In what may be the perfect combination of the two most successful Florida Gators coaches, Dan Mullen brings Urban Meyer's playbook with Steve Spurrier's attitude to Gainesville. BY KASSIDY HILL GATORBAIT COLUMINST From the moment he left for a job in the NFL, there has been a Steve Spurrier shaped shadow hanging over the University of Florida Gators. Each coach since has been measured against him and none have been found to measure up. There likely never will be again, as he’s one of a kind. Even Urban Meyer, winning two National Championships in three years, is still considered a far second to Spurrier. The reason Spurrier has become synonymous with the Gators is far more than his 122-27-1 record. It was his attitude. Despite being a long standing member, Florida has always been a bit of an outlier in the SEC, due partly to geography, partly to a different type of lifestyle south and east of the Chattahoochee River and partly due to an air of arrogance that existed in rivals due to the long period of time it took the Gators to become relevant as a contender within the SEC and all of college football. Spurrier didn’t spurn any of those things but instead boldly pointed and laughed while pointing out the hypocrisy of them all. He cocked his visor and would cackle, cutting someone so quickly and effusively that they wouldn’t even realize it had happened until they looked down and saw the blood. While some coaches slept in their offices and never left during the season, Spurrier never missed a tee-time. He was awarded relaxation time because when it was time to work, he demanded-and received-perfection. He kept a slick back and let any insults roll off his back. It gave Florida an impenetrable shield, at least for a while, because Spurrier and therefore the program and fans, simply didn’t care what you thought of them. They just kept winning. Even as Meyer was winning crystal balls faster than they could be made, he did so with a cloud of worry and stress hanging over his head. Meyer, like Spurrier, pushed for perfection and helped his teams go farther than even they thought was possible. But Meyer was always clenched, waiting on the other shoe to drop. It’s why no matter how much he did for this program, it will always be Spurrier who is considered the shining example, the pinnacle of success at Florida. While the Gators went through a cycle of Nick Saban disciples and watched them fail at trying to emulate only parts of Saban’s philosophy instead of implementing the entire “Process”, new Athletic Director Scott Stricklin decided to try for a different style with his first big hire. He went after someone he already knew and therefore was confident could win. But in hiring his former Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen, Stricklin also hired the closest thing to Steve Spurrier that Florida has seen in two decades. Mullen wears a visor and does so because, as he explains, it’s what Spurrier did. Like many offensive coaches coming up in the late 90’s, early 2000’s, Mullen studied the greatest offensive mind in the game at the time, Steve Spurrier. It began with the visor but became so much more than that. Like Spurrier, Mullen has perfected the smirk and stab, the subtle way of throwing a jab at a rival while delivering it in a candy coating that delivers the insult under layers of a joke. Things like changing the Orange and Blue Game attendance to match the amount of days since Georgia had won a National Championship, or reflecting the score of a Gator win during a Florida-Florida State game. Mullen isn’t afraid to roast Georgia’s inability to hold on to 5-star quarterbacks-“I’d think we did a poor job recruiting if guys were coming in and then immediately walking out the door because it was something different than what they thought it would be and we lied to them during recruiting, or we sold them on a dream that wasn’t true.”-even if it means it can later come back to bite him. The opportunity to do so in the moment is too good to pass up. It’s an attitude that rival fanbases will critique, but Florida fans-after spending years as the laughingstock of the SEC once and then once again with Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain-have once again put on a shield that allows them to rebuff those Twitter taunts. And Mullen, like Spurrier, is ok with the risk of one jab if it means he can later throw another. It’s the leeway given with back-to-back New Years Six wins and a trajectory that is heading up again for the first time in a decade. Mullen was brought back to Gainesville labeled as the prodigy of Urban Meyer, the offensive coordinator responsible for Tim Tebow and some of the greatest offenses seen in Orange and Blue since Spurrier. He is all of those things and so much of what makes Mullen a great CEO of a program is what he learned from Meyer; how to run practice, what to expect of your team’s in meetings and away game trips, how to structure expectations and more. But what makes Mullen perfect for Florida is his penchant to allow his personality to mirror more that of Steve Spurrier. It’s flippant at first glance, but driven by a deep motivation to win. It’s barely concealed nervous energy that forces itself to relax and never take itself too seriously. It’s a combination of Urban Meyer and Steve Spurrier and it’s what gives Florida it’s best chance to win in decades under Dan Mullen.

Thirty-five yards is 35 yards — no matter how you put it. Unless you’re a place kicker. Which way is the wind blowing? Is the opposing defense sending the house? Will the near-300-pound linebacker leap over the line? Is Steve Spurrier your holder? And is he offering you a spot on his team if you split the uprights? The second group of questions were two factors that Andrea Kavouklis was dealing with in the summer of 1996. Kavouklis, a place kicker out of East Lake High School in Tarpon Springs, was the only female participant at Florida’s summer football camp in ‘96. And though this meant she and her mom were boarded up at a local hotel instead of the dorms, it didn’t mean she would be overlooked by the Head Ball Coach. In fact, that’s one thing Kavouklis never was: overlooked. In her freshman year at East Lake, she spent the spring athletic season on the tennis court -- with a tennis coach who doubled as the junior varsity football coach. Earlier in the year, that same coach watched too many two-point conversions fail at the hands of a kicker-less roster. But that’s when he realized he was in the presence of a budding soccer star -- who just happened to be on the tennis roster, too. Just as quickly as he could extend the invite, Kavouklis eagerly accepted the invitation to kick for the JV football team the following year. “That really stirred up my feelings as a kid,” Kavouklis recalls. “Like, ‘why can’t I play football?’.” Kavouklis kicked her way through a sophomore JV season before being promoted to varsity during her junior season. And as an incentive for good grades, one of her teammates’ fathers paid for East Lake players to go to the Gators’ summer football camp, so long as they had over a 3.0 GPA. And in 1996, that included Kavouklis. When Kavouklis and her mother arrived in Gainesville, after prior permission from Florida Football’s camp staff, East Lake’s kicker wasn’t shocked to find out she was the only female camper. “It was great having other teammates with me… it took away the nerves and discomfort,” Kavouklis says. “Of course all the other guys were definitely like, ‘Woah, what’s going on here?’, but everybody got over that… I was like a regular player there… a regular kicker, they’re already a little different anyways.” Steve Spurrier extended a warm welcome to Kavouklis on day one of camp, telling her that he’d love to let her kick in a football game. In doing so, Spurrier would become the first Division I coach to have a female kicker play in a game -- something the Head Ball Coach didn’t neglect to mention. “That’s basically how he put it,” Kavouklis says. “It’s kinda funny, when I tell that story… non-Spurrier fans are like, ‘oh, it’s all about Spurrier’. And Spurrier fans are like ‘that’s so cool’.” Nonetheless, Spurrier assured her that he’d follow up with her later in the multi-day camp and that they’d kick some field goals together. Little did she know what that would actually entail. Days later, in the middle of a water break, Spurrier pulled Kavouklis aside for her tryout -- that’s what it became, anyways. As Kavouklis recalls, the kick was from 30-35 yards out and she couldn’t use a tee. “If you make this, you’re coming to Florida and you’re kicking for me,” Spurrier told her while kneeling down holding the ball. “He held the ball for me. I kicked it. I made it,” Kavouklis says. “And he said, ‘That’s it, you’re coming to Florida.’.” And if you ask the Head Ball Coach, he remembers it all, too. “Yeah, I remember that girl,” Spurrier told GatorBait. “She could kick an extra point… I thought it would be pretty neat to have a female kicker kick the first extra point. I’m not sure if there’s ever been a female in Division I to do it today.” And truth be told, Kavouklis gave it some thought. During her senior year of high school, Kavouklis was recruited just like any of her male counterparts. The coaches kept in contact with her and her Florida State-loyal family took a visit to The Swamp during a recruiting weekend. “Keeping it in the back of my head… Am I going to do that? Do I want to do that? Do I want to go play soccer?,” Kavouklis asked herself. “Do I want to go to Florida? Do I want to go somewhere else?” By her high school graduation, Kavouklis had decided to go to Florida. “My principal, as I walked across the stage, announced that I was going to go kick for Florida,” Kavouklis told GatorBait. “But deep down, even though I had signed all of the paperwork… I was still kind of unsure if that’s what I wanted to do.” The internal battle returned for the Florida signee. “Do I want to pick Florida? Do I want to go kick for Steve and kick in a game?,” Kavouklis continued to ask herself. “I had some discomfort about that. Only because it was just because I was a girl. And I wasn’t in it for that. I just wanted to be like another kicker and be looked at equal to other kickers. I didn’t want to get that opportunity just because I was a girl.” Kavouklis eventually decided to enroll at Florida State her freshman year, joining her older sister and twin brother. However, it wasn’t long before the near-place-kicker signed on to play soccer at the University of South Florida and finish out her undergrad. Though, let it be known, Kavouklis eventually found her way back to Gainesville, where she earned her masters degree in architecture. Thanks to the recession, Kavouklis ended up also getting a MBA from Carnegie Mellon -- paving the way to where she is today. Kavouklis is currently a Vice President at Wells Fargo and lives in Colorado with her husband Dan. When she reflects on that summer day at Florida Football’s summer camp, the 35 yards standing between her possible history and the internal conflicts that followed, she is sound with her decision: “I don’t regret deciding not to take Steve up on his offer for my own sake whatsoever,” Kavouklis said in an email after her interview with GatorBait. “But a part of me wishes I could have helped Steve add that to his legacy.” EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was initially reported on by ESPN’s Andrea Adelson (then Andrea Szulszteyn) when she was a student at the University of Florida and writing for the Alligator in 1997. Read the original story HERE.

It was the spring of 1990, just a few days before the Gators played the Orange and Blue Game in Jacksonville since the artificial turf at Florida Field had been ripped out and real grass installed at the insistence of new head coach Steve Spurrier. To make the game fun, Spurrier appointed two of his assistant coaches head coaches for the game and held a player draft. The head coach of the Orange team, John Reaves, had the first pick and to the surprise of many chose Shane Matthews, the same Shane Matthews who had been the sixth string quarterback the year before and who had never taken a snap in a college football game. “That’s the only time in my life I ever got drafted and it gave me an awful lot of confidence,” Matthews remembers. He went on after his Florida career to spend 14 years in the National Football League, remarkable for a quarterback by any standard but especially for one that had to sign on as an undrafted free agent. Matthews lived up to his number one draft pick billing that Saturday in Jacksonville by completing 9-15 passes for 146 yards and three touchdowns. Most importantly, he didn’t throw an interception. Kyle Morris, who had started most of the games the previous two seasons, threw for 283 yards in that spring game but he threw four completions to the Orange defense. Lex Smith, who split time with Matthews on the Orange team, completed 10-14 passes but he also fumbled four times. Spurrier noted after the game that Morris would start the fall as the number one quarterback “but the other players will have a chance to beat him out in the fall.” The season opener against Oklahoma State was September 8. On August 20, Spurrier named Matthews his starting QB and a week later, the Head Ball Coach reaffirmed that decision, something that didn’t necessarily go over all that well with the media, boosters and fans. How in the heck could Spurrier start a quarterback who had not only never taken a college snap in two previous years but whose dad – Pascagoula (Mississippi) High School coach Bill Matthews – had asked for a chance to take some snaps in scrimmages back during the spring? “I didn’t get into any scrimmages the first week or so of spring ball,” Matthews remembers. “John Reaves (former UF quarterback and Spurrier’s tight ends coach at the time) took me under his wing. I was throwing to the tight ends every day and just absorbed whatever he was telling me to do. Well, the first couple of weeks I didn’t get into a scrimmage. My dad came over to watch practice and after practice he went up to introduce himself as a high school coach and he told Coach Spurrier, ‘I know this is your team but I hope you will just give him a chance.’ Coach Spurrier kind of apologized to him and said he’d make sure I got into some scrimmages. Coach Reaves was in his ear the whole time, too. He was kind of the one guy that was for me from the start.” That chance was all Matthews needed. The offense, which became known as the Fun ‘n’ Gun with Matthews running the show from 1990-92, was complicated enough that every other Florida quarterback that played for Spurrier required a year to learn it. Matthews picked it up from the very beginning. “It just clicked for me,” he said. “Being a coach’s son and having been around football all my life – that has a lot to do with why I lasted in the NFL for 14 years – I was fortunate that I didn’t have to study playbooks. Once I saw a play the first time, I knew exactly what I needed to do and what everyone else had to do. I don’t know if it’s a photographic memory for football or what. It’s actually (the Fun ‘n’ Gun) a simple basic offense but it has a lot of complex things in it. I think my mind and Coach Spurrier’s mind just think a lot alike.” So much alike that before the Gators took the field on that September afternoon against Oklahoma State, Spurrier asked Matthews if there were any special plays he wanted to run. Matthews suggested a screen or a draw to start the game. Spurrier’s response surprised him. “He told me, ‘They ain’t paying me all this money to come run the football’ and I thought oh my, this is going to be fun.” Florida won the toss and elected to receive. On the game’s first play, Matthews faked a draw to Willie McClendon and connected with Ernie Mills for a 26-yard gain sending a sparks of electricity through the air at sold out Florida Field. Before the crowd could catch its breath, the Gators were going no-huddle and Matthews delivered a 17-yard strike to Tre Everett. Again, operating without a huddle, Matthews and Mills connected again, this one for 22 yards to the Okie State five. Two plays later, Dexter McNabb scored the first touchdown of the Spurrier era. Five plays. 70 yards. 1:50 off the clock. By halftime, Matthews had already thrown for 239 yards, He finished the game 20-29 for 332 yards and a touchdown on a 50-yard pass to Everett. He also scored on a one-yard quarterback sneak. The Gators, offensively challenged and so predictable the previous two seasons – 1988 with the Amedeeville Horror (offense coordinated by Lynn Amedee that averaged 155.8 yards passing per game); 1989 under Whitey Jordan that averaged 148 passing yards per game – racked up an almost unheard of 567 yards. It was a rather auspicious start and the star was the guy who admits he might have transferred out if the NCAA’s transfer portal had been in place at the time. “If the transfer portal had been around back in 1990, who knows what might have been?” Matthews said. “My mom and dad both went to Ole Miss and I had caught a lot of grief when I chose Florida. A lot of people said maybe I should have gone to Ole Miss. I kind of knew that if was at Ole Miss I would have been starting but my parents didn’t want me to transfer and thank goodness I didn’t.” The Oklahoma State game was the beginning for a most impressive career. Matthews went on to be named Southeastern Conference Player of the Year in 1990 and 1991. He led Florida to the best record in the SEC (9-2) in 1990 (Gators weren’t eligible for the league championship due to NCAA probation from the previous staff) and UF’s first SEC title that counted in 1991 when the Gators won a then school record 11 games. In 1992, playing with a depleted offensive line that required freshmen to start at both tackles, the Gators went 9-4 and almost won the first SEC Championship Game in Birmingham, falling to eventual national champion Alabama, 28-21. “The 1992 season was a tough one for me,” Matthews said. “We lost a lot of good players from 1991 and we were playing with two freshman tackles, plus we lost two of our first three games (31-14 at Tennessee and 30-6 at Mississippi State). I had lost my mom so at the start of the season, it was tough on me … and then we went to Mississippi State, which always played us really physical, and with me being from Pascagoula, it was pretty tough." But that changed. Matthews led the Gators to seven straight wins and a surprising SEC East Championship in the first year of division play in the league. UF lost its final two regular season games to third-ranked Florida State and unbeaten second-ranked Alabama. Matthews capped off his career by throwing for 242 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Gators to a 28-6 win over North Carolina State in the Gator Bowl. “It didn’t end the way we all had hoped, but we were a good football team that kept getting better that year,” Matthews said. “We rallied the troops after that 1-2 start and ended up being a good team. We ended up being a better team than the Miami team Alabama played to win the national championship.” Perhaps the storybook beginning didn’t have the storybook ending that Matthews might have wished but it was a remarkable career that saw him complete 722-1,202 passes (60.1%) for 9,287 yards and 74 touchdowns. He also ran for seven touchdowns and caught a touchdown pass. He was 28-9 as a starting quarterback and remains the only quarterback in Florida football history who never lost a home game. Not bad for a guy buried so deeply on the depth chart that Spurrier was being questioned before he ever coached his first game at UF. “I think the fans and boosters were a lot more nervous than I was or Coach Spurrier was that first game,” Matthews said. “I think Coach Spurrier caught a pretty good amount of grief for starting a quarterback who had never played before but he wasn’t nervous. I admit, I was a little bit nervous. I always believed that if you’re not at least a little bit nervous and have some butterflies in your stomach that you just don’t care.” Shane Matthews cared, but whatever nerves he had that September day in 1990 he kept to himself and then took it out on Oklahoma State. A star and Gator legend was born that day.

So who’s minding the store? Let’s be honest, the NCAA is toothless and the Power Five conferences call the shots. Who's got a better idea? BY BUDDY MARTIN GATORBAIT EDITOR AND COLUMNIST Now that we are pretty sure there will be students on a campus most places this fall, it looks increasingly like there is going to be a college football season. On Wednesday the NCAA Division Council voted to allow football and basketball athletes to resume “voluntary” on-campus workouts beginning on June 1. Every day we get another sign that football is about to be a reality. There is more than a good chance teams will get back to the field. We’ve all been hoping and praying for that to happen, without jeopardizing the health and welfare of many others. Of this I am certain, however. We need college football. Our economy would take a huge financial hit without it and so would our mental health. ESPN reported this week that the 65 power five schools would lose more than $4 billion if there was no football season, including almost $19M in football ticket sales. I have no earthly idea about how this season will look or how it will be played out, but hey, we’ll take it. It would be asinine to suggest that I, or anybody, has the answers. Meanwhile, college football needs a makeover. Why not now? It’s big business and it’s time to stop treating it like a lemonade stand. I’m fairly optimistic. Gator fans were heartened midweek when this report came out that President Kent Fuchs was optimistic about UF’s “ability to safely host students on campus for the fall semester, with adequate measures in place to ensure that.” I like to think this Pandemic has afforded the CFB brain trusts ample time and opportunity to noodle out some new ideas and options. First keep people safe, but aside from Covid-19 what about the overall health of the sport? More than ever, money is going to be scarce. This calls for a new day and a new way. Let’s not kid ourselves about the problems that were already here before the Pandemic—shrinking attendance, lack of leadership and vision, an archaic playoff system and poor governance by a makeshift organization. While cash-rich schools like Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Florida would survive because they have built up big reserves, some programs at smaller schools—even the schools themselves—will shut down. Oddly, in a game where the bigger schools were wallowing in money, presidents and ADs were already squeezing the lemon for more. Six SEC schools started selling alcohol. Successful programs like Alabama are tracking students to find out why they are staying away from attending games on Saturday. Concession prices have been lowered at places like Clemson. Ticket prices at some of the biggest venues – like Ohio State – were not raised. And stay tuned for a lot more to come once the reality of nearly 39 million Americans being unemployed begins to hit CFB in the pocketbooks. However, I can’t help but to ask: Isn’t it time to stop putting a band-aid on a deep wound like it’s a paper cut? So who’s minding the store? Let’s be honest, the NCAA is toothless and the Power Five conferences call the shots. Now is the time for leaders to emerge and protect this beautiful sport. And they are emerging. Scott Stricklin’s leadership has been one of the bright spots in the SEC and Florida’s numbers were increasing before the Pandemic, as noted by Robbie Andreu of the Gainesville Sun in January: "They showed up — giving UF its first increase in home attendance since 2015. They showed out — creating a loud and electric atmosphere that helped the Gators go 6-0 at home, including a defining victory over then-No. 7 Auburn that propelled UF into the Top 10. The Auburn game was a sellout, with 90,584 filling The Swamp to capacity. That crowd helped play a role in the school experiencing an increase in home attendance for the first season in three years. The Gators averaged 84,684 fans per game, an increase of 3% from 2018, when the average attendance was 82,328. Florida Field was at 95.6% capacity for the 2019 season." That’s the good news. What’s the bad? Wait for it … because it’s coming. So get ready. College football’s void in leadership at the management level has produced an obsolete way of thinking, powered by greed and stupidity. And the financial reality is that there’s not going to be enough money for 130 teams to field major college football programs. Some painful decisions need to be made about preening the FBS field in order for CFB to display its product on the best platform that will produce the most revenue. With stadiums perhaps empty, the revenue stream that matters most -- as the NFL has discovered – is television. And especially with only a smattering of fans socially distanced by space in these huge college arenas. Or worse yet, empty. We all hate to admit it, but settling for canned crowd noise may be the best we’ve got. Athletic Directors, their constituents and conferences need to start becoming pro-active. And yes, you can plan for the unknown and yet unrealized. Think hurricane season. Projections are for a worse-than-usual season. The storms they are a-comin’. Down here in Florida we start designing a protocol and hopping into supply line for batteries, water, lanterns, generators and food stuffs every summer in anticipation of some violent weather. This year I may buy a generator for the first time ever and I’ve lived in Florida all my life – maybe with the next stimulus check. The Problem There is simply no excuse why a better plan can’t be designed for this wonderful sport which is embraced by nearly 48 million fans with about 170 million TV viewers. With more fans doing social distancing and opting for experiencing game-day without stadium seats, tailgating spots in places like Baton Rouge, Tuscaloosa, Athens, etc. are at a premium. So you can probably add a few hundreds of thousands more TV sets to that number. I once attended an LSU-Florida game that had 80,000 tailgating outside Tiger Stadium. There won’t be those average crowds of over 100,000 at Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State, Alabama, Texas A&M and LSU anymore – nor will there be more than 80,000 at Steve Spurrier-Florida Field. And by the way, with overall attendance already down and many fans opting out of buying overpriced tickets in favor of a stay-at-home experience, some schools shrinkage in stadium size was already an agenda visited. It’s all about the armchair fan now anyway, so feed the monster. Give them better games, more post-season and enhanced broadcasts. Ratings will go up and ad revenue can help offset the loss of ticket sales. Time to face reality and make a change—not in the near future—now. For over 30 years I’ve been drum-beating for modifying the system – and I don’t mean just the playoffs. I’m no Rhodes Scholar, but even I figured this out a long time ago. As we were reminded by Michael Jordan’s "The Last Dance" series, TV is King Kong; college football is an extraordinarily valuable television product and must be marketed as such, now more than ever before. The Solution This needs an emergency makeover, not in 3-5 years, but NOW! Here’s an idea: The Power Five Conferences can ditch the FBS in favor of forming a National College Football Super Conference. Sorry, not everyone can be invited. This is not NCAA football welfare. Only about 50 of those 130 FBS schools can make the cut. (And if you were ever wondering, “FBS” stands for College Football Subdivision. Subdivision?) How? We need better games on TV. Essentially, we need a Cupcake-Free Zone, and we should severely penalize teams that play directional schools or other sacrificial/cannon fodder lambs. Power Five on Power 5. Only a 10-game schedule plus conference championships, followed by the playoffs. Conferences could be restructured with regard to geographical proximity. A few radical thoughts: How about Missouri and Texas A&M going to the Big 12? The SEC can pick up Georgia Tech again and maybe Clemson. Perhaps even Florida State. You get the idea. Other conferences can follow suit. The FBC needs to become the new Division II, with its own playoffs and bowl lineup, with more weeknight games on TV. There’s money to be made there and the FBC could own a huge chunk of the early bowl games – and maybe even in the spring. I hear you critics saying: Those smaller schools need that money from playing against Power Five schools to support their whole athletic program. Fine. Throw in the added incentive of monetizing spring games. This is not football welfare. You want an idea on how to make them some money? Schedule an FBS-FBC spring game and charge $10 more a ticket. It’ll even get on ESPN or Fox if you make it more like a real game. And now for the playoffs: Let me dust off my old hymnal book and sing a song I wrote more than 30 years ago when I first proposed Buddy’s Plan: 80 teams, eight finalists. (Or pick your own set of numbers). Which more than doubles the number of post-game payoffs and offsets some of the deficits. There’s not time or room here to break down the entire playoff system, but eight teams means four more games with premium TV packages and under the new TV contracts that could mean huge dollars. The simple math should be sobering enough to the College Football Playoff Committee and ADs looking for cash in these trying times. How about another $15-20M for each of the conferences? People are waking up to the fact that the new normal is going to be football games played in empty stadiums – at least for a while. However, as Kansas State AD Gene Taylor said this week, most programs have enough money to stay afloat until 2021, at which time we’ll all be on the same team rooting for an effective vaccine. The time is now. Please college football, start setting the agenda. Meanwhile, keep this in mind (as I’ve written here before): During a deadly bubonic plague that killed 100,000 in 1666, Isaac Newton dropped out of school in Cambridge and moved to a farm just north of London to begin his work that led him to becoming the co-founder of Calculus. Surely during these trying times college football leaders can begin developing a new path to a better way.

BY: KASSIDY HILL GATORBAIT COLUMNIST For the past month, sports deprived fans across the country have tuned in weekly to watch an inside look at the work of basketball superstar Michael Jordan and the NBA Championship run of the 1998 Chicago Bulls. We watched transfixed by a story we already knew, still amazed at the dedication, motivation and sheer unworldly talent that spurned one of the sports greatest individuals and teams of all time. As such, it’s caused us to wonder on some other teams in other sports and contemplate again, who are the greatest of all time in football? Is there a team that was unlike one we’ve ever seen or ever will see again? The 2008 Florida Gators are arguably one of the greatest teams in all of college football history. The top to bottom talent was matched only by their sheer domination of each opponent. The way they bounced back from a loss, banded together and unapologetically pursued their goal helped them go down in college football lore. As Urban Meyer’s Florida Gators began to prepare for the 2009 season, they set their sights on doing it all again. It was Tim Tebow’s final season, so fans knew in some way or another, this was the end of an era. But there was still this final year, this “last dance” to borrow the term. Like Jordan’s Bulls, Tebow’s Gators lost some pieces for their final run. There was no more Percy Harvin, but Tebow still had other favorite targets such as Riley Cooper, David Nelson and Aaron Hernandez. The defense was still led by studs such as Brandon Spikes and Major Wright. The Pouncey twins were still holding down the center of the offensive line. As the season began, the Gators were hot and carrying all the momentum of their National Championship. They thumped any team that dared face them and in a variety of ways. There was the defensive battles against LSU in Baton Rouge and Arkansas at home, then an embarrassing display of offensive numbers against Kentucky, Georgia and others. The regular season ended with the Gators undefeated, No. 1 in the country in every poll and on a path to repeat. The only real obstacle standing in their way at that point was a date in Atlanta with the also undefeated Alabama Crimson Tide, No. 2 in the country and looking for revenge for the defeat a year before in the SEC Championship. It was a de facto National Championship and everyone knew it. But it was more than a 2009 Championship on the line. It was a dynasty. We could debate all day as to who the NBA G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) is; if it’s Michael Jordan or Lebron James or maybe even Kobe Bryant, Wilt Chamberlain, Steph Curry, Magic Johnson or several others. But one thing that is in no way up for debate is the Bulls dynasty. Six championships is a feat few organizations could even hope to pull off and to win them all within the same decade is a run unlike any other. Michael Jordan is at the nucleus of it all, much like Tim Tebow was with the Gators. There is no one way to define a dynasty and it’s somewhat different in college than the pro’s where the turnover is more frequent. But the general acceptance is that winning three championships in five years is enough to earn the title. Looking back, a dynasty hinged on that 2009 SEC Championship. If the Gators had won, they would have very likely gone on to defeat Texas in the National Championship, much like Alabama did. It would have been their third crystal ball in four years and that era would move from being one of the greatest in Florida Gators history to one of the greatest in college football history. It then begs the question, would it have made a difference in the Heisman Trophy competition the following week? Instead Alabama won, the Tide’s Mark Ingram took home the trophy and Tim Tebow, in his first autobiography "Through My Eyes" admitted he relaxed in New York knowing it was Ingram’s trophy to win, following his three touchdown performance against the Gators the week before. So instead the Tebow family invited Ingram to spend the time with them gallivanting around the city to help keep the young running back’s mind at ease. Tim Tebow knew the tide (pun intended) had turned and soon so would everyone else. Alabama, as mentioned, parlayed that SEC title into a National Championship win against Texas. The year after next, they would win a second under Nick Saban (2011 against LSU) and the following year, would run over Notre Dame for a third in four years. It was a dynasty, no doubt about it. There is a lot of debate in this current sports-less world as to who the greatest college football player of all time is, who the greatest SEC player of all time is, who is the greatest quarterback—basically any way we can think to frame the argument so as to have another topic of conversation around the water cooler. No matter how the question is asked though, Tim Tebow’s name inevitably comes up. When talking about specific Florida Gators, so does Danny Wuerffel. As storied and inspiring as Danny Wuerffel’s career was in Gainesville— a Heisman winner and the cog to the 1996 National Championship, it’s hard to put him above Tim Tebow primarily due to less championships. Yes Chris Leak was the quarterback for the 2006 championship team, but it’s hard to imagine the Gators winning that title without Tebow who became the greatest role player of all time his freshman year. Wuerffel’s best argument as the greatest is that he inspired the greatest, Tebow. And perhaps this is akin to the Jordan/Lebron debate in that it’s somewhat generational. But for this writer, it’s hard to argue with the production Tebow had in his four years. Danny Wuerffel was an incredible quarterback, a one of a kind talent. Tim Tebow was a one of a kind player. If need be, he would’ve played every snap, running out as linebacker on defense and relishing in the hard hits. Ergo, this space maintains Tebow is the greatest Florida Gator of all time. But where does he rank in the echelon of college football’s greatest? And how much is that 2009 season to be held against him? It was Tebow’s best statistical year…but it didn’t end with a crystal ball. If it had, would there even be a debate? These are questions that can’t be answered but the wonderment is what makes it exciting. It’s what makes us tune in to watch a ten part documentary about a two decades old team. It’s what makes us look back and ask “what if?” It’s what makes us grateful to have seen at least a little bit of the greatest the game has to offer.

BY AINSLEE LEE GATORBAIT COLUMNIST Three-hundred and sixty-nine days separated the two announcements. On May 13, 2019, Florida signee Diwun Black was forced to swallow his pride and announce that he wouldn’t be attending the University of Florida in the fall of 2019. However, unlike most recruits, Black’s announcement didn’t stem from a change of heart. It still hasn’t. In today’s world of recruiting coverage, dirty laundry is never spared. In Black’s case, this meant everyone in the Twitter-verse and on recruiting forums knew that the four-star recruit was struggling in the classroom. It was widely expected that Black wouldn’t qualify for a four-year university, let alone a Top-10 public institution like the University of Florida. Black, a Mississippi native, spent his senior year of high school in the State of Florida trying to rectify his grades. However, when the buzzer sounded, it was too little too late. It was 8:49 pm when Black broke the news: “I’m very upset right now, but I’m here to tell y’all that I will not be attending The University of Florida, instead I will be attending a community college this summer,” Black wrote on his Twitter. “Maybe to y’all I (failed), but to me I’ve (come) a long way, I wasn’t (supposed) to graduate and for me to come this far, I’m so (damn) proud of myself.” Thirty-three minutes later, Dan Mullen replied to the former signee. “You know we got your back and you are a Gator,” Mullen wrote. “Keep grinding.” With that, the message was delivered. Diwun Black wasn’t coming to Gainesville… yet. “I’m going to wipe these tears away, become a man and finish what I started,” Black continued in his post. “I’m not done yet. Still screaming Go Gators.” One full year, a leap day and three days later, Black is still screaming “Go Gators.” On May 16, 2020, Black once again took to Twitter just minutes before 9 pm to make an announcement. “4 star SS/LB Diwun Black will be attending the University of Florida this December,” Black wrote at 8:41 pm. “This kid man, I tell you, Florida is going to love him as (a) player on (the) field, but even more as a person off the field. I can promise you that. His story will be one to remember.” In those 369 days, a lot had changed for Black. He returned home to Mississippi, where enrolled at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College. And though MGCCC is an unlikely landing spot for a top-30 recruit, Black made the most of his time there. With Black on the roster, the MGCCC Bulldogs finished the season undefeated—beating teams by an average of 20.5 points. At defensive back, Black helped the Bulldogs keep their opponent to an average under 200 yards per game and just 12.3 points per game. MGCCC capped off its season with its fifth national championship in a 24-13 win over Lackawanna College in the NJCAA Football Championship on December 5, 2019. Through 12 games, Black contributed 46 total tackles and one interception -- which was returned for a touchdown. As the saying goes, good things come to those who wait. And in this situation, it’s undoubtedly a two-way street. The gains for Black are glaring. In waiting, he earned himself a second chance. He earned himself a JUCO National Championship. And he earned himself the respect from Gator Nation that most players never receive, let alone recruits. Meanwhile, in Gainesville, Dan Mullen and the Gators are gearing up to have 247Sports’ 2021 top-rated JUCO player in the country on campus. But perhaps more importantly, they’re about to be on the receiving end of a deal that gifts them a player that has already bought into the culture of the program. There were a lot of unknowns about Black’s academic situation in 2019. But you’d have to be naive to believe that he couldn’t get into ANY Division I school. The reality is, he didn’t want to. On May 13, 2019, Diwun Black was still screaming “Go Gators.” In the 369 days that followed, Diwun Black was still screaming “Go Gators.” On May 16, 2020, Diwun Black was still screaming “Go Gators.” And in the three years of eligibility that Black has left, you can bet that he will still be screaming “Go Gators.”

BY: BUDDY MARTIN GATORBAIT COLUMNIST AND EDITOR IN CHIEF There was fire and rain in the eyes of Tim Tebow as he stood at the lectern. The Promise was part Apology, part Covenant and part Call to Action. Perhaps The Promise proved even more inspiring than Knute Rockne’s famous 1928 “Win One for the Gipper” speech at Notre Dame. At least it produced a better result. Following the perfunctory press conference after lowly Mississippi’s shocking 31-30 upset of the No. 4 ranked Gators on Sept. 27, 2008, Tebow proceeded to take all the blame for what had just happened on Florida Field -- vowing it would never occur again on his watch. The indignation of such a powerful offense sputtering out on what would surely have been the drive for the winning field goal with such a powerful runner falling short of one yard for a first down had overwhelmed Tebow emotionally. You could feel the anger clanging loudly in a quiet room. Maybe it was that anger which incited perhaps the greatest non-coach pep talk in football history. Even the media was stunned and many got ambushed by the emotion. “I was there covering it as a media member,” said Florida grad Laura Rutledge, now one of the stars of ESPN. “I was a student in love with the Gators as a sophomore. Obviously I'm a fan and I was dealing with that at the time. But I was so annoyed that I couldn't even show how mad I was because I was trying to be professional. “Just the gravity of the silence almost hit all of us as it ended,” said Rutledge, then a sophomore intern at GatorCountry.com. “And you just didn't even know what to do.” Tim Casey, then of Gator Country, was one of only two photographers in the room. His colleague Brenden Martin was also taking video. “It was so quiet in the press conference as Tim paused and looked as if he was done speaking,” recalled Casey. “When he turned back to the microphone and said ‘I just want to say one thing,’ he had everyone’s attention and left us speechless.” And yet the negative impact drove the team to new heights. What took place in the South End Zone meeting room was more than a game-changer – it was transformative. Brenden Martin of Gator Country recalled videoing the moment with a camera that was about to lose battery power. “As Tebow began to talk I could sense the emotions boiling to the surface,” Martin wrote. “I got the sense he wanted to cry and rip somebody's head off all at the same time. As he fielded question after question, 2, 3, 4 minutes passed and he kept answering them as best as he could -- but you could tell he was on auto pilot. I knew he was going to get emotional, but as a Gator fan I wanted him to shut up and say all things he was supposed to say, be mad and walk off.” Anger was the prevailing mood for many. “I remember feeling so nauseous walking into that room because I was just sick that Florida had lost that game,” Rutledge recalled. “I could not believe it. I was so mad about it. It really was the first time, I think that I had felt disappointment in sports like that. And a lot of it was because that season was supposed to be this big championship year. Are you kidding me? I could not even process that that was happening even as the game was going on.” An historical reverberation of legendary proportion was being unveiled in real time, right before our eyes. Tebow made The Promise. It produced an immediate and a remarkable response. He delivered on The Promise. And a lot more. It was A Covenant. A Call to Action. Maybe even A Mandate. For sure it was A Moment. “And this was before people used the phrase ‘Mic Drop,” said Rutledge. “It was such a ‘Mic Drop’ moment, but we didn't know that it was going to affect the team that way.” Florida Head Coach and offensive coordinator Dan Mullen recently told me: "I know losing that game changed the attitude of the team for the rest of the season. I think Tim’s speech encapsulated the feeling of everyone on the team and in the program. There was a different sense of urgency and focus after that game.” And The Promise would become the major catalyst in a national championship drive as it sent shockwaves throughout college football. Why did Tebow feel compelled to do it? In Rutledge’s mind: “He loved Florida. And he bled orange in blue. And that's something that was ingrained in his family from the early stages of his life. And so first and foremost, being a Florida fan, that hit him on that side, too. He felt he had let down his team and he had missed on his goals. And he had let down this Gator Nation that is so important to him. So I really think all of it came from that.” Since that time Rutledge and Tebow have become friends and colleagues on the popular ESPN Saturday morning show SEC Nation. Both of them have matured impressively as broadcasters and are vigilantly trying to remain above the fray by not showing prejudice toward their Gators. But don’t think for a minute Tim’s competitive juices aren’t still flowing. Or that he’s forgotten that loss -- even though the 2008 season turned out great for him. Tebow still seethes underneath about not making that yard and losing to Ole Miss. And it’s interesting when you talk to him about it still today, 12 years later – and I'm trying to think the last time that we would have talked about it, maybe a couple of years ago. Even at that point, you could just see how the loss itself ate at him. And even though he ended up winning the ultimate prize that year and The Promise was what really fueled something bigger than even he probably realized, it still kills him that he lost that game. You know, he still would have much rather not had that to even happen. It was 110 words that were about to be chiseled into a plaque on a wall outside the Bill Heavener Complex: The Promise “To the fans and everybody in Gator Nation, I’m sorry, extremely sorry. We were hoping for an undefeated season. That was my goal, something Florida’s never done here. “But I promise you one thing, a lot of good will come out of this. You will never see any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of the season, and you will never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season, and you will never see a team play harder than we will the rest of the season. God bless.” Laura Rutledge was working the story. “I sat down in that room and I remember when Tim walked in – I can even visualize it now. And he opens the door and he goes to the podium and starts in on The Promise. And as it was happening — it was almost one of those things that I don't know that any of us realized the gravity of in that moment.” Urban Meyer didn’t want him to do it, but upon reflecting on The Promise, Meyer now says: “It was absolutely Florida’s ‘Gipper’ speech. A great example of leadership. Speeches are speeches and plaques are plaques. But this was different and it moved people right away.” Meyer and offensive coordinator Mullen weren’t in the media room during the speech but quickly heard about it. Urban had found Tim in front of his locker, heaped into a hot mess of tears, instinctively knowing there was nothing he could say to ease the pain of his star player. So Tim’s head coach sat on the floor with his back to his quarterback, leaning up against his legs to let him know he was there and feeling the pain, too. “I didn’t know he was going to do ‘The Promise’ and probably would have tried to talk him out of it,” said Meyer. Nobody saw it coming, but once he was into it you knew this was not just lockerroom talk and blood oaths were being sworn. “I knew that something amazing was happening,” said Rutledge. “In fact, I turned around to look at his parents because both of his parents were in the room, his mom and dad, who were lovely people. And just even seeing their faces. They were proud but they were also feeling his pain in that moment. It was a combination of those things. And I think I understand that a lot better now being a parent, even though I'm a recent parent. But I get kind of why they looked the way that they looked and that really sticks with me. I can still visualize their faces. And then as he walked out of the room, I remember all of us kind of looking at each other like, “What just happened?” The effect was felt right away, said Meyer. “The next morning David Nelson was in my office at 7 a.m. wanting to know what he could do,” Meyer said. “That’s when he asked to play on special teams. And he wound up catching the only touchdown in the SEC title game victory over Alabama and the difference-making score against Oklahoma in national championship game. That’s leadership.” At the time I was covering Gator football regularly as the Editor/Columnist for GatorCountry.com. My other colleague in the room was Franz Beard – we were sitting on the front row six feet away from Tim. Brenden Martin was in the back videoing the speech. Literally three seconds after “God bless” I turned to Beard in amazement, locked eyeballs, and we said in almost-unison: “WOW! I don’t believe what I just saw.” The Promise had a profound impact on Rutledge: “When I think back on the moments that I've had, as a reporter and as a person in this business, that one will always stick with me as one of the most important.” Columnist Franz Beard, then also of Gator Country, was blown away by Tebow’s willingness to shoulder the blame: “Here was the best college football player in the country, a kid who would go down as one of the two or three greatest players in the history of the game, baring his soul to the world and doing what great leaders do — placing the entire blame for the loss entirely on his own broad shoulders. This was a powerful moment because not only did we understand just how important winning was to Tim Tebow, but more importantly how much it meant to him to lead by example. In his own eyes, the example Tim Tebow set against Ole Miss failed, and in his own heart and mind that afternoon, failure was not going to be an option ever again, not that season.” In 1940 they made a movie in Hollywood entitled Knute Rockne – All American. A guy named Ronald Reagan played George Gipp, greatest Notre Dame player in history at the time who had died. But the words in the script were Hollywood-ized fiction. I would argue that Tebow’s Promise was much better and bigger than Rockne’s Gipper speech and would make a better movie. After all, Rockne’s speech at halftime of a nothing game against Army in Yankee Stadium was a desperate attempt to salvage something out of his worst season ever. And while the Irish did come back to beat the Black Knights of the Hudson 12-6, they lost their final two games to Carnegie Mellon and Southern Cal, finishing 5-4 on the season. Tebow’s speech fueled maybe the greatest season in Florida football history. Are you listening Hollywood? Or maybe Netflix?

Tim Tebow made "The Promise" then the Florida Gators struggled against the Arkansas Razorbacks. On the rocky road that served as the Gators detour to a National Championship. BY FRANZ BEARD GATORBAIT COLUMNIST Doom and gloom. Not even Tim Tebow’s "Promise" that Florida would become the hardest working team in all of college football could rescue the Gators from a plunge of eight spots (fourth to 12th) in the polls or from the talking heads at the networks pretty much declaring the dream of a national title all but over. After all, how could you lose to an Ole Miss team that had lost to Wake Forest and Vanderbilt in the weeks prior to the 31-30 upset of the Gators and still be considered championship material? For three quarters of Florida’s road trip to Arkansas the next weekend, the Gators gave the distinct impression that they might go down as one of the most overrated teams in 2008. Heading into the final quarter in Fayetteville, the Gators held a 17-7 lead on an Arkansas team that had lost 49-14 to Alabama and 52-10 to Texas the previous two weeks. Other than a gift touchdown (16-yard drive) in the second quarter when Brandon James recovered a muffed punt at the Arkansas 16, the Razorbacks were going toe-to-toe with the Gators and seemed poised to spring an upset. Complicating matters for the Gators were an onslaught of penalties (11 through the first three quarters, 12 for the game), most of them on the offensive line. Maybe it took looking up at the scoreboard and seeing how close the game was or perhaps it was just as simple as deciding enough was enough, but the Gators shook off whatever it was that had them in a funk in the fourth quarter. The Gators only had three fourth quarter possessions and a mere 17 plays, but they were good for 237 yards. Florida scored on a 21-yard Tebow to Percy Harvin pass, a 75-yard run by Chris Rainey and a 48-yard run by Jeff Demps, turning a potential white knuckles finish into a 38-7 blowout win. The final stat line gives the impression the Gators dominated Arkansas from start to finish. Florida outgained the Razorbacks 514-361 overall, 278-141 on the ground and 236-220 through the air. Unlike the week before when UF fumbled five times (losing three), the Gators won the turnover battle 2-1. After giving up a touchdown on the Razorbacks’ first possession of the second half, the Florida defense allowed Arkansas only 60 yards the rest of the way. “We struggled and then the second half was the turnaround,” then Florida Head Coach Urban Meyer said. How the Gators could play so badly against Ole Miss and then so lackadaisical for three quarters against Arkansas the next week is still a mystery to everyone who saw Florida play in 2008. This was a team that finished the season averaging 43.6 points and 445 yards per game while giving up only 12.9 points and 285.3 yards. Florida had it all – offense, defense, special teams and coaching. Yet something was missing against Ole Miss and for most of the Arkansas game. Rainey disputes any notion that the Gators went into either the Ole Miss or Arkansas games looking past inferior opponents. “Sometimes you just have a bad game,” recalls Rainey, who ran for 103 yards against Arkansas, the same total as Demps. “I don’t know why we played so bad against Ole Miss. We weren’t too cocky or nothing like that. It’s the SEC and you never forget in the SEC that the other team has good players too but when you can’t run the ball (only 128 yards against Ole Miss) and when you fumble – What was it? Five times? – how you gonna win? In the SEC when you can’t run and you keep fumbling the ball you lose. We didn’t have the big head. Ole Miss just played a good game and we didn’t but it was kind of embarrassing to lose. Even with all our mistakes we still shoulda won the game.” So what happened the next week against Arkansas? How is it the Gators went from struggling for 45 minutes to superior in what seemed like the blink of an eye? Rainey has a theory about that. “We had too many good players to keep playing bad,” he said. “Against Arkansas maybe we were thinking too much about losing to Ole Miss. I think we all got mad at the way we were playing and decided it was time to play like the Gators play.” Despite the fourth quarter dominance, nobody was all that impressed with a win over Arkansas. The 21-point fourth quarter was mostly attributed to Arkansas running out of gas and Florida’s superior athletes taking over. The Gators moved up one spot to 11th in the national polls. The talk in the SEC was all about 2nd-ranked Alabama and 3rd-ranked LSU over in the West. Georgia’s only loss was by 11 to Alabama so the national pundits were already talking about a rematch in the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta. The Gators were a slight underdog when LSU came to The Swamp the following weekend. LSU probably would have been favored by 10 or more if the game had been played in Baton Rouge, but when this one was over there was no question that the team Tebow had promised after the Ole Miss loss was beginning to emerge. Point to the third quarter against LSU as the moment in the season when The Promise started to become reality. After the Gators bolted to a 20-0 lead, LSU roared back with consecutive touchdowns, the second a time-consuming 12-play, 80-yard drive that consumed 6:19. Florida responded with an 8-play, 67-yard touchdown drive to begin a 31-7 onslaught that featured a 52-yard return of an interception by Brandon Spikes. Everybody it seemed got into the act. Tebow threw for 210 yards and two touchdowns while running for a third. Demps gained 129 yards on 10 carries and scored a TD while Rainey rushed for 66 on 11 carries. Percy Harvin caught six passes for 112 yards. After that 80-yard scoring drive, the Florida defense never allowed LSU to have the ball more than five plays. The 51-21 win over LSU shot the Gators back up to 5th in the polls. In the subsequent six weeks of the regular season, Florida's closet game was their 42-14 win over Vanderbilt in Nashville. The anticipated showdown game against Georgia was a 49-10 laugher. Florida won the SEC East, moved all the way up to #2 nationally to set up a classic SEC Championship Game with #1 Alabama. The Gators had to play Alabama without Percy Harvin, but it didn’t matter. Florida took charge in the fourth quarter and walked out of Atlanta with a 31-20 win. A month later, the Gators stifled Oklahoma’s nearly point-a-minute offense for a 24-14 national championship victory. Meyer believes to this day the 2008 Gators should be considered one of the greatest college football teams of all time. “I think this is a team that had everything from great athletes on both sides of the ball to what I consider the greatest leader I’ve ever seen in college football in Tim Tebow,” Meyer said. “I’ll put that team up against any I’ve seen.” Rainey won’t disagree with Meyer, but he adds a final thought about the transformation that took place following the loss to Ole Miss and then the sluggish first three quarters against Arkansas. “We always worked hard, even before Ole Miss and Arkansas,” Rainey said. “We didn’t lose the Ole Miss game because we didn’t work hard enough or practice hard enough but Tebow was right. When we lost we knew how tough it would be to win the national championship. Usually, you lose, you out but we worked hard and kept winning after that. That was one great football team.”

While the nation continues to deal with the evolving spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19, governors, sports commissioners and university leadership personnel are working on a plan for the return of sports, albeit in a possibly different capacity than normal. “Our priority is the well-being of Gator student-athletes, staff and fans, and we are working toward the day when we can once again engage with those groups safely on campus,” said Florida Gators Athletic Director Scott Stricklin in a statement to GatorBait Magazine on Thursday. The State of Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis has reopened with more lax terms than some other states. As such the possibility of sports being played in The Sunshine State before the 2021 calendar year looks higher than ever. And now, according to DeSantis, the state could also play temporary home to teams from other states as well. While there are federal restrictions in place, they pertain more so to the medial side of things. When it comes to more everyday life restrictions, all 50 states are making independent decisions based on their own population. The State of Arizona, for example, is open to sports teams returning but without fans. Per Associated Press: Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey 'announced 'Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL, the NFL, MLS are able to participate and play in the state of Arizona after May 15.’ Under some of baseball's possible plans, a portion of teams and possibly all would be based in the Phoenix area, but the first preference of late is to play in empty regular-season ballparks. ‘Of course, this would be with CDC guidelines, and protecting the public health," the Republican said. "We have had discussions with leaders of some of these leagues and they all know they are welcome to operate, play and perform in the state of Arizona.’” But while Arizona and Florida are opening stadiums back up, even if only to teams, other states, like the hard-hit California, is putting the discussion of sports on the back burner. California and the Pacific Northwest were the first hotspots for COVID-19 in the United States and the large population means Gov. Gavin Newson has a long road to recovery. With that in mind, Newson—a huge sports fan in his own right—doesn’t see any league’s return in his state happening anytime soon. “It’s difficult to imagine a stadium that’s filled until we have immunity and until we have a vaccine,” Newsom announced the afternoon before the NFL revealed the 2020 schedule. “There are conditions that persist in this state and this nation that make re-opening very, very challenging…it’s difficult for me to imagine what the league and, broadly, leagues, do when one or two of their key personnel or players have tested positive,” Newsom said. “Do they quarantine the rest of the team? If an offensive lineman is practicing with a defensive lineman, and they have tested positive, what happens to the rest of the line? What happens to the game coming up the next weekend? “It’s inconceivable to me that that’s not a likely scenario.” If California and likely other states as well discontinue sports in any capacity for the remainder of the calendar year, teams will be looking for other landing spots if there’s any hope of competing with others in their league. Continuing with California as an example, the West Coast state boast three NFL teams (Los Angeles Chargers, the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers), four NBA teams (Golden State Warriors, the LA Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings) and five MLB teams (Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Athletics, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants). The MLB would open the soonest, planning a July 4 return date. Those teams will need somewhere to play. DeSantis would like to invite them to Florida. On FoxNews this week, Desantis said, “I’ve already spoke with some of our colleges, like the University of Florida. They got a great football stadium, the Swamp, that’s not used on Sundays. So if an NFL team needs a place to land, we could work that out, too.” GatorBait reached out to Stricklin for more clarification on DeSantis’ comments and the A.D. outlined an invitation for teams of all three big professional leagues. Said Stricklin, “Following Governor DeSantis’ comment yesterday inviting other pro teams to participate in our state, I reached out to remind him that UF and Gainesville have world class health care facilities, an iconic football stadium, a state-of-the-art basketball arena and a brand-new baseball ballpark within two hours of cities with professional franchises. We’ve been receiving excellent guidance from our state and health care officials, and when those groups believe it is safe to host college and pro sporting events in Florida, we will be prepared to do so.”

Asking 17 and 18-year-old athletes to move away from home is a lot to ask, both for the athlete and his or her parents. But that’s the world of recruiting. Recruits are allowed to have five “official visits”, meaning everything is paid for by the university, and an unlimited number of “unofficial visits”, where the family is financially responsible for the trip. If you had five opportunities in your junior and senior years of high school to travel the country on someone else’s dime, arrive at your destination and have someone at your beck and call, wouldn’t you do it? Of course you would. Moving forward, there has to be an expectation that every recruit will utilize all five of their official visits. And that’s nothing to fret over. And while recruiting, especially in college football, often helps give the phrase “expect the unexpected” a new meaning, what if nothing is all that unexpected to begin with? At 18-years-old, I moved just an hour away to college. I returned home every weekend. I then spent a couple months back home before getting an apartment just 35 minutes north of my childhood home. And now, as I pen this story, my family and I are actively looking at homes for me to buy back in my hometown. Homesickness is a very real ailment. Since the rise of the transfer portal, how many times have we seen athletes leave one program, for another closer to their family back home? Take Chris Steele’s situation, for example. As muddy as that was, there’s a wide belief that the California native was homesick -- hence his transfer to USC. And now, it seems that Dan Mullen and the Gators have fallen victim to homesickness once again. ISSIAH WALKER After narrowing down his list of schools to Florida, Miami and North Carolina, the four-star offensive lineman committed to the Gators following the Auburn game in early October. On December 18, Walker signed in the early signing period and enrolled as an early enrollee. But on May 4, Al.com’s Matt Zenitz reported that the freshman had entered his name into the transfer portal. Walker’s decision to transfer out of Gainesville came in the midst of a global pandemic. Thanks to the coronavirus, Walker had spent seven weeks back home in South Florida with his family. And according to Gators recruiting freelancer Olivia Granaiola, “it looked like he missed being home.” Just five days after entering the ominous transfer portal, Walker announced on his Twitter that he would be transferring to Miami to play for Manny Diaz and the Hurricanes. “I’m staying home,” Walker wrote. And unfortunately for the Gators, the homesick-bug didn’t just infect Walker. ZACH EVANS To visualize the recruitment of Zach Evans, imagine a pinball machine. The five-star running back could have undoubtedly gone to any program he desired. Though, back in December, it seemed as though Kirby Smart and the Georgia Bulldogs had done just enough to reel in the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Houston native. After silently signing his National Letter of Intent with Georgia in the early signing period, Evans was eventually released from his contract after being suspended twice in his senior season — including being sent home by coaches ahead of the Texas High School Football State Championships. While the Texan was fully released from Georgia, this now meant he was racing with the clock. “I know he was really close with a couple Gators who were working to get him on campus,” Granaiola told GatorBait. “But after the whole pandemic pushed SEC activities back to April 15 and then to May 31, Evans needed to enroll by May 1 to be considered eligible to play FBS this year.” Though Granaiola admits that Evans was “tight lipped” when it came to speaking with the media, it was widely expected that Florida and Tennessee were in the running for the No. 1 running back in the country. However, both SEC East schools came up empty handed as it was announced on May 11 that Evans had enrolled at TCU, a program that was linked to Evans very late in his recruitment. “TCU was kinda popping up around that May 1 deadline,” Granaiola told GatorBait. “He’s a Houston kid and obviously TCU being in the Dallas-Fort Worth area isn’t too far away.” However, unlike Walker’s decision, Granaiola feels that the Covid-19 pandemic had little to do with Evans’ decision. “I think his decision had less to do with the pandemic and more with the fact that he’s a Texas legend and being TCU’s first five-star ever,” Granaiola said. WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE GATORS Dan Mullen and his staff were widely criticized after the handling of the Chris Steele “episode”. And while perhaps Steele did have issues on campus, his final destination and the speed in which it was decided is glaring. It has also become a trend. The situation with Issiah Walker is eerily similar, — minus the dramatic confusion. Both left Gainesville before ever playing a down in the orange and blue. In Walker’s case, you can’t help but wonder if the transfer would have happened if not for the coronavirus pandemic. Some even believe his mother was slated to take a job in Gainesville, but the pandemic caused it to fall through. But on the other hand, maybe there’s a much bigger pandemic sweeping through college football recruiting. And that’s homesickness. Obviously this isn't the case for all recruits. If it were, we’d be living in a very different competitive landscape. However, losing out on a couple of kids each year to the closest Power Five school to their hometown shouldn’t deem uprisings against the staff. In recruiting, they say to “expect the unexpected”, but perhaps the “unexpected” is right under our noses to begin with.

ARE YOU READY? LET THE CHAOS BEGIN! In eight days or so, the NCAA is scheduled to vote on the transfer waiver rule that will allow athletes in every sport a one-time get out of jail free card. The Transfer Waiver Working Group has recommended the NCAA adapt a rule that would allow athletes to transfer one time without having to sit a year. Recently, however, the NCAA Board of Directors recommended tabling the measure, claiming now is not an appropriate time to consider such a change in the rules. Despite the recommendation, it is not a slam dunk that the proposed rule will voted down and it is entirely possible that some sort of changes to the current requirement of sitting a year will be voted in. Confused? So is the NCAA and adding to the confusion is the potential for the people who currently oversee waiver requests to be completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of athletes who feel the need to be closer to home due to COVID-19. Imagine the lawsuits if some kids are denied the right to move closer to home and one of their loved ones dies or becomes seriously ill because of the virus. Imagine also what happens to kids at schools that might shut down football or basketball because all classes are suspended indefinitely. The simpler thing for the NCAA to do might be to offer a one-year transfer waiver with the promise to come up with a more structured process in the future. Some might say that once the barn door is open it will be impossible to go back, but the NCAA has been tinkering with scholarship rules for more than 50 years so coming up with a better set of transfer requirements is not a particularly big deal. If they want to get it done they will. The NCAA isn’t known to move quickly on anything but in this case there is probable motivation given the organization’s track record of losing in court. Failure to implement some sort of change to the transfer requirements might create the kind of dilemma that either eliminates altogether or neuters the NCAA. Some sort of temporary right to transfer without sitting out seems to be the intelligent thing to do. Of course, the NCAA and smart decisions are far too often ships that pass in the night CHAOS AND COLLEGE BASEBALL Major League Baseball has elected to reduce its usual 40-round draft to a mere five with fewer high school and college baseball players drafted and a huge reduction in bonus money. Instead of first rounders signing for seven figures, the max bonus paid out this year will be $100,000. If a drafted player is signed for more than $100,000, the additional money will be deferred until next year and the year after. For an undrafted free agent, which will be the case for hundreds of high school and college players who would have been picked in a 40-round draft, the max signing bonus will be $20,000. Here is where the chaos really begins. First off, all the kids who were playing college baseball this past spring can come back without losing eligibility. Second, college programs that figured to lose a few players taken after the fifth round in a 40-round draft will likely see a spike in returnees. Third, high school kids that might normally get signing bonuses of at least $100,000 when taken in rounds six through 10 are going to figure college baseball is a better bet, particularly when MLB is planning a similar format for the 2021 draft. MLB is planning to reduce the number of minor league teams. Less money and fewer jobs means better players coming to play at a college near you. Currently, NCAA rosters are capped at 27 players dividing up the money from 11.9 scholarships. The Division I coaches want rosters expanded to 35 to cover the influx of freshmen and players who decide to come back rather than take smaller bonuses. And, unless the NCAA decides to implement a transfer-waiver rule, we’ll see a lot of kids lose their scholarships if they’ve been unproductive for a year or two. The situation at Florida might not be as chaotic as some other schools. Pitchers Tommy Mace and Jack Leftwich will both be drafted with Mace likely to go in the first round. It’s highly doubtful Florida’s three seniors – Austin Langworthy, Kirby McMullen and Nick Blasucci – will be selected and while all three could come back for another season, Langworthy and McMullen should sign if offered a free agent contract. At least now they have the small amount of leverage returning for another year at UF offers. Blasucci might want to look for a grad transfer destination since playing time in 2021 will be hard to come by. Typically, O’Sullivan loses anywhere from 4-6 freshmen signees to the MLB Draft. With the reduction in bonus money, that number will probably be reduced. That means more talent than ever before for the 2021 season in the new ball yard, but also puts O’Sullivan in a situation he doesn’t want, which is to tell some kids they might want to move along. CHAOS FOR COLLEGE FOOTBALL We’ll start with the fact that NCAA president Mark Emmert is waiting for an intelligent thought to strike him. What a strange accident that would be because when it comes to leadership and college football he’s clueless. He’s busy casting doubt about all of college sports in the fall. Meanwhile, probably 80% of the influential Division I football programs are making plans to play, whether it’s a full or reduced schedule. Figure the schools/conferences that want to play will come up with their own solution and if Emmert doesn’t want to go along then bet the farm there will be a wholesale migration from the NCAA to a brand new organization. I keep hearing whispers that some of the more powerful people in college sports are putting together contingency plans that will allow football to be played with or without the NCAA. From a personal standpoint, I think it’s high time to kick the NCAA to the college football curb. One of two things needs to happen: Either reduce Division I to 100 schools (possibly a few less) or set up two national championships, one for the Power Five schools and one for the Group of Five. I’m good either way as long as it gets the NCAA out of the Division I football business. Let football schools streamline things by eliminating about 75% of the ticky tacky NCAA rules that require schools to hire an army of compliance people to play watchdog for the stupidest of violations. I will stick with my belief that the college football season will be reduced to 10 games with Division IAA games lopped off. I know the SEC thinks it can play a 12-game schedule, but I don’t think that’s feasible with all five power leagues so I think there will be some uniformity for the sake of the College Football Playoff. Since Notre Dame has to be accommodated, 10 games seems to be the magic number. We may see quite a few schools either suspend football for a year or drop it completely both at the lower levels of Division I and throughout D1AA. One way Division I could help out their less fortunate brethren would be to allow a spring game against a D1AA team. Which would you rather see: A glorified scrimmage with the clock running and walkons getting 40% of the snaps or a game against say Bethune Cookman? BCU would sell out The Swamp and would bring its band. That alone would be worth the price of admission. Keep a close eye on California where the governor is saying there may not be any college or professional sports at least until January. Would the rest of the Pac-12 play if UCLA, Southern Cal, Stanford and Cal couldn’t? Would the Mountain West play if San Diego State and Fresno State couldn’t? It will be interesting and potentially chaotic! CHAOS FOR DUKE BASKETBALL? QUITE POSSIBLY Now before you roll your eyes back in your head and think out loud that donkeys will fly first, understand that Gina Ford, who at one time represented former Dookie Zion Williamson, has filed a lawsuit along with a Request for Admission. A Request for Admission is only going to result in a denial from Williamson that he received any financial incentives to attend Duke University but this isn’t simply a nuisance filing. The reason to take it seriously has to do with former Dookies Marvin Bagley and Wendell Carter along with FBI wiretap evidence that was used to convict former Adidas consultant Merl Code. Bagley is accused by disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti of being paid by Nike. Carter is named on expense reports submitted by agent/runner Christian Dawkins, also convicted in the college basketball corruption trials. Bagley and Carter are eye-openers but the NCAA didn’t act or at least hasn’t been forced to act. The wiretap evidence may force the NCAA to start a serious investigation because in it former Kansas assistant Kurtis Townsend and Code discuss what Williamson’s stepfather (Lee Anderson) was asking (cash and housing). Add all this together and it starts getting sticky for Duke. There is enough evidence to proceed forward with Ford’s lawsuit and that means depositions under oath that will likely follow the line of questioning in her Request for Admission. Here is a sample from the Request for Admission that involves Williamson’s mother, Sharonda Sampson: “knew that Sharonda Sampson demanded and received gifts and economic benefits from persons acting on behalf of Duke University (directly or indirectly) to influence you to attend Duke University to play basketball.” Duke and Mike Kryzyzewski are considered college basketball’s ivory tower. Is it possible that Bagley, Carter and Williamson got nothing under the table to attend Duke and had any sins in their recruiting washed white as snow by Coach K? Sure. Anything is possible, just as it is entirely possible that a Duke booster paid all three or that Nike chipped in. Of course, Coach K will deny everything and maybe justly so, but isn’t it interesting that dirt is being heaved in his direction? POTENTIAL SEC BASKETBALL CHAOS? LIKELY Finally, with the NCAA doling out more Notices of Allegations, Auburn, LSU and South Carolina await FedEx to deliver their packages that will essentially say, “You’re guilty as sin, the only thing remaining is to negotiate the amount of pain that will be inflicted.” Judging by the severity of allegations in the NOA’s already delivered, none of these three schools should expect to get off easily. Of the three, LSU figures to get hit the hardest since Will Wade is caught on FBI wiretaps negotiating the price it would take to sign Javonte Smart. There is enough evidence that Wade should have already been fired except to do so without an NCAA NOA or federal indictment would have resulted in the school having to pay a rather hefty buyout. Once the NOA is received, LSU is well on its way for jettisoning Wade without paying him another dime. Auburn is going to get hit and there is a chance they’ll nail Bruce Pearl for failing to monitor the program since, after all, he hired Chuck Person, but expect AU to stick with Pearl and ride out the sanctions. South Carolina will get off lighter than the other two, but it’s still a black mark for Frank Martin and for AD Ray Tanner, who runs a rather clean program top to bottom. Three SEC schools on NCAA probation, all three of them likely to be banned from postseason play for at least one year is chaos since Auburn, LSU and South Carolina should all be good enough to make the NCAA Tournament next year.

Bear Bryant once called the University of Florida football program “a sleeping giant” and said others would rue the day the Gators woke up. For nearly the better part of 85 years they slept, but when Steve Spurrier arrived in 1990 the alarm sounded as the Gators won the school’s first national championship and Rip Van Winkle awakened. Sixteen years later Urban Meyer doubled down and did it again and again, winning two in three seasons. BY BUDDY MARTIN GATORBAIT COLUMNIST Another in a series on Gator sports 2000-2009. "I should've never left Florida.”-Urban Meyer They were Butch and Sundance, or Sundance and Butch. However, both Spurrier and Meyer admitted in interviews with GatorBait recently that they made a mistake departing so soon. while the resources were plentiful and the cupboards anything but empty. After winning the Gators’ first national title in 1996, Spurrier, was just 55 when he resigned in 2001 and became the highest paid coach in football with the Redskins. He returned to resurrect South Carolina football and became the Gamecocks’ winningest coach. Meyer arrived at UF four years later and left after the 2010 season with health issues at age 45 before going to ESPN and then Ohio State and winning a third national championship. Together, Spurrier and Meyer won 187 out of 230 games at Florida over that period and were almost always in contention. They owned almost all of their rivals in big games with a couple of exceptions. Spurrier beat Georgia like they were the Washington Generals. Meyer went 17-2 against Georgia, Tennessee, FSU and Miami. Spurrier was 68-5 in the place named The Swamp. During his six years, Urban went 36-5 on Florida Field. Ten home losses in 17 years! Both walked away from a prosperous program that was flourishing under Jeremy Foley – one that may have been set up for many championships to come, but instead leaving Foley to struggle in a futile search for competent replacements. How do you replace Sundance and Butch? One could only wonder what might have been accomplished at Florida had either, or both, not departed so soon. They may have been forced to building an annex on the O-Dome for a trophy room. There will likely never be such a prosperous period at Florida as there was from 1990-2011. So why did they leave? Spurrier wanted to scratch an itch to coach in the NFL, so he took the plunge to DC. Urban had hoped and planned to stay longer at UF but after losing a friend to a heart attack and then developing chest pains for which he could find no immediate diagnosis, he resigned to work for ESPN -- going to Columbus one year later. Spurrier told me a long time ago he should have stayed at Florida and described his departure as “a mistake.” In a lengthy interview for this article, I asked Meyer how he felt about his decision to leave Gainesville, even though his health helped dictate his resignation, and he replied recently: “At the time I was having some significant chest pains. And you know, I just didn't love it anymore. It just consumed me. And I felt like I was becoming that old person one day who would sit in a chair and miss my kids growing up because they were so involved in everything. So, yeah, I look back on the ending, I wish it would have been much different. I knew about a month and a half after I left Florida. Then I said I'd made a mistake. "I should've never left Florida.” He also regretted it couldn’t have happened under different conditions. MUTUAL ADMIRATION COACHES To have two world class coaches within four years of each other is an embarrassment of riches that few schools have enjoyed. Today, looking back at their successes, both Spurrier and Meyer admire each other’s work. In fact, Urban said he loved everything Spurrier’s teams did at the UF. Since then Urban has bought a home in Sarasota, he and Steve talk more and have become even better friends and may be seeing more of each other. They both marvel at how different, yet similar, their Gator teams were. “We went at it different ways,” said Spurrier, “but when our teams left the locker room and went on the field they achieved the same result.” Both had innovative offenses – and both were sneered at by some so-called experts early on. But not for long. Meyer brought the “Spread Option” from the Mountain West Conference where it was brandished successfully by Utah but later doubted among SEC denizens and soothsayers. Spurrier’s derring-do Fun’N Gun had its detractors for a while, but Meyer wasn’t one of them. The bold, brash Fun’N Gun changed all of college football and Meyer was right there cheering it on even though he and Spurrier didn’t know each other. “I loved what coach Spurrier did when he came to Florida,” said Meyer, who admits Gator games were must-see TV for him. “He just didn’t care what people thought or said – he was going to run his offense. Everybody was fascinated by what he was doing. And we were all trying to figure it out.” At first the Fun’N Gun was almost all through the air, with Shane Matthews, Terry Dean, Danny Wuerffel, etc. at the control panel. As it evolved, Spurrier usually used the ground attack in the second half of the games to control the clock once he was able to achieve a substantial lead (which was often). Unless, of course, he happened to be “hanging 50 on Georgia in Athens” or rolling up a 52-20 licking on FSU in what turned out to be a title game. Then it was no holds barred. And by the way, he was still going to vanquish his foe when he could. No knee-taking. If he wasn’t the father of the forward pass as reinvented and redefined for college football, then Spurrier was at least a second cousin. But he could turn on a dime. Later at South Carolina, he used the running game to ring up three straight 11-win seasons. “You know, there there's two types of offenses today,” Meyer said. “You have the Air Raid and you have The Spread. And then I guess you have the Spread where you throw it. The majority of time, that's not what we did. We were basically a glorified I Formation team that still believed in our athletes in space -- not allowing defenses the box up on you. So, you recruit to that. A guy like Percy Harvin was the ultimate H Back. That's what you wanted. If someone had made a decision to load the box on you, you had an athlete like that that just really you couldn't handle him one on one.” Meanwhile, in his early years at Florida, Urban was mostly utilizing the ground and pound – especially once he found “the greatest short yardage guy I ever coached” in Tim Tebow. And to think how close Meyer’s team came to not signing Tebow, who had been romanced torridly by Mike Shula at Alabama and admitted had been leaning toward Tuscaloosa. That frightening thought shook Urban the day he got on a plane with co-defensive coordinator Greg Mattison to go visit Tebow. “I was worried we lost him,” Meyer recalled. “You know, Alabama had such a head start on us. And Tim is such a ‘relationship’ person. Mike Shula and his dad did an excellent job recruiting them and we were kind of coming in late. We had another commitment from another quarterback. I was trying to (rationalize) in my mind to say, ‘OK, if we lose Tim, we'll be okay.’ I'll never forget. Greg looks me right in the eye on the plane and said, ‘if we lose Tebow it could set our program back 10 years.’ It just kind of like, hit me in the jaw and I realized that he was right. And pretty much at that time, the hay was in the barn. I mean, we worked so hard at recruiting Tim and his family. You know, we had about a year and a half to catch up on Alabama and we did finally.” That was 2006 and there was already a quarterback at Florida named Chris Leak, a 5-star senior from Charlotte, N.C. PLAYING TWO QBS IN 2006 Tebow or Leak? How would Meyer handle the issue of two quarterbacks? Well, he went to the example by the Head Ball Coach, who did that back in ’97 with Doug Johnson and Noah Brindise in back-to-back wins over South Carolina and No. 1 ranked FSU. Again, Spurrier yinged when others yanged. “It was a really unusual, unique set of circumstances that allowed us to play two quarterbacks,” said Meyer. “I know coach Spurrier did it once. Other people have tried to no avail. You got to really give credit to Chris Leak and people in his family. And Tim’s family. Both were good enough probably to be starters anywhere in the country. And it's my obligation to play people to help us win. And there is one point where you're almost we're thinking of making a quarterback change. Chris was struggling a bit. The fans were obviously excited about Tim, who was a golden boy of recruiting. And then every time he walked on the field, the energy he brought!” So why didn’t Urban make the change? “I just felt Chris still at times gave us the best opportunity and he earned that right … Tim brought in an incredible amount of energy to our program. And he was the best short yardage player that I've ever had. And he gives you a quarterback who can you do two things. The term I used is, ‘you equate numbers immediately.’ That means if your quarterback turn around and hands off to the tailback, you lose one player. If it's a direct snap to the quarterback and use him as a running back at times, that's called ‘Single Wing Offense.’” Both agree that while you have your eye on the big prize, so much of winning a national championship comes through a bit of fate. And the best way to get there is the proverbial “one game at a time.” One season at a time. And one conference championship at a time -- tantamount to a playoff game. On that count, Meyer and Spurrier excelled. Between them they have won 17 conference titles. “You compete for that conference championship,” said Meyer. “And I would say it wasn’t just our goal, but it was the focus of our program. And I think when you start talking about national championships, whenever we talk about setting goals, we were very different than a lot of people. There was never a national championship (talked about) around the facility … If I did hear people talk but I usually try to say that we stay away from that. That's just too many variables …” For instance, Meyer said there was even a vast difference between the Gators’ two championships in 2006 and 2008. He feels that the 2008 team was “one of the best in college football history” and played its way to the top through excellence. Not so much the 2006 squad, which had to master internal strife and get some help from the luck of the draw in other conference playoff games just to make it to Glendale, Arizona for the showdown with Ohio State. “That (’06 national championship) never crossed our mind. You know, that was never something until we beat Arkansas (for the SEC title) that I remember the way the season played out. A lot of things had happened for us to even get in that game … One of the biggest things was at halftime in Atlanta. We're up seventeen to seven over Arkansas. And our S.I.D. Steve McClain comes up to me and says, ‘USC just lost to UCLA.’ And that kind of opened the door to some of the things to take place. But that was never a conversation in 2006 until it happened.” That 2006 championship opened the floodgates for SEC teams, who won the next seven straight BCS titles (including the Gators again in ’08) which continued on for 10 of the next 14 even after 2014 College Football Playoff Committee took over in 2014. Really, when you measure the biggest difference between the programs of Meyer and Spurrier at Florida and their coaching styles, there was one contrasting trait between them: Meyer was a recruiting machine and Spurrier looked at it as a necessary-but-somewhat annoying responsibility. THE SECRET TO RECRUITING WELL Not to say Spurrier didn’t recruit well, but while his talent level was ebb and flow, Meyer was a recruiting powerhouse. Almost every year Urban’s teams were Top 5 national or better. How did Urban do it? “Well, I think first it's hard work. You know, there's a lot of times you can kind of get away with stuff without working really, really hard at it. And I'm talking about the head coach and the head coach has got to be knee-deep in recruiting. And I loved it. And it was something that I knew because the amount of time and effort you would be rewarded tenfold on with great athletes -- you're talking about college football. “This is not professional football … But at the end of the day, your head coach has to be an elite recruiter and you’ve got to devote an inordinate amount of time. And I did because I realized there was no chance of winning without great players.” THE 2006 DUSTUP There were hurdles to vault right away in ’96 and it could have come unglued. After going into Auburn 6-0 as the nation’s No. 2 ranked team and getting whacked 27-17 in a painful 2006 loss, a spat between the offense and defense erupted. Linebacker and defensive captain Brandon Siler called out wide receiver Dallas Baker and quarterback Chris Leak for their unit’s lack of toughness. The defense was playing well but the offense had been struggling since 2005. “It was during the season, a little bit of offense/defensive issues,” recalled Meyer. “And you know, that toughness question came up. We just couldn't run the ball and line up and pound people the way that championship teams have to. We lost to Auburn and in the locker room at Auburn, Siler kind of went after the offense a little bit, and Charlie Strong almost got into it with him. And so Charlie kept saying to me, ‘Coach you better break this thing up.’ And I said -- and I even told the team – ‘You keep going. I want to hear it. I don't want this to fester.’ If we're gonna be a team, we're gonna be team. And I want to hear the problems.” And so the defense questioned the toughness of the offense. The offense was aware of this. Once it came out in the open, “we addressed it as a team. I agreed with the defense. And that became a point about the system. By the end of the season we had very tough offensive outfit.” The hurdle was overcome. Then it was on to seven straight wins -- the SEC title game, the win over Arkansas and on to the desert for the BCS Championship win over Ohio State. But not without a big scare upon kickoff. First, though, Urban asked his old boss Lou Holtz for advice about preparation. “I remember Lou Holtz kept saying to me ‘don't play the game (yet),’ because typically my personality is ‘let's get ready now. We're going to win now.’ And of course, we're not. You know, he kept saying, hey, you don't play that game before January 8th at 7 o'clock or whatever time it was. And he kept saying that to me.” He took Holtz’s advice and established the routine: Three phases. Phase 1 was all about fundamentals. Get back to work. Phase 2 was about preliminary game plan. “That means, you don't want to start installing things with players and then change it all the time.” Then Phase 3 is Game Week. Except there was nothing in the game plan for being down a touchdown in the first 15 seconds. Speedy Ted Ginn took the kickoff to the house. Urban was about to become unhinged. “It was typical me on the sideline,” said Meyer. “I wanted to find out what happened. I was getting after people when Brandon Siler came up and grabbed my arm and said, ‘Coach, relax, we got this. We're good.’ And I remember he grabbed my arm real hard. That was my friend. He and I were so close and he was the heartbeat of our team. And I remember looking right at him and saying, ‘I gotcha.’ And so I just kind of just went about the business coaching, making sure it didn't happen again and finding out what the issues were -- coaching instead of panicking.” A memorable night. Two years later in Miami there would be another national championship, but first that year came the remarkable 31-20 SEC Championship win over Alabama with the picturebook fourth quarter drive – without star Percy Harvin. Then the 24-14 win over Oklahoma in MIami. The following year Nick Saban got his revenge, the Crimson Tide knocked off Meyer’s team and the night of the loss to Alabama Urban Meyer fell out of bed with chest pains. The run was over. Meyer resigned, changed his mind but came back for 2010. In retrospect he should have stayed resigned because the magic was gone. Ten years later Dan Mullen is still trying to crank up the engine again and find that magic.