Gator Football Feel-Good: The Open Date Is Sweet Music, But Check the Lyrics
By Buddy Martin
Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media.
Two words on a football schedule don’t mean much to most people: “Open Date.” To a normal citizen it’s a blank square on the calendar. It’s a fine Saturday for a wedding, a trip to the mountains or finally cleaning the gutters.
But if your life is built around a football team, those two words sound like a Merle Haggard ballad drifting out of a jukebox. Sweet, a little sad and exactly what you needed to hear.
For Jon Sumrall, this week is that song.
His Gators have played seven straight Saturdays. They’ve been to the mountaintop, No. 8 in the country after running Ole Miss out of the Swamp 52-28.
They’ve been in the ditch beside it, falling out of the poll after a homecoming loss to South Carolina. Then last weekend they went to Austin, where the barbecue smoke hangs over the interstate and nobody expects the visitors to leave happy, and beat No. 7 Texas 27-24.
That’s a season’s worth of mood swings in seven weeks. A team needs a nap.
So this Saturday in Gainesville, the practice fields will be quiet and the training room will be full. It’ll be ice tubs instead of film sessions. Somewhere a backup linebacker will sleep until noon and call it the best thing to happen to him since signing day.
Florida is 5-2, ranked No. 20 and back in the conversation. That’s the cheerful part.
Now for the part where I squint.
In their infinite wisdom, the voters put Texas at No. 19, one spot ahead of the Gators. That’s the team Florida just beat on its own field. It’s like losing the wrestling match and getting the trophy anyway because your singlet fit better.
I’ve been reading polls longer than some of those voters have been alive, and I still can’t tell you what they’re measuring.
Apparently neither can Mario Cristobal, but more on him in a minute.
The History of Doing Nothing
Open dates get oversold, like a waterfront lot in Florida that comes with alligators.
Rest heals, but rest also rusts.
Look at 1996, the gold standard of Gator football. Steve Spurrier’s national champions had three open dates that season: Sept. 14, Oct. 26 and Nov. 23.
Coming off the first, they went to Knoxville and beat No. 2 Tennessee 35-29. Coming off the second, they beat Georgia 47-7. Coming off the third, they went to Tallahassee and lost to Florida State 24-21 — due mostly to two regular offensive linemen being injured and out. And don’t get me started on the late hits to “the echo of the whistle” by FSU.
So the most famous rest-week record in Gator history is 2-1, and the one blemish on a national champion came right after a week off.
Steve Spurrier got his revenge in the Sugar Bowl, 52-20, for the natty. As he put it, “we won the one that really counted the most.” But that November, nobody in Gainesville was calling open dates magic.
The lesson then is the lesson now: the week off doesn’t win anything. Depth does. A rested team with nobody behind the starters is just a team that’s about to get tired again.
Florida has been on the other end of the calendar math, too. In 2019, the Gators and Miami opened in Week 0 in Orlando. That stretched a 12-game schedule over 15 weeks and gave Florida three open dates. Good teams use that kind of breathing room. Thin teams just get more time to worry.
Meanwhile, Down in Coral Gables
Here’s where the record skips.
The same week Florida climbed back into the Top 25, guess who’s sitting on top of it?
The Miami Hurricanes are No. 1 in the AP poll for the first time since Dec. 8, 2002. A whole generation of Canes fans had never seen it. Some only knew about it from uncles in gold chains.
They got there the hard way and the easy way at once. The hard way was a 43-35 double-overtime escape against Florida State. The easy way was No. 1 Georgia losing at home to unranked Auburn 27-24 while No. 2 Notre Dame lost at BYU.
Five of the top seven teams went down on one Saturday, a first in poll history.
Miami won the No. 1 ranking the way you win a hot-dog eating contest after everybody else gets sick.
To his credit, Cristobal isn’t buying the crown. He called the ranking “absolutely insignificant and irrelevant with the changing of the guard from week to week.” He’s right. Texas held No. 1 and lost to unranked Oklahoma. Georgia took over and lost to unranked Auburn. In 2026, the top spot has been less a throne than a trap door.
Miami gets unranked Pitt this week. History says the Hurricanes should check the floorboards.
The Real Reason to Rest
Here’s my footnote to the cheerful news. Florida’s open date isn’t exactly a head start, because Georgia is off this week, too. The two teams meet Oct. 31 in Atlanta. Not Jacksonville, which still feels like a priest saying Mass in a bowling alley. Both will arrive with fresh legs and fresh grudges.
The wise guys favor the Bulldogs by 12.5 points, with the over/under at 53.5. The same Bulldogs who lost to Auburn last week. Auburn, of course, was one of the five teams the Gators had beaten this year, but put that aside for right now.
Georgia will be angry about Auburn, and Florida will be confident about Austin. The Bulldogs’ staff will spend the week reminding the players how that loss felt. Sumrall will spend it hoping his players’ ankles heal faster than their egos swell.
That’s the job of an open date. It isn’t for celebrating the last win; it’s for getting ready for the next fight. Heal the ankles. Fix the pass protection. Remind the young guys that No. 20 is a number, not a résumé.
So enjoy the quiet Saturday, Gator Nation. Go to the wedding, take the trip, clean the gutters.
Just be back by Halloween. The music’s about to get loud again.
Comments