Oh My! Mick Is Riding Off Into The Sunset

Oh my! He’s riding off into the sunset.

Actually, Mick Hubert and his wife Judi are just riding down I-75 to Sarasota where they plan to enjoy life on Longboat Key, far away from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, the O-Dome and arenas throughout the Southeast where Gators fans know “Oh my!” as his signature line.

Okay, so he borrowed “Oh my!” from the late, great Dick Enberg, but when Dick Enberg said, “Oh my!” it was soft, subtle, almost as if he were inviting you to admire what he was seeing as he called a game. When Mick Hubert said, “Oh my!” there was an elephant in the room, not just dancing to the music, but crashing into the china cabinet. When crowds roared, Mick roared with them and if the Gators did something well along the way, it was punctuated with a boisterous, “Oh my!”

With Dick Enberg it was like he was sharing a private moment, just the two of you and not however many millions were tuning in. Dick Enberg described what was going on, never missing a detail. With Mick, it was more like there is a party going on and the details aren’t nearly as important as making us feel like we were sharing the excitement of the moment.

Do you remember, “Doering’s got a touchdown! Doering’s got a touchdown!”? You probably don’t remember the down and distance or that there was still time left on the clock when Chris Doering caught the TDP from Danny Wuerffel, but you darn sure remember feeling like Mick was jumping up and down with you, hugging whoever was within grabbing distance to celebrate the Gators snatching a highly improbable win from the jaws of a defeat to the Kentucky Wildcats in Lexington.

Oh my what a night that was. What a call that was. Thirty years later, everyone who was alive and listening remembers Mick Hubert all but losing his mind and making us feel like it was not only okay, but expected that we should be losing our minds with him. Good announcers make us feel that way and Mick wasn’t just good at what he did, he was great at it because he knew how to take whatever electricity was in the air and send it through the airwaves so that we could have a Gator moment with him.

That’s how I will choose to remember Mick Hubert on the mic of Florida football, basketball and baseball games the last 33 years. He was THE VOICE. He was the guy in charge of the excitement when the Gators did something well, the guy who understood our disappointment when the Gators bit the bullet. He was the perfect party host, celebrating with us when the Gators won, aching to the core with us when the Gators lost.

A few months ago before a Florida basketball game, Mick and I talked about his job as a play-by-play announcer. I remember this comment in particular: “I want everyone to feel the excitement of the moment but I don’t ever want them to feel the moment caught me by surprise and was too big for me.”

Excitement? Oh we always felt Mick’s excitement, but even when it seemed he was on the verge of total broadcast insanity, we never felt like he wasn’t prepared for just such a moment.

So as I think about Mick leaving, I keep thinking do I have enough oh mys in this column?

Mick Hubert will be on the mic for Florida’s final regular season baseball series with South Carolina this weekend, then it’s off to Sarasota with Judi. The house he’s called home has been sold and a new place awaits about three hours down the road. The games will go on at the University of Florida, and no doubt, Mick will be listening in, but it’s going to be different.

It has to be different. It always is whenever an icon says sayonara, replaced by someone brand new whose voice we can’t hear in our minds when we close our eyes and shut off all outside interference. It was that way when Otis Boggs and his “high lazy spiral” called it a play-by-play career, replaced by David Steele, the play-by-play guy for the Western Carolina Catamounts of all people. David was a fine football announcer but he was so good calling basketball games that the Orlando Magic hired him to be their radio and TV voice when they came into existence in 1989. Magic fans know no other announcer. When David Steele retires there will be a void in the hearts and minds of the Magic fan base.

Mick Hubert was hired by then Florida athletic director Bill Arnsparger in May of 1989. He’s taken us through Galen Hall, interim Gary Darnell, Steve Spurrier, Ron Zook, interim Charlie Strong, Urban Meyer, Will Muschamp, interim DJ Durkin, Jim McElwain, interim Randy Shannon, Dan Mullen and interim Greg Knox. And that’s just the football coaches. For basketball, it’s been Captain Ahab (Don DeVoe), Lon Kruger, Billy Donovan and Mike White. For baseball, it’s been Joe Arnold, Andy Lopez, Pat McMahon and Kevin O’Sullivan.

He's been on the call for three national championships in football (1996, 2006, 2008), two in basketball (2006-07) and one in baseball (2017), plus countless ups and downs before, after and in between.

And now he’s about to say his last “Oh my!” and spend his sunsets looking at the Gulf of Mexico from Longboat Key.

As for the rest of us, it’s time to prep for the transition to a yet to be named voice. Those of us who have been around since the days of Otis have gone through this transition twice before, but it’s still going to feel indescribably weird to hear someone welcome us to their version of the Florida sports party starting in September. Mick, after all, is a legend who has been doing it his way for 33 years and legends just don’t grow on trees.

So just who does Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin hire as THE VOICE of the Gators? When it came time to fire Dan Mullen as the football coach back in November, Stricklin already had a short list of coaching candidates he had been working on for months just in case Mullen opted to go somewhere else or in case he had to do the unthinkable and add Mullen to that very long list of former Florida football coaches. Billy Napier was hired in short order.

Stricklin also had a short list already prepared for basketball. Mike White’s neck wasn’t on the chopping block, but Stricklin was well aware that White was growing increasingly uncomfortable with a fan base that expected more than simply making the NCAA Tournament as a mid-to-low level seed. The sweat had barely dried on the Florida basketball uniforms after the Gators took it on the chin to Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament in Tampa when Stricklin was drawing a line through the names on his short list except one – Todd Golden.

Mick Hubert retiring may have caught Stricklin by surprise when Mick confided that he felt it was time to call it a career a few weeks ago, but when the retirement announcement was released Thursday morning, you can bet the farm Stricklin was already going through his list of potential replacements.

The Florida job is attractive, no doubt about it. Billy Napier and Todd Golden are young coaches who all the experts believe will bring back a measure of greatness that was once synonymous with Florida football and basketball. Kevin O’Sullivan has one of the youngest teams in America so the baseball team should be back among the top five or six in the country very soon. The thought of calling games for the Gators and in the Southeastern Conference, the best college sports league in the country, is going to draw some serious inquiries.

Amid the inevitable national search for the successor to Mick, one name should be given consideration in the event he’s called basketball and that is James Bates. He’s done football play-by-play and color analysis when for the Mountain West Conference broadcasts. For the past few years, he’s been with the Atlantic Coast Conference Network.

Batesy is as Gator as it possibly gets. Always has been and always will be a Gator dating back to when he sent shockwaves through his entire family and the Tennessee Vol nation when he came to Florida to play for Steve Spurrier. From the day he was born, James Bates was SUPPOSED to be a Tennessee Vol. His dad played for Doug Dickey at Tennessee, then served as a grad assistant for Dickey (1968) and as the defensive coordinator for Johnny Majors (1989). Jim Bates was Steve Spurrier’s first defensive coordinator (1990) at Florida, but even with that Florida connection, nothing was supposed to detour James Bates highway from Sevierville to Knoxville when it came time to play college football. But, a funny thing happened on the road to Knoxville. It detoured to Gainesville and Bates became an All-SEC linebacker and a vital member of four SEC championship teams plus the 1996 national championship.

Gainesville felt so much like home that Bates married UF All-America swimmer Tina Hinton. Their daughters Talia and Georgia swim for the Gators. You don’t get more all-Gator all the time than that.

James Bates is no stranger to the broadcast booth for football. Pair him with Shane Matthews, a two-time former SEC Player of the Year and 14-year NFL veteran who will be taking over as the color analyst for the retiring Lee McGriff (Shane did the road games last year), and Florida would have a unique Gator perspective.

The only drawback to hiring Bates would seem to be basketball. There is time between plays in football, so an announcer has a chance to catch his breath a bit while the analyst does the talking. In basketball, the action is non-stop and the play-by-play announcer is talking constantly. Unless he has picked up some basketball experience along the way or unless Scott Stricklin is willing to have separate play-by-play announcers for football and basketball, James Bates would seem like a longshot. However, it should be noted that former South Carolina quarterback Todd Ellis does the play-by-play for Gamecock football broadcasts while Derek Scott does play-by-play for basketball. Ellis has a day job as a lawyer in Columbia. Batesy’s job when it’s not football season is painting. Although he didn’t study art at UF, his paintings are hot ticket items.

Would Scott Stricklin be bold enough to hire an announcer for football and one for basketball or will this be a national search for someone experienced who does football, basketball and an occasional baseball broadcast when Jeff Cardozo is doing television work? We’ll find out in a hurry because the Gators play their first college football game on September 3.