Now Comes the Hard Part for the Gators: Handling Success

Now comes the hard part.

Photo Credit - Chris Spears

Just 19 days ago, the Florida Gators seemed rather close to rock bottom after almost inventing ways to lose to Utah in Salt Lake City. That was what you would call a Murphy’s Law kind of game. Not everything that could go wrong did go wrong, but it certainly seemed that way.

Sixteen days later, those same Gators who found creative ways to lose a winnable game in Salt Lake, beat 11th-ranked Tennessee so badly that the Vols might take awhile to shake off the doubts. The score says it was simply a 13-point loss for the Vols and two possessions is no big deal for an offense that is dubbed “The Blur” because it’s so capable of scoring fast.

The reality is the game wasn’t even close. Thirteen points is deceptive. If you want to compare it to boxing, it was jab, jab, jab with the left then boom an overhand right to the face. Jab, jab, jab some more, then a body blow to the rib cage. At the end, the Gators were still standing. The Vols were Chuck Wepner, the “Bayonne Bleeder,” ready for a doctor with enough cat gut for 60 stitches.

The Gators made it look easy, like they did a week earlier against McNeese. You knew they would dominate D1AA McNeese. People were not only shocked that the Gators beat Tennessee, they almost gagged in disbelief that it was a knee-buckling beatdown.

Now the whole world knows what the Gators are capable of doing and this is the hard part. Because everybody knows, there has been a never-ending stream of text messages, phone calls and of course, “Hey, I’m your best friend’s favorite uncle’s cousin and you got any extra tickets for Saturday?”

This is what happens when you have success. In so many ways, dealing with the adversity of losing is easier, particularly when you have a team that has good leadership, one that is willing to stick together and make things better. The Gators did that following the loss to Utah.

Saturday night after the win over Tennessee, Billy Napier spoke glowingly of how there was no head-hanging, no finger-pointing, no poor pitiful me from any of his players after the loss to Utah. Monday he took it a step further.

“I would say that one of the things we try to teach our guys is that the minute that you start living life, and you are not an excuse-maker, you don't look to blame others or blame the circumstance,” Napier said. “You accept responsibility of the things that you can do better right away - like, ‘Hey, I can do this better and make the necessary changes?’ I think that helps you.”

That got the Gators through McNeese and Tennessee. For now the adversity of a loss is in the rearview. Ahead is Charlotte (1-2), a 10-year-old startup program that has gone from D1AA to membership in the American Athletic Conference in rather short order. The 49ers play in Jerry Richardson Stadium, capacity about what fits into the south end zone of The Swamp, which tells you Saturday night’s close encounter with the Gators is a cardboard sign with “will work for beer” paycheck game.

Florida is expected to win this game by 28 points if you believe the Vegas oddsmakers. What Billy Napier has to pound into the Gators’ heads this week is maybe you’re standing on third base right about now, but that doesn’t mean you hit a triple.

Just how will the Florida Gators, now ranked 25th in the Associated Press poll, deal with the barrage of attaboys coming from every direction? Do the Gators look in the mirror and think they’ve arrived or do they look at the week ahead as another step on a 12-game journey? They can believe the hype or they can come to work every day intent on improving.

And, it isn’t just the players that have to buy in to the challenge of handling success. It’s everyone in the organization.

“I think every part of your building has responsibility to model what we expect from the players,” Napier said. “We all have human nature to get comfortable, to relax, to not have the same urgency or detail, to not have the self-discipline to follow through. It's our job to attack human nature when we see it. That's at the player level, that's the video, equipment, nutrition, the training room, the strength and conditioning staff, all parts of the building.

“The challenge here is that we do what we would ask the players to do so we're not just talking about our young people, we're talking about everybody.”

Following the win over Tennessee, Saturday night was all about celebrating the best win of Napier’s 16-game tenure as Florida’s head football coach. Then came Sunday, time to get heads straight and focused on what’s ahead. Charlotte is non-conference but it’s important to avoid a letdown with an SEC gauntlet of (at) Kentucky, Vanderbilt and (at) South Carolina looming before the Jacksonville showdown with No. 1 Georgia.

Napier was happy with what he saw at the team meeting Sunday evening, even more pleased when he met with the leadership groups Monday morning, all this prior to an afternoon practice devoted to correcting the mistakes of the Tennessee game. The tough practice days will be Tuesday and Wednesday.

“I like what I saw last night,” Napier said. “Then I like what I heard when I went to the leadership group today at 11. I think they'll have a platform here at 11:30 and 1. We have two team recovery groups. We'll see where we're at.”

Even though the Gators will be practicing and prepping for Charlotte, the attaboys, text messages and sudden appearances of long lost friends and relatives won’t end. It will be up to each player to zone out the noise and clutter to stay focused on what is important moving forward.

Just what is important? It’s the team.

“They (fans, friends, relatives, etc.) want to tell you all about it when it's bad, and they want to tell you all about it when it's good,” Napier said. “I think it's important that we have something that we can stand on independent of that, a process and a system, and we can eliminate the external and say, ‘Hey, am I doing the best I can for the team today?’”