Buddy Martin's Blog: Mick's 3 Lexington Nights. ‘If They'd Lost, What Would Have Happened To Me?'
One minute Steve Spurrier’s dream of a winning another SEC was about to go up in smoke – the next it exploded into that moment that all Gator fans know so well, trademarked as: “Doering’s got a touchdown! Doering’s got a touchdown!”
Raise your hand if you’ve been alive long enough to have seen the Kentucky Wildcats beat the Florida Gators in football more than once. OK, there was that one time three years ago, and then maybe back just after WWII when Bear Bryant had Babe Parilli playing quarterback for the Wildcats, and then again in the mid-eighties when Ronald Reagan was president.
Let’s face it, though, when you’ve won 31 straight, it’s a rare sight for the Gators to be seen on the wrong end of the score vs. Kentucky.
Mick Hubert has been broadcasting UF sports for 31 years and he’s never called a game in Lexington which the Gators were beaten by the Wildcats. He’s seen 16 straight wins by Florida. And only one loss, period. He became a part of history in the closest and most famous game played between these two schools in the last 50 years – maybe even the 71-year history of the series.
One minute Steve Spurrier’s dream of a winning another SEC was about to go up in smoke – the next it exploded into that moment that all Gator fans know so well, trademarked as:
“Doering’s got a touchdown! Doering’s got a touchdown!”
In his exuberant style, Hubert’s description of the game-winning pass play was well documented on the ESPN special of Chris Doering’s touchdown catch from Danny Wuerffel. That was the night Mick Hubert made his bones, as he recalled:
“Part of me says that if Florida had lost that game, we would not only have NOT won the SEC that year, but maybe not the next (2004) either … as Coach Spurrier has said. And if Florida loses that game, how would have it affected my career? Would I still be here today? What would have my reputation have been?”
As Mick said in ESPN’s 90-minute special on SEC play-by-play announcers, it was a career-launching moment that he and Doering shared. And as Mick is wont to do, he made that call with every ounce of passion and gusto that he could muster.
“His veins were popping out of his throat,” said broadcast partner Lee McGriff, “and we were afraid he was having a stroke!”
Mick did, in fact, survive and hang around for a while. That was one of Three Memorable Nights in Lexington. The second was Sept. 26, 2009, when the Gator Nation shivered in terror as they saw their Superman go down for the count.
Tim Tebow was cruising along, despite having taken pre-game flu meds, on what would eventually turn into a 41-7 rout. Until UK defensive lineman Taylor Wyndham came crashing into him on a sack, with Tebow falling backwards as the back of his head struck the knee of a teammate to knock him out. It was petrifying. Hubert remembers stone silence from the Kroger Field crowd, as the Heisman Trophy winner lay motionless. The man of millions of words was stuck for what to say.
“It was a vicious hit,” Hubert recalled. “Tim went down – and the whole stadium went silent. Obviously, they would do that for anybody that gets hurt like that. They’d do that for a broken ankle. But we were dealing with the head. Wow! Plus he had the flu at that time. So everybody had their hearts on their throats. There’s a place for silence. But on radio, silence is scary. You don’t really know what to say. There’s no pictures.”
I remember long after the game ended doing a live streaming shot with my producer son Brenden, when we chose to speed out to the University of Kentucky hospital, where we had no access to information and were thrown out of the lobby because we were media. We were not even allowed to broadcast from the lawn.
About 1 a.m., already bedraggled by a 15-hour day, we went across the street where Brenden framed the hospital behind me and I said into his camera: “Somewhere in this hospital behind me, Tim Tebow lies in a bed, being treated for a concussion.” That’s all I knew.
By morning that report had 20,000 hits, although we really couldn’t give them real updates. Around 7 a.m. I had a message from an unknown viewer who said: “Hey Buddy, don’t you have any updates?” We were long gone down the road to Florida.
LSU was next and surprisingly Tebow recovered to play.
What happened to two other Gator quarterbacks in Lexington was one of the most bizarre moments. Nine years after the Tebow injury in Lexington, Feleipe Franks was hurt and did not recover to ever play for the Gators. An unexpected star was born in Kyle Trask. Both sad and happy. It was a movie script.
The forgotten man who hadn’t started a game since ninth grade was dragged out of mothballs to answer the urgent Next-Man-Up bat signal in an SEC road game -- in the final ticks of a third quarter with his team trailing, never missing a beat. He even ran an option play to score – not his strong suit – and put Florida on his back.
Kyle Trask came out of the witness protection program to lead his teammates to victory and a whole lot more as a Heisman finalist.
Which brings us to 2021 showdown at Kroger at what the experts are calling the perfect place for Mark Stoops’ 8.5-point underdogs to knock off a Top Ten foe. And we’ve got yet another potential quarterback unveiling. Will we see Anthony Richardson?
Dan Mullen says Richardson is cleared to play. What exactly does that mean? By the third Florida possession we’ll know, because if AR15 is good to go, he’ll be taking snaps by then. Not that Emory Jones doesn’t deserve to take them all, but that’s not how Mullen’s two-quarterback system works.
To me this sets up the ultimate moment for the SEC debut of a future star. Where Doering crashed on to the scene as a household name to Gator fans, Tebow avoided a tragic injury that could have been devastating and Trask finally got discovered like a movie actress in Hollywood’s Schwab’s Pharmacy, AR15 could be taking his first step on the national stage to the big-time.
Then Mick Hubert could have Four Memorable Nights In Lexington.
And you, sir, are a gifted writer and an all-time Gator great! You belong on the figurative Mount Rushmore of the UF College of Journalism and Communications, aka the Ray O. Weimar School of Journalism.
I don’t think you’ve ever written a better column than this superb piece from the great Mick Hubert’s vantage point. We older Gator fans recall a Wildcats’ win in the 1970s when Fran Curci was the Kentucky coach and Doug Dickey our under-achieving leader. Curci was soon after hit hard with NCAA violations and disappeared. If Florida plays four quarters of what the Gators are capable of doing Mick will be intoning the heroics of AR15 and Emory Jones Saturday night. Go Gators!