Personal Recollections Of “14 Days In Gainesville” And The ESPN Documentary

“I was just thinking football,” Spurrier said from his office Wednesday when discussing the 1990 season opener and the murders. “I have a way of putting all that out of my mind.“

By Carlton Reese

GatorBaitMedia.com

In watching the recent ESPN documentary “14 Days in Gainesville” I certainly did not expect to learn anything new and figured only to have some memories I had wished extinguished long ago to be rekindled. On both counts I was mostly correct.

For anyone in or around Gainesville in late August and early September of 1990, the stories of what happened at that time need no explanation from a documentary or anywhere else. 

Thankfully, this documentary was as much about football and its power to bring about healing in a community as much the grisly murders brought everyone together if only out of fear.

I remember during the week before the season opener, which would be the unveiling of the Steve Spurrier era so anxiously anticipated since the past December when he was announced as the new head football coach, my mother, aunt and a friend came up to Gainesville for a round of golf with me. Most of the conversation was about the murders and the abject fear gripping the city, and not much about the upcoming game. When we walked off the 18th green, my putter did not go in the bag – it stayed in my hand as it would the rest of the week as a measure of self-defense.

Today, 36 years after that horror, I have vivid recollections of the murders, but also of that first game against Oklahoma State. Funny, not until this documentary aired did I ever really associate the two, instead keeping them safely compartmentalized in my mind. When I interviewed coach Spurrier recently for material on his forthcoming book we spoke of that first game against the Cowboys, the preparation headingin, quarterback Shane Matthews’ readiness, and many details of what happened. 

At no point was there any discussion of the Gainesville murders and its effect on that game – it took Tuesday night’s documentary to remind me that all this was happening at the same time.

“I was just thinking football,” Spurrier said from his office Wednesday when discussing the 1990 season opener and the murders. “I have a way of putting all that out of my mind. After that week when they caught the dude, there was no sense talking about it.”

The documentary stated how people were carrying baseball bats and such out of paranoia, and this was no exaggeration. Everything in the documentary I already knew from having lived in Gainesville and working on the sports desk at The Gainesville Sun at that time. Everything except one: that Spurrier allowed the players’ girlfriends to stay at Yon Hall so they could be safe.

Speaking on Wednesday, Spurrier refused to take as much credit as was given him in the documentary, in which players claimed they were going to stay with their girlfriends for protection, but that Spurrier said it would be safer for them all to be at Yon Hall. “I didn’t say that. I said ‘you can spend the night with your girlfriends if you want to.‘ I may have allowed (the girls in Yon Hall), but I didn’t tell them to bring them.”

It was 36 years ago, so perhaps the details are remembered a little bit differently by coach and certain players. Nonetheless, allowing the girls into Yon Hall at that time was not just a stroke of genius, it was also a stroke of humanity.

“That was just Coach being Coach,”said Shane Matthews.

Students had left Gainesville in droves, with many transferring to other schools under the cloud of the murders. But on gameday, Florida Field was packed and for three hours no one was thinking about murders.

“It brought everybody back together,” Spurrier said of that game, especially the winning of that game. “Three passes (to start the game), then we ran it in. Dexter McNabb scored the first one.” 

In a manner of speaking, Spurrier and his Gators were heroes that day – they breathed new life into a community stunned and in mourning. The timing could not have been any better.

I’ve watched many of these ESPN documentaries and while they are for the most part entertaining, they are dripping with egregious biases (see ‘The U’ in which they want viewers to believe the Miami Hurricanes players enjoyed more celebrity than Dan Marino, Mark Duper or Mark Clayton. Pshaw!) 

This one seemed very fair and on point, although it conveniently left out the blowout losses that year in Knoxville and Tallahassee. We can forgive them for that, even thank them, honestly.

What this documentary did was put things into contexts that I had completely forgotten. For me, Florida 50, Oklahoma State 7, had become merely a scoreline that marked the beginning of an era, a pivot point in Gator football history. Now, I recall all that surrounded what truly was a glorious day and an appetizer for what would be a glorious future. In the end, it was more than just football and that does not happen very often.

The Miracle on Ice was more than just a great hockey victory, it was a moment of patriotic pride that grabbed everyone, hockey fan or not. Ten years later, it would be a Super Bowl to bring a nation together when Operation Desert Storm was just getting underway. 

No one is fool enough to think sports is such an important endeavor in this world, but one need not downplay its significance either. Chief Justice Earl Warren once stated, “I always turn to the sports section first. The sports sections records man’s accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man’s failures.”

The 1990 Florida Gators football team was about the beginning of a new era and finishing first in the Southeastern Conference. But, looking back years later, it was about much more than we could have ever known at the time.

It was about bringing joy to a place where only gloom had dwelt. It was a reason to celebrate when tears and fears held sway. A great movie or play, or even a rock concert or art show could not have reversed the mourning. No, it took a victory. A victory to redefine a culture and turn people’s focus to hope and excitement for the future, instead of dwelling on the melancholy gripping them so tightly. 

Were Steve Spurrier not the head football coach at the University of Florida during those dark days, it’s more than likely melancholy and man’s failures would have won.