Twenty Years After 9/11, Florida Gators Football Still Hasn't Recovered
Updated: Sep 10, 2021
There are moments in your life that you never forget. For my father’s generation it was Pearl Harbor. Until the day he died he could remember even the most minute detail of where he was and what he was doing December 7, 1941. A day later he stood in line to enlist in the Navy only to be told come back two years later when he was 18.
My dad and I shared one of those never forget moments on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Fifty-eight years later, I can remember small details such as the moment David Bricker came bursting into the locker room where we were dressing after Coach Mike “Fuzzy” Fratella’s phys ed class at Westwood Junior High in Gainesville. He was in tears and he blurted out, “They shot him! They shot President Kennedy!” Moments later our principal Mr. Simmons voice came on the intercom instructing everyone to proceed immediately to our home rooms. Walking to my home room I remember the distinct shuffling of feet and hearing voices barely above a whisper. Once in home room, Mr. Simmons again spoke, telling us that President Kennedy had been shot and that we were to go home immediately. The bus ride from the Westwood campus to Gainesville High where we got off was deathly silent. That was Friday. That night my dad and I went to the PK Yonge football game at Citizens Field. We sat quietly throughout the game. Everybody did. The only football game I ever saw that quiet involved the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind.
The Gators played and beat Miami, 27-21, Saturday. Sunday morning, we watched on television as Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Later that day the National Football League played a full schedule. Monday, President Kennedy’s funeral was held at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington. That same day, my Hughes Supply football team played our final game of the season in Hawthorne and won 30-0. On the ride over and back, hardly anyone spoke. We were still stunned by the chain of events. I could bore you with more details. I remember complete conversations I had that weekend, hearing Otis Boggs describe the 70-yard touchdown run by Hagoode Clark that broke open the game with Miami, NFL scores, Walter Cronkite’s commentary on CBS, John Dulaney, Todd Rainsberger and Dale Davis scoring touchdowns against Hawthorne.
Some things you just never forget.
My most recent never forget moment was September 11, 2001. I had just returned from an early morning walk and was eating breakfast when it was reported a plane had struck the World Trade Center. As the first photos came in, the commentators were asking out loud how this could happen? How could a plane stray this far off course? They were still asking when the second plane came in view on a glide path straight for the second tower. At this point the commentators were telling us this was not some random accident, but America was under attack. The rest of the morning we watched in horror as we heard about the plane going down in Pennsylvania and how another had struck the Pentagon in Washington.
That morning I talked to my longtime close friend Gene Bazemore, whose son was working for Prudential’s investment division in New York. His son was due to be on the upper floors of the World Trade Center about the same time the first plane struck. Gene didn’t know if his son was alive or if he had escaped. He was fearful. He watched on TV as people leapt to their death as the fires consumed the towers. I remember vividly the fear and pain in his voice. Gene was trying to be brave, but he was struggling. There was no way to get any kind of phone call to New York as both land lines and cell phones were jammed. It would be days before Gene found out that his son was early for his appointment, so was drinking coffee about a block away when the first plane struck. That saved his life.
The attacks happened on a Tuesday. By Wednesday with what was left of the Twin Towers in New York and the damaged Pentagon still smoldering, all air traffic was suspended nationwide and with that decision, sports came to a standstill nationwide.
It was Tennessee week for the Florida Gators, time for what was, at the time, the unofficial SEC East championship game. The SEC added South Carolina and Arkansas in 1992, expanding to 12 teams that were divided into two six-team divisions. Either Florida or Tennessee had won every SEC East title (Florida 1992-96, Tennessee 1997-98, Florida 1999-2000) since divisional play began and the 2001 game was expected to once again decide who would play for the SEC title in Atlanta in December.
The Vols were ranked eighth, having opened their season with a 33-9 win over Syracuse followed by a 13-3 win over Arkansas. In both wins, Tennessee’s defense was outstanding but the offense wasn’t impressive despite Travis Stephens running for 317 yards in the two games.
The Gators were ranked second with blowout wins over Marshall (49-14) and Louisiana-Monroe (55-6). Rex Grossman already threw for 706 yards and six touchdowns and Jabar Gaffney had 13 catches for 204 yards and two TDs. In both games, the Gators could have scored more, but it was almost like Steve Spurrier was just toying with the two opponents. The national perception was Spurrier was holding back for the Vols.
Wednesday the SEC announced that all games scheduled for September 15 were postponed and would be re-scheduled for December 1. Florida fans were disappointed because the Gators were on such a roll that it seemed impossible the Vols could stop them, particularly in Gainesville where the Vols hadn’t won since 1971 when Douglas Adair Dickey was the UF coach.
When the football season resumed on September 22, the Gators blew the doors off Kentucky in Lexington, 44-10, as Grossman threw for 302 yards and four touchdowns. A week later, the Gators returned to The Swamp to face 21st-ranked Mississippi State. It was another blowout win, 52-0, and another brilliant game for Grossman, who threw for 393 yards and five touchdowns on a day that was all about the United States of America. There was a patriotic theme to the entire day. When the Florida band played the “Star-Spangled Banner” pre-game the entire stadium joined in singing to the point that it made the hair standup on necks and forearms. The same thing happened at halftime when the show was all patriotic music. When the band played “God Bless America” even the folks who found carrying a tune troublesome joined in at the top of their lungs.
Somehow, just 18 days removed from the 9/11 attacks, it began to feel as if things were getting back to normal. A stadium full of football fans will do that for you.
Most Florida games in 2001 were by blowout with the exception of a shocking loss to Auburn on October 13 when the unranked Tigers took down the No. 1 Gators and a tough, 24-10, win over Georgia in Jacksonville. In the Auburn loss, the Gators were playing without injured running back Earnest Graham. Without Graham there was little to no running game and Auburn rendered the Gators one-dimensional for a 23-20 win. Graham got hurt again on November 17 when the Gators stomped 20th-ranked Florida State, 37-13.
The injury against FSU remains one of the more controversial plays in Florida football history. Graham was tackled early in the third quarter by Darnell Dockett. It seemed a routine tackle, but replays showed what seemed like extra-curricular activity by Graham. Postgame, there were reports from the FSU locker room that Dockett boasted, “Did you see what I did to Earnest Graham?”
Spurrier believed what he saw on film and, combined with the reports from the FSU locker room, thought he had to stand up for his injured player. Over the next two weeks prior to the re-scheduled Tennessee game, Spurrier complained early and often that Dockett had indeed done something to Graham. Few in the national media were convinced and the national uproar that followed was all negative against Spurrier, whose complaints were viewed as an attack on the integrity of Bobby Bowden. Spurrier was dismayed that neither athletic director Jeremy Foley nor interim UF president Charles Young offered much in the way of support.
The Graham injury simmered for two weeks and reached a boiling point when Graham was unable to play two weeks later when the re-scheduled game with Tennessee was played in The Swamp. For all the deserved kudos for Grossman’s play that season – he threw for 3,896 yards and 34 touchdowns – Graham was critical to Florida’s offense because he not only picked up the tough yards running, but he was an exceptional pass blocker who rarely missed picking up the blitz.
Without Graham, there was once again no running game and Grossman was without his personal protector. Despite 371 passing yards by Grossman, No. 2 Florida only netted 36 on the ground and lost 34-32 to the fourth-ranked Vols. Although Florida put 32 points on the board, there was a distinct feeling throughout the game that the Gators were leaving points on the field that they would have scored with Graham in the lineup.
Thirty-two points were plenty enough to win except the Gators couldn’t make critical stops defensively, particularly in the second half against UT running back Travis Stephens. Stephens finished the game with 226 yards of which 186 came on four carries. In the second half, Stephens ripped through the UF defense for runs of 35, 68 and 48 yards. On a radio show the following week, UF defensive coordinator Jon Hoke proclaimed that the Gators played great except for those four plays.
Of course, the internet and every call-in radio show in the southeast erupted. One of the kinder comments on what was the largest Florida message board at the time was, “That’s like a pilot saying except for crashing the landing I flew that 747 perfectly.”
Had the Gators beaten Tennessee and then followed that up a week later with a win over LSU in the SEC Championship Game, they would have gone to the Rose Bowl to play No. 1 ranked Miami in the BCS National Championship Game. Instead, a month after the Tennessee debacle, the fifth-ranked Gators walloped sixth-ranked Maryland, 56-23, in the Orange Bowl on a Wednesday night. Five days later, Spurrier resigned, leaving after 12 seasons, a 122-27-1 record, six Southeastern Conference championships, one national championship and no season with fewer than nine wins. Two weeks later, Spurrier was off to the NFL to coach the Washington Redskins.
There are questions that still haunt Gator fans about that 2001 season. What would have happened if the Gators had played Tennessee on the originally scheduled date? Most observers tend to think that with a healthy Earnest Graham – the Gators lost the only two games he didn’t play in 2001 – Florida would have handled the Vols quite easily. The game would have been played in the bright Florida September sunshine with a 3:30 p.m. kickoff, a time when the Vols had shown a penchant for wilting in the past. The re-scheduled game was at night and the Florida heat was not a factor. Additionally, in the time between the originally scheduled game in September and the re-scheduled game in December, the Vols figured a few things out offensively to become better balanced and less predictable. Had the game been played in September when the Tennessee passing game was fairly pedestrian the Gators would have had a tremendous advantage.
Another question that continues to haunt Florida fans: Would Spurrier have resigned if he had felt Young and Foley had his back? People who were close to the program at the time offer differing opinions but nearly everyone agrees that Spurrier felt wounded when neither Young nor Foley really stepped up to support him when he tried to make the case that Darnell Dockett intentionally tried to injure Earnest Graham.
Had the Gators beaten Tennessee, they still would have had to face LSU in the SEC Championship Game, but Florida had already destroyed Nick Saban and the Tigers in Baton Rouge earlier in the season, 44-15. But, win the SEC Championship Game and it would have been a Florida-Miami national championship game in the Rose Bowl. This was a Miami team that would eventually send more than 35 players to the NFL, one that had defeated the Gators 37-20 the year before in the Sugar Bowl. A lot of Miami people to this day believe the 2000 Hurricanes were better than the 2001 team. It could also be said that the 2001 Gators were an improved team over the one that lost to Miami in 2000.
Would a healthy Florida with Earnest Graham have beaten the Hurricanes in the Rose Bowl? That’s a question we’ll never know the answer to, but it leads to another question that involves Spurrier. Had the Gators won that 2001 national championship, would Spurrier still have bolted for the NFL? Spurrier, if you remember, had one foot out the door after the Gators beat Florida State, 52-20, for the national championship in 1996 but after thinking things over, decided to stay with the Gators.
In 1996, the FSU dynasty was still roaring and Miami was on its way back under Butch Davis, but five years later, the FSU dynasty was beginning to wobble and Butch Davis had moved on to the NFL, leaving behind Larry Coker. Even the heartiest of Hurricane fans found it hard to imagine Coker sustaining the program at the level it was when Davis left because Davis owned South Florida recruiting and Coker was perceived to be a below average recruiter. Spurrier might have sensed that Florida was on the verge of even greater things had he been able beat Miami for the national championship in the Rose Bowl. Would Jabar Gaffney, Reche Caldwell and Lito Sheppard have gone pro if Spurrier had announced he was staying another year?
We will never know the answer to those questions and it’s senseless 20 years later to assign blame to anyone in the athletic department. However, just as life in America was permanently altered by 9/11 so was Florida football. In the 20 years since that 2001 season, the Gators have had one spectacular pocket of success from 2005-10 when Urban Meyer went 65-15 but otherwise the consistency that was always there with Spurrier has been missing. Meyer won SEC and national championships in 2006 and 2008, but neither Ron Zook (2002-04), Will Muschamp (2011-14) nor Jim McElwain (2015-17) won big and all three were fired. Dan Mullen is 30-9 since taking over from McElwain so it seems Florida football is creeping closer to a championship level program once again but it’s not there yet.
The fear of every Florida football fan is that the glory years have come and gone, but this is a new football season and with the new season there is reason for hope. Saturday, when the Gators face South Florida at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, UF will wear commemorative helmets and uniforms to honor those who died on 9/11 and the first responders who saved countless lives. It’s just a football game and perhaps many will see this as a small gesture, but it is also a reminder that just as America rebuilt from the terror attacks Florida football can also be rebuilt. Hope does spring eternal.
The twin towers weren’t rebuilt overnight but rebuilt they were and the new towers are glimmering masterpieces to the resolve of America. Perhaps Florida football will also be rebuilt as a glimmering masterpiece of what once was before the 9/11 attacks.
Some things you just never forget.
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