How To Screw Up A Perfectly Good Night. If Not A Season.

This was supposed to be a happy night for Urban Meyer. Photo by Brendenmartingatormedia.com

Sorry, Urban — you deserved better than this.

By Buddy Martin

gatorbaitmedia.com

Just when it seemed like things were getting better, they got worse.

Just when it looked like the season was turning the corner, it didn't.

Just when the stage was set for a night to remember, the Gators turned it into one that Gator Nation will spend the rest of the fall trying to forget — and the rest of the winter pretending it never happened.

It was all there for the taking — a banged-up, underdog Oklahoma team that would have made the perfect victim for Florida's sixth win and bowl eligibility.

Instead, the guests ate the feast, emptied the liquor cabinet and made off with the silverware on their first visit ever to the Swamp. Some hosts. Some revival.

The table was set. Urban Meyer, the two-time national championship coach, was being introduced as the newest member of Florida's Ring of Honor — the highest honor the program can bestow. All his team had to do was not embarrass itself in front of the guest of honor.

Naturally, that was too much to ask. The Gators forgot to bring their A game. And their B game.

What showed up was roughly a C-minus, graded on a curve.

Sorry about that, Urban. You deserved better. You built the standard this program spends two decades chasing and one Saturday night trashing.

For nearly a quarter and a half, Florida couldn't stop the Sooners and couldn't muster any offense of its own — a two-part problem that would plague the Gators all night in what ended as a 23-7 defeat, their fourth loss in five games. What looked like a cakewalk to bowl eligibility a month ago is now a scavenger hunt, with Kentucky, Vanderbilt and FSU still standing between this team and a 6-6 participation trophy.

Consider the setup.

Oklahoma had fired its offensive coordinator and promoted a man who had never called plays — Jason Witten. A gift-wrapped opponent, in other words. The Gators unwrapped it, said thank you and handed it back. Florida stumbled out of the box, and for almost the first 25 minutes was out-hustled, out-played, out-schemed and out-classed — not to mention out-executed — as all those old bugaboos from seasons past returned like relatives at Thanksgiving, suitcases in hand, planning to stay through December.

And on top of everything, the Florida defense graciously permitted its guests to play keep-away with the football for the better part of a quarter in the second half. Call it Southern hospitality. Somebody should tell the Gators you're supposed to extend that to the visitors, not to the visiting scoreboard.

It was a night for mistakes, and I'm not just talking about the penalties and interceptions.

Maybe it was a mistake to let Hayden Hansen go play for the Sooners, because he came back to haunt his old team, catching a touchdown pass from the suddenly accurate John Mateer — the quarterback who rose from the living dead to play like the guy everybody thought he'd be someday. Naturally. Against Florida. Where else?

Hansen helped Oklahoma take a 10-0 lead in the second period on a night the Florida offense was stuck in reverse, headlights staring at it. The Sooners outgained the Gators by nearly 100 yards in the first half — and by more than that for the whole night, in case you were still keeping hope alive.

It took special teams to get Buster Faulkner's offense off the schneid — a punt return by Bailey Stockton that finally gave the Swamp something to cheer about.

One unit.

One play. That was the highlight package.

For most of the night it felt like 24-0. The touchdown, when it finally came, was a big-time stretch-and-touch of the end zone by Jadan Baugh — his 14th rushing score, salvaged by a replay review just to count, because of course this season even the good news needs a second opinion. And suddenly 10-7 felt like a bounce-back.

It wasn't.

The Sooners added a field goal and took the second-half kickoff. Florida hadn't gotten many stops all night, but coming up with one to open the third quarter was mandatory. The Gators got it.

It didn't matter. Nothing did.

I'm not going to lie — there were some egregious no-calls that went Oklahoma's way, holding and pass interference and the like, and they could have made a difference. But those things tend to even out. What doesn't even out is empty possession after empty possession by a team that keeps calling it a work in progress in November.

A bad decision on a fourth-down throw by Tramell Jones killed off Florida's chance to take the lead in the third quarter — and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Had the pass fallen incomplete in the end zone, Oklahoma would have taken over on downs. The real question was whether Florida should have taken the field goal — yes! — instead of coming away empty and still trailing 13-7. From there, the Gators never got over the hump. And even if they had, they'd have had to take the ball away first, because the Sooners hung onto it in the second half like a pack of starving dogs on a steak bone.

We kept waiting for the turnover that never came, just as we kept waiting for the touchdown pass from Jones that never came. At some point you stop waiting and start reading the schedule.

Then came the 20-play Oklahoma drive — the longest by the Sooners in 20 seasons — a death march that seemed to last 22 minutes in real time, longer than a full harvest moon, and turned out to be Florida's death knell.

Did Mateer dip his hands in Gorilla Glue before the game? The Gators couldn't get the football away from him. They couldn't even get close enough to try.

I don't know who that other John Mateer was — the one who'd been stumbling around earlier this season — but the one who played in the Swamp on Saturday night was nothing short of magnificent. Credit where it's due, even through gritted teeth.

It's a wonder nobody in orange and blue could replicate the trick.

On a crazy day when LSU got hammered by Alabama, Kentucky's bubble was popped by Tennessee, and Texas took care of business against Missouri, the Gators could not find the magic — and instead found themselves trailing upstart Oklahoma 20-7 with under five minutes to play. Florida joined LSU, Missouri, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Kentucky on a day being hailed as one of the greatest in college football history. Some people called it one of the greatest Saturdays in the history of the league.

Not so much, in some places. Ask the guys holding the bag.

(Feel free to add Miami and Ohio State to the losers' list, if it makes anybody feel better. Misery does enjoy company.)

And so a season that began 4-0 and looked so promising has just about gone in the dumper. There's still a path to bowl eligibility, and at this rate the Gators will need a map, a flashlight and a police escort to find it. The quality of play hasn't improved in recent weeks — it has regressed. At exactly the wrong time, against exactly the wrong visitor, on a night that was supposed to honor the coach who once made November in Gainesville the most fun in America.

Instead, November in Gainesville is once again a punchline, and the Gators are once again the setup.

Sorry, Urban. You deserved better. So did the rest of us.

That's the verdict from the press box, and I'm sticking to it.