Urban Sees The Gators’ Bright Future, And Maybe He Knows Something

The Gators have been wandering in the football wilderness long enough to know every cactus by name. They have cycled through coaches, quarterbacks, coordinators, athletic-department philosophies and enough hope to fill Lake Alice. 

Yet Meyer, who knows a little something about winning at Florida, placed the Gators among the programs most likely to sustain success in the coming years.

By Buddy Martin

GatorBaitMedia.com

There was no shocker in Urban Meyer putting Ohio State at the top of his list of college football programs best built to keep winning for the next decade or two.

Urban Meyer picking Ohio State No. 1 is a little like asking the late Colonel Sanders to rank fried chicken. He has a certain affection for the product.

And there was no surprise in Georgia and Texas getting the bronze-medal penthouse, tied at No. 2. Both are currently loaded, located in recruiting-rich territory and backed by administrations willing to spend money with the enthusiasm of a lottery winner in a tackle shop.

But Florida at No. 9?

Now that got my attention, in a good way.

The Gators have been wandering in the football wilderness long enough to know every cactus by name. They have cycled through coaches, quarterbacks, coordinators, athletic-department philosophies and enough hope to fill Lake Alice. 

Yet Meyer, who knows a little something about winning at Florida, placed the Gators among the programs most likely to sustain success in the coming years.

That is not nostalgia talking. At least, not entirely.

Urban’s list came during an episode of The Triple Option podcast, where he laid out his four pillars of football permanence: Recruiting infrastructure, administration, fan base and history. You need the players, the money and support, the people in the stands, and preferably a trophy case that has seen some traffic.

By those standards, Florida still has the bones of a blueblood, even if the recent product sometimes resembled a beautiful old house with a few too many squirrels in the attic.

Meyer was blunt about the Gators. Recruiting, he said, is elite. The fan base is elite. And when The Swamp is rocking, he called it “the best stadium in college football.”

He also raised the obvious question about administration, awaiting the inauguration and leadership of new president Stuart Bell, calling that part “to be determined.”

Fair enough. At Florida, the question has never been whether the program can win. The question has been why it occasionally behaves as though winning national championships requires a permission slip from Tuscaloosa or Tallahassee.

“How do you not win there in football?” Meyer asked.

Exactly.

Florida has the population. Florida has the recruits. Florida has the brand, the facilities, the weather, the tradition, the stadium and the memories of Spurrier, Meyer, Tebow, Wuerffel, Emmitt and a long parade of men who made Saturdays in Gainesville feel like a state holiday with better barbecue.

The missing ingredient lately has been alignment. But there is a positive spin emerging on that lately. Everybody pulling the rope in the same direction, preferably before the rope has been sold to a booster collective and renamed after a local car dealership.

That is why Meyer’s ranking of the Gators is also something of an endorsement of Jon Sumrall. Urban sees Sumrall as a younger version of himself, which is a compliment carrying both horsepower and a warning label. Meyer was restless, demanding, obsessive and capable of turning a program into a machine. If Sumrall can bring even a portion of that edge to Gainesville, while surviving the modern complications of NIL, the transfer portal and social-media quarterback evaluations from people whose only coaching experience is Madden, Florida can climb fast.

Meyer knows the job. He won two national championships there from 2005 through 2010. He knows what Florida looks like when it is operating at full voltage. It is terrifying to those who fear the sleeping giant is awakening to the rest of college football.

His top 10 ranking was a reminder that sustained success is not always a reflection of last season’s record. USC, which Meyer put at No. 10, has spent years trying to remember where it left its swagger. Oregon, at No. 8, has built itself into a national operation through investment, innovation and Phil Knight’s checkbook, which may qualify as its own branch of government.

Then come Michigan, Miami, LSU and Notre Dame, programs with enough history, resources and recruiting appeal to remain dangerous even when they stumble.

Georgia and Texas at No. 2 make sense because both have become modern football factories. Kirby Smart has Georgia operating like a high-security facility for five-star prospects. 

Texas has the money, the recruiting base and now the kind of institutional focus that makes old Southwest Conference ghosts sit up straighter in their rocking chairs.

And Ohio State at No. 1? Of course.

Meyer credited the Buckeyes for adapting, for being ahead of the Big Ten curve in recruiting nationally and refusing to settle for merely being the best team north of the Mason-Dixon line. Ohio State has won three national championships this century and has built a standard of excellence that does not allow many rebuilding years, only temporary disappointments followed by a new fleet of wide receivers.

But Florida being in this neighborhood is the real story for Gator fans.

It means Meyer believes the program is not broken beyond repair. It means he sees the ingredients still sitting on the counter, waiting for the right chef to stop burning the soufflé. It means the Swamp can still become the place visiting teams dread, recruits dream about and old Gators remember with a grin.

Urban Meyer is not saying Florida is back.

He is saying Florida is built to come back.

And for a fan base that has spent too many recent Saturdays staring at the scoreboard as if it were a foreclosure notice, that is a premise worth endorsing.