Thoughts of the Day: September 29, 2026

O-line coach Phil Trautwein and family celebrate the win over Ole Miss (Photo by Chris Spears)

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning:

Driving home on I-75 from Jon Sumrall’s Monday morning press conference in Gainesville, cruise control set at 77 to keep steady with the flow of traffic, I’m listening to the album “Hitman: David Foster and Friends.” The music makes the miles go faster but one song in particular bridges 42 years of Florida Gators football and everything in between.

“Something happened along the way

What used to be happy was sad

Something happened along the way

And yesterday was all we had” – From “After the Love Has Gone,” music and lyrics by David Foster

I flash back to 1984 at the Gator Bowl. No. 8 Georgia vs. No. 10 Florida. Galen Hall is Florida’s interim coach having taken over the reins of the team when Charley Pell was dismissed by UF president Marshal Criser when the NCAA dropped the hammer on the Gators for 109 NCAA violations. What Charley Pell did paled in comparison to what was going on not only in the Southeastern Conference but wherever winning college football was played. A case of selective enforcement not to mention a good bit of deceit. Charley was promised the University of Florida would stick with him much the way Oklahoma stuck with Barry Switzer. Of course it didn’t happen that way, but that’s another story for another day.

Over on the Georgia sidelines was Vince Dooley, as big a hypocrite as ever served as head coach and athletic director at an SEC school. In retrospect, I have to believe Vince Dooley looked across the field, saw what amounted to an NFL roster in orange jerseys and felt the urge to purge. There was no way in hell he could keep up with Charley Pell’s recruiting. How many Herschel Walkers were out there to buy? Florida didn’t have Herschel Walker, but it had three first round NFL Draft pick running backs in Neal Anderson, John L. Williams and Lorenzo Hampton; the best offensive line anyone had ever seen with monsters like Lomas Brown, Jeff Zimmerman and Crawford Kerr; four future NFL wide receivers in Ricky Nattiel, Ray McDonald, Frankie Neal and Gary Rolle; and over on defense unblockable nose tackle Tim Newton, scary good linebacker Alonzo Johnson, and a secondary led by Jarvis Williams and Adrian White. There was also a safety on that team named Vernell Brown, yes, the grandpa of the very talented sophomore wide receiver that current UF offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner keeps finding creative ways to use, keeping opposing defensive coordinators burning midnight oil to figure out how they’re going to neutralize him.

There was this Georgia mystique about the Florida game. Vince Dooley ruined Steve Spurrier’s senior season in 1966. There was Fourth and Dumb 10 years later. Lindsay Scott providing the 1980 miracle. Herschel in beast mode in 1982 when Georgia whomped the Gators 44-0. Vince had Charley’s number. Five of Georgia’s six straight wins came at Charley Pell’s expense, but 1984 was different. There was no Georgia mystique.

Kerwin Bell threw a TDP to a leaping Lorenzo Hampton for one touchdown and Neal Anderson went over the top for a second one as the Gators built a 17-0 halftime lead. At the start of the third quarter Georgia marched down the field but in one of the great goal line stands in Florida history, Roger Sibbald made the initial hit on fourth down and a host of Gators swarmed in for the stop at the two. Two plays later, Kerwin and Ricky Nattiel teamed up for a 96-yard TDP.

Then came the grind. With a 24-0 lead, the Gators ran the ball. They ran it some more. Georgia was powerless to stop Florida. The final score was 27-0 and it could have been worse except Galen Hall took pleasure in delving out the punishment and humiliation by pounding away. I will go to my grave believing the beating Vince Dooley took that day convinced him to do whatever it would take to bury the Florida Gators.

Thinking about the second half of the 1984 win over Georgia reminded me of last Saturday’s Ole Miss game. The Gators threw only six passes in the second half. Why throw it when Florida’s O-line, led by Southeastern Conference Offensive Lineman of the Week Bryce Lovett, punished Ole Miss with 26 carries for 169 yards and four rushing touchdowns in quarters three and four. SEC Offensive Player of the Week Jadan Baugh (29-142, 3 TDs) got the last one.

Just as Auburn was a week earlier, Ole Miss was powerless to stop the Florida run game. The offensive line wasn’t supposed to be this good. At least that’s what the folks at Athlon and Phil Steele thought. Someone forgot to tell that to Phil Trautwein and Faulkner. You think these guys are good now, think about this. All five starters – LT Lovett, LG Knijeah Harris, C Harrison Moore, RG TJ Shanahan and RT Emeka Ugorjie – have another year of eligibility. These guys are good and they’re only going to get better.

“We're not finished there,” Sumrall said Monday morning. “We can improve in some of that, but I think just doing your job and not blowing assignments helps, you know, and then I think there is also a mindset of like, we're gonna try to move the pile. We’re gonna try to move forward each play.”

And there is the Faulkner Factor. Everybody in the stadium and watching on TV knew the Gators were going to run the football. Nobody knew better than the Ole Miss staff. What they never figured out was how Buster calls the game. You can know a run is coming, but it’s hard to stop it if you’re uncertain of the point of attack. And, it’s doubly hard to stop it because quarterback Aaron Philo does a dandy impersonation of Kerwin Bell, not only the mustache on a baby face but the way he processes information and then executes plays because he can make all the throws. Load the box and he goes over the top to the best set of receivers the Gators have had in years. Some might call him a game manager, but he doesn't make many mistakes. If that's what a game manager is all about, I'm all in.

Then I think about all that has happened since that 1984 Georgia game. We had the Spurrier years with six SEC titles and the 1996 national championship. There was the Urban Meyer meteor, six years that flashed across the sky too quickly with two national championships, two SEC titles and three 13-win seasons.

Glory years those were and in the 15 years since then until now, it’s like the song – something happened along the way and yesterday was all we had. We had some moments during the four coaches and 15 seasons prior to Jon Sumrall that gave us a measure of hope but the collective of those years was like watching a gymnastics meet when one of those athletic, talented pixies twists, turns, tumbles and flies through the air but doesn’t stick the landing.

It’s been quite awhile since Florida football stuck the landing.

There is something about Jon Sumrall that lends itself to this growing confidence that the best is ahead for Florida football. Yes, I’m quite aware that we’re only four games into the season. Sumrall didn’t use Nick Saban’s “rat poison” analogy Monday, but he put the eight weeks of football that lie ahead in perspective. For him, this is a one-game season. Missouri. Beat Missouri and it will be another one-game season. South Carolina. And so on.

Focus on winning the week ahead, then flush last week. Pay no attention to rankings or what’s on message boards or social media. Minimize the outside noise. Praise is a wonderful thing, but don’t buy into it. Instead keep a mindset of what can I do to get better.

“Well, I've helped block it out for them this morning by showing them all the bad stuff we put on tape, too,” Sumrall said. “We showed our not-our-standard tape this morning. I said this, I think last week maybe, but nobody, you don't hang a banner or get celebrated for where you're ranked between game four and five in college football. Like, the rankings mean absolutely nothing. And anybody that's feeling really good about us being ranked wherever we're ranked, it means nothing to me today. It really doesn't mean anything until after the last game is played and it's like, ‘All right, where were we? How did we do?’

“And so I realize in the public area, the fanbase, it's exciting. There's a lot of great, you know, morale, whatever, but here's the deal, and I told the team this morning, you have to humble yourself or you will be humbled. Like, if we don't look in the mirror and hone where we're deficient still, somebody else will show it to us. And so we … I'm very happy that we won last week, I’m happy that we won each week so far. It beats the alternative. But I'm not, like, celebrating anything. Nobody in our building should be celebrating anything. If we are, then we're totally off base at how you find success over the long term. So, yeah, just, I think we have to keep a humble, hungry, gritty blue-collar mindset. You know, tough teams win, selfless teams win. Like, teams that have an edge about them and hunger about them, they win. Complacent, soft, entitled, lazy, selfish teams, they lose.”

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act last night with 77 votes. The House of Representatives still has to pass it and many experts say that’s iffy at best. There are provisions in this bill to like and some that will require tweaking. I won’t claim I have done an in-depth study of the bill, but my Readers Digest Condensed Version mind sees this for what it is – a stopgap measure that will halt the lemmings from racing to the cliff and leaping to their death in the sea below.

We are at a juncture in which the future of college athletics hang in the balance. I might be in a minority here, but I think college football players especially should be paid. They rally us to the point we’ll join 90,000 of our closest friends to scream until our throats are sore and our lungs feel like collapsing on a Saturday afternoon while watching them put their future health on the line all for the sake of our entertainment. Spend some time with Scot Brantley. Talk to Wilber Marshall about his aching, deteriorating body. Then tell me these guys don’t deserve to be paid and have health care that extends well beyond their playing days.

But when we have a system that invites greed, which is what we have now, and results in kids still in high school selling out to the highest bidder, then something has to be done to bring some sanity back into the equation. I don’t know if anyone has all the answers but there is more to this than this bill the Senate just passed.

The Chinese philosopher Lao Tze once said “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” The Protect College Sports Act is a single step. We should pray that the people in charge of college sports and the legislators in Washington will see this for what it truly is – the first step in a journey that probably won’t end anytime soon.