You never forget your first: Talking season is over, now it's time to play football

We have been down this road before. Four times in the last 15 years to be exact. Four new head coaches, all of whom posted a resounding victory in the first game of what turned out to be a very brief tenure, had us believing happy days were here again. Will Muschamp whacked Florida Atlantic 41-3 back on September 3, 2011 for his first win. Jim McElwain’s first win came four years later, a 61-13 thrashing of New Mexico State. Then came Dan Mullen in 2018 with a 53-6 first game win over Charleston Southern. Billy Napier got his first win four years later, a white knuckles 29-26 win over No. 7 Utah.

Hope sprung eternal but fizzled out. Other than a first game win to start their careers, the common denominator for all four is they got a large amount of buyout money to agree to vacate the premises. Why Old Yeller (McElwain) got any kind of severance is one of those great mysteries in life since he lied his way out of a job by claiming Florida fans had issued death threats against members of his family.

So here we are, another new season, another new head coach. The Gators play Florida Atlantic tonight (7:45 p.m., SEC Network), the maiden voyage of Jon Sumrall, who has spent the previous eight months charming the bloomers off grannies throughout the state while at the same time impressing folks who can discern the difference between a Hail Mary and a hook-and-lateral. Sumrall seems like a good fit, perhaps more so than any of his four predecessors. Yes, Mullen did seem like a good fit since he had done things in Starkville nobody else had ever done plus he had called the plays for two national championship teams but Mullen never embraced recruiting, something Sumrall has attacked from day one. Despite arriving in December while still coaching Tulane for its College Football playoff matchup with Ole Miss, Sumrall retained 16 of the 18 Florida commits on the early signing day, then followed that up by getting Jadan Baugh and Jayden Woods to stay rather than take the big bucks being waved under their noses by other programs.

If that didn’t convince you then what he has done in the months since should because the Gators are currently No. 8 in the 2027 recruiting rankings and Sumrall is convincing highly ranked offensive linemen to commit to UF. What a concept that is.

File recruiting in a sub-folder under the category of charming the masses. Jon Sumrall can recruit. He is definitely charming. What he hasn’t done is win football games. Oh, he’s going to win tonight. Bet the farm on that one. It would something similar to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego surviving the Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace for FAU to leave Gainesville with a win.

Can you imagine the reaction in the Gator Nation and beyond if that were to happen? Don’t fret. It won’t happen. Sumrall will be 1-0 at Florida about the time the clock strikes midnight and at least temporarily Gator fans will be overwhelmed by a case of the warm and fuzzies. Sustaining the good will earned by a game one victory will take time but if Sumrall can do what the four previous coaches couldn’t, which is to elevate Florida back to elite status, then years into the future at least 400,000 Florida fans will claim that they were among the 90,000 or so who were at The Swamp on September 5, 2026.

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As we get older, we are prone to nostalgic moments when we recall firsts in life. I have three firsts that I store away in a special place in my heart and mind: my first concert, my first visit to Hong Kong and my first Florida football game.

Concert: The Beatles, September 11, 1964. It was the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville. I was there because I had won two tickets by being the ninth caller to a Gainesville radio station. My grandparents drove a friend and me to Jacksonville. I have no idea what they did while we saw The Beatles sing 12 songs. They were on stage 36 minutes. In the 62 years since I’ve seen the Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Hall and Oats, Billy Joel, Ray Charles, Elvis, Queen, Chicago, Luciano Pavrotti, Frank Sinatra and countless others, but seeing The Beatles live remains the most special.

Hong Kong: I flew in from Taipei on Singapore Airlines, landing early evening on that 8,000-foot finger into the harbor that was the Kai-Tak runway. From my window seat I was amazed looking across the harbor at the skyscrapers on Hong Kong Island. Limo to the Grand Hotel on Kowloon, Peking Duck dinner at Spring Deer Restaurant on Mody Road where I met a Singapore Airlines flight attendant that I had flirted with on the flight, then a 15-minute walk to the Star Ferry. I was already stuffed from dinner, but the two of us succumbed to Mrs. Fields chocolate chip cookies that were being baked right there at the boarding gate. On the other side, the tram up to Victoria Peak. At the top looking down on Hong Kong Harbor at night is something I’ll never forget.

Florida 18, Georgia Tech 17: My first college football game, but more important, my first Gator game. I was already a Gator through and through. My grandparents lived three blocks from the university and my grandfather’s cousin was Dale Van Sickel. I had never been in a stadium so large or in a crowd that big (something like 40,000 there that day). I remember the buzz when Bobby Dodd Jr. took the field. I didn’t know at the time that Georgia Tech coach Bobby Dodd was his dad. I remember the fourth quarter drive and Larry Libertore pitching the ball to Lindy Infante for a touchdown that cut Georgia Tech’s lead to 17-16. Then Ray Graves held up two fingers. The Gators were going for the win instead of sending in the kicking team to tie the game. Bob Woodruff, the previous coach, would have gone for the tie but Coach Graves was willing to put it all on the line. Georgia Tech expected another option and that’s what it looked like, but after faking a handoff to fullback Jon MacBeth, Libertore took another two steps down the line still selling option. Tech had that one smoked out, but a funny thing happened on the way to predictable. Libertore stopped, saw MacBeth in the end zone and shot putted a pass to him for the win. I yelled and screamed then watched as perfect strangers hugged each other. I was a Gator for life!

SANKEY 1, LSU 0

LSU submitted its roster for tonight’s opener with Clemson minus the names Dae’Quan Wright and Zxavier Harris, recently in NFL camps but now seeking a fifth season back in college. A Baton Rouge judge ruled Thursday they could play, the same day Greg Sankey and the SEC filed a lawsuit in Federal Court in Birmingham. The Federal judge has yet to issue a ruling, but LSU backed down anyway.

The case in Baton Rouge centers on the principle of fairness, that it is unfair these players can’t get a fifth year of eligibility when last year’s third year guys get two more under the newly implemented NCAA 5-for-5 rule. The Baton Rouge judge said it’s unfair and granted an injunction favorable to the players returning to college to play another year. This is why athletes all over the country have been winning injunctions that allow them to return to school for one more season.  

The 5-for-5 rule is brand new, so fairness can be argued successfully. The NCAA needs to offer a compromise on this one, allowing a fifth year except for those who spent time in professional training camps.

Sankey and the SEC know fully well that 5-for-5 is so new that the challenges will be endless, so rather than challenge fairness, the legal path taken was LSU is a member of a very exclusive club – the Southeastern Conference – in which membership is by invitation only. By accepting the invitation, which is totally voluntary, LSU agreed to follow the rules or face sanctions for breaking them. Rather than fight a local judge who the SEC knew would rule favorably for LSU, Sankey took the fight to US District Court in Birmingham where (1) Federal law trumps local or state law; and (2) the argument shifted to the SEC’s right to enforce its own rules and by agreeing to membership in the SEC, LSU is obligated to follow the rules or face punishment.

So, LSU has backed down, but for how long? If they’re smart in Baton Rouge – a dicey proposition to say the least – they will end this nonsense now, but this is Lane Kiffin we’re talking about and he’s always bucking for a fight. Is Lane smart enough to understand that he’s not the smartest guy in the room if Greg Sankey is present?

In the immortal words of Clint Eastwood as Detective Harry Callahan, “A man’s got to know his own limitations.”

SEC PICK’EM

Saturday winners: Florida over Florida Atlantic; Alabama over East Carolina; South Carolina over Kent State; Kentucky over Youngstown State; Georgia over Tennessee State; Texas over Texas State; Tennessee over Furman; Arkansas over North Alabama; Texas A&M over Missouri State; and Vanderbilt over Austin Peay.

Upset alerts: Clemson vs. LSU and Baylor vs. Auburn, tossups.

Sunday winner: Ole Miss over Louisville.