicking, even if the Gators were pinning their hopes on a freshman wunderkind in his first start.

Ironically, another Richardson named Nolan, he of Arkansas basketball fame, coached his Razorbacks to play with a fury he called “40 minutes of hell.” This Richardson, named Anthony, of Gator football fame, experienced all of that it 2 minutes, 17 seconds, when everything came apart.

So many possibilities were frittered away.

(Warning: Look away if you can’t stand the pain…)

In a nutshell … an 11-yard sack loss, a curious call by Mullen on a fourth-and-13 attempt to Jacob Copeland which fell incomplete … After a Herculean effort to gain 8 yards, in another “Bronko” style effort, AR-15 was stood up and stripped by Nolan Smith after which James Cook turned it into an 11-yard rushing TD and a 10-0 lead … Seconds later the interception by the same Nolan Smith, a one-man wrecking crew, capitalized on by a 36-yard scoring strike from Bennett to Kearis Jackson and 17-0 lead ... And then finally, the Pick Six by Nakobe Dean, who read the young UF quarterback like a cheap novel for a 50-yard touchdown. Georgia 24, Florida 0. Not 3-0. Whaatt?

(OK, you can look up again.)

It was a House of Horrors from which Dan Mullen’s team could not recover. Now the bigger question: Can Mullen’s program ever recover from it? One of the best offensive minds in CFB is 4-4 this season and 4-7 in his last 11. And let’s be honest here, the cup of bitterness isn’t going away — because recruiting season for Florida isn’t looking like a holiday to be celebrated.

Credit Mullen for doing his best to stress the old “there’s still a lot football left” line and “still a third of the season to play.” All of which is the mandatory language required to keep members of his squad from going over the wall. It may be a challenge. Just one year ago Mullen had a win over Smart and his ticket punched to the SEC Championship game. Since that time Smart has gone 12-0 and Mullen is 8-7.

There should be zero chances of Mullen losing his job, but the 49-year-old coach needs to regain the confidence of his boss, Scott Stricklin, and the fan base. He might do better if he was willing to explain some of the problems in more detail during Zoom media conferences and become more engaged after legitimate questions. Instead, he tends to fall back on the old generic non-answers like“we’re going to have to correct that” and “I’m not happy with this either.” He gets paid well enough to explain, although he did do better of total ownership after the Saturday debacle.

And by way, he could probably use a hug.

(Monday’s presser was cut short by Mullen, who declined to answer questions about recruiting. Also Todd Grantham, usually available to the media, was not. The UF announced no more players or coaches would talk to the press until after Saturday night’s game in Columbia, S.C.)

Earlier this week I made a reference to lyrics of a James Taylor song, “Fire and Rain.” Pardon me for the redundancy but this line from the same song is also applicable … even if I’m stuck in the late 1960s. But this reminded me of the current state of Florida football ...

“Sweet dreams and flying machines, and pieces on the ground …”

Maybe it’s because I’m really stuck in 1996, 2006 and 2008.