THE SWEET MUSIC CHIMES AGAIN!
Something’s Stirring in The Swamp. And It’s Waking Up The Echoes.
On Friday, Paul Finebaum brought his TV show to campus and spent an hour ringing some of the sweetest chimes since Century Tower was at its best.
By Buddy Martin
Maya Angelou never sat in the press box at Florida Field, which is probably lucky for her. The coffee was terrible and the view has gotten worse for about 20 years.
Still, she probably would have understood this place better than a lot of the people who got paid to fix it.
More importantly, she would appreciate the way Gator fans have been feeling in the past few months.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel," she once said.
This week in Gainesville, it was about the feeling.
For the first time in about a decade, Gator fans feel good about themselves. I don’t mean the Thursday-night kind of good that’s gone by the second quarter Saturday. This one feels real.
All week I heard things around town I hadn’t heard in years: “This team is physically tough.” “This coach gets it.” “We look like Florida again.”
For a while there, the most optimistic thing a Gator fan could say was, “At least the band was good.”
An Hour Worth Remembering
On Friday, Paul Finebaum brought his TV show to campus and spent an hour ringing some of the sweetest chimes since Century Tower was at its best.
Afterward, of the 3 to 4 hour, Paul told me he thought it was “a really good hour” of television. Coming from a man who has spent decades listening to SEC callers explain how their team got robbed, that’s close to a papal blessing.
He also said something I agree with completely:“The HBC was amazing.”
Look at who else was in that lineup.
Scott Stricklin, the athletic director, who has taken more arrows than Custer and is finally watching the program get up off the canvas.
Jon Sumrall, the feisty new head football coach, whose standards already show up in how this team plays. He doesn’t talk much about toughness. He expects it.
Todd Golden, who won a basketball national championship and reminded everyone that winning at the very top is still possible here.
Both coaches agreed they have struck up a Bromance “ because we coach alike!”
Major Wright, the All-America defensive back who hit people for a living on a national championship team. He knows what a real Gator defense looks like, and so does anyone who ever tried to catch a ball over the middle against him.
And Steve Spurrier. The Heisman Trophy winner. The Head Ball Coach. The man who put a visor on the program and turned The Swamp into the place nobody wanted to come to as a visitor.
Some men get old. Spurrier just gets more Spurrier.
Put those five people on one stage for an hour and it stops being a TV show. It turns into a family reunion where everybody finally has good news and nobody has to talk about the uncle who went 4-8.
Why It Feels Different
Feelings like this get earned.
Florida beat Auburn 44-39 in a game that could have gone badly and didn’t.
Aaron Philo played like a cowboy. He took hits, got up, and kept throwing. He reminded me of the old gunslingers who would take a shot to the ribs, spit, and find the open receiver on the next snap. When a quarterback won’t stay down, the rest of the team usually stands up with him.
Credit Sumrall. He didn’t show up selling snake oil. He brought standards and has made his players live by them. A team takes on its coach’s personality, and this one is starting to look like his: hard-nosed and unwilling to back down.
For ten years, Gator fans were told to be patient. They heard about “process” and “next year” until they were ready to throw the remote at the television. The pride never went away. It just didn’t have much to hold onto.
It feel like it does now.
About Saturday
I don’t know what happens Saturday night when No. 4 Ole Miss comes to town to play No. 21 Florida. Nobody does. Ole Miss is ranked fourth for a reason, and good vibes have never blocked a blitz. But I am taking the Gators and laying 3 on my mythical bet.
I can tell you this, though: something is happening here. You can feel it in the parking lots and in the texts from old friends who quit calling about football years ago. You can hear it in the way people say “Go Gators!” without wincing first.
The folks up in South Bend like to talk about waking up the echoes. Around here, the echoes have a Florida accent.
They sound like Spurrier’s visor hitting the turf, Wuerffel’s spirals floating through a September sky, and 90,000 people standing up at once because they couldn’t help it.
I’ve heard those echoes before. I’d know them anywhere.
Maybe they’ve been in hiding and have been awakened. We’ll get on a better idea Saturday.
Win or lose, Gator fans got something back this week that they’d been missing for a long time.
They remembered how it feels to be Florida.
And the people who were there for the good old days found out they weren’t as far behind us as we thought.
Beautifully expressed. We all feel it, even those of us far away from our Gator home, Gainesville. When we see one another the “Go Gators! greeting, the exchange of smiles, the excited talk that follows match what you’re describing. Thank you, Buddy, for presenting all so well.