December 5, 2009.
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the date of the SEC Championship, the supposed “Game of the Century” in college football.
Florida vs. Alabama. Number one against number two. A rematch of last season’s thriller between the two teams and a matchup thought to be a “de facto” national championship game.
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It was also the night the Gators’ budding dynasty came crumbling down before our very eyes.
Oh sure, Florida would go on to eviscerate Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl less than a month later, and they even managed to cobble together a few impressive seasons in the years since.
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But as far as being the nationally relevant powerhouse they had become under head coaches Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer in the 90s and 2000s, those days were long gone.
The Gators would stumble their way through myriad coaching searches, hiring flawed candidate after flawed candidate.
If Florida landed a defensive wizard (Will Muschamp), the offense would suffer under his watch.
Conversely, if the Gators nabbed an offensive guru (Dan Mullen), the defense would inevitably fail to live up to their end of the bargain.
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And if they happened to get a guy who was a relentless recruiter (Billy Napier), neither side of the ball would look up to snuff.
Big wins were short-lived, usually followed by a cataclysmic event that would tank any shot at a successful season after the fact.
In 2015, the Gators welcomed a top-three Ole Miss team to The Swamp in an eerily similar scenario to Saturday’s game, and handled them from the opening whistle.
Just weeks later, rising second-year signal caller Will Grier would be suspended for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, and the Jim McElwain era was never able to replicate the magic of those first six games.
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Five years later, during the fog of the COVID-19-shortened season of 2020, Florida had a legitimate championship-level offense under head coach Dan Mullen’s tutelage, and even with a porous defense, were able to knock Georgia off its perch and take the inside track to the SEC Championship Game.
A month after their win over their fiercest rival, the Gators lost as a three-touchdown favorite at home to LSU thanks to the now infamous “shoe toss” from defensive back Marco Wilson.
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Mullen was relieved of his duties as head coach less than a year afterwards.
My point is that any time the Gators seemed to gain a foothold in the “we’re back” conversation, something would jump up and drag them back to reality.
I’m not sure if Saturday’s domination over number four Ole Miss means the Gators are “back,” but for the first time in a very long time, the picture is looking clearer than ever.
The offense looks as dangerous as it did six years ago, when that aforementioned 2020 team ran roughshod over a 10-game SEC schedule thanks to the aerial assault provided by Kyle Trask, Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Toney, among others.
And the crazy thing is, this year’s offense might be deeper and even more balanced.
Consider the fact that Florida had Eric Singleton Jr., Vernell Brown III and Bailey Stockton, three of their top four wideouts, all hobbled for large portions of the game, and still put up 52 points and nearly 500 yards of total offense against a top-five SEC team.
That 2020 offense was lethal, but they couldn’t run the ball as effectively and certainly didn’t have a tailback of Jadan Baugh’s magnitude.
The defense was the Achilles heel of that COVID-19-year team, and while this year’s unit doesn’t look elite, they certainly play a more cohesive brand than their predecessors did in 2020.
Florida fans (myself included) begged on their hands and knees for Lane Kiffin to come to Gainesville.
Ultimately, that didn’t work out, and when it was announced that Jon Sumrall was the hire, Gator Nation revolted.
For 24 hours, that is.
After hearing the man speak and seeing the plan he had in place for the orange and blue, many of the Florida faithful started to have hope.
It’s early on in the process, but Sumrall and his staff have already started to show proof of concept, winning a road SEC game and then clobbering one of the best teams in the country in back-to-back weeks.
I can’t say for certain if Jon Sumrall will ever win anything of significance while coaching the Florida Gators.
This season is only four games old, and it’s year one of his tenure.
But with the way things are trending, both on and off the field, it’s safe to say football is, at the very least, fun again in The Swamp.
I try to be as objective as possible in my writing, but you can read it for yourself in my bio: I’m an unabashed Florida fan.
This was an article 17 years in the making, and I want to reiterate that the job is far from finished.
The Gators moved all the way up to 8th in the AP Poll on Sunday, their highest position in any poll since the end of the 2020 regular season.
No one is going to hang a banner about where you are ranked in week five, and there are plenty more tests still on the schedule.
This feels different, though.
Will the Gators win an SEC Championship or national title in 2026?
Not likely, but I see the vision from Sumrall and trust this is a sustainable approach to building a consistent winner.
Florida labored in finding an explosive offense outside of a few years with Mullen, so Sumrall went out and hired the best offensive coordinator in the country in Buster Faulkner.
Offensive line play has been downright putrid for large swathes of the last decade and a half, so Sumrall brought offensive line coach and UF alum Phil Trautwein, widely considered the best O-line teacher and recruiter in college football, back to Gainesville.
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The man gets it.
Sumrall said in his postgame press conference that the beast hasn’t been fully awakened yet, a nod to his comments from his introductory press conference back in December, but he acknowledged that they are getting there.
And if what I’m hearing from those close to the program is true about the recruits in attendance, the beast might be waking up sooner rather than later.
Saying the Gators are “back” feels a bit premature and might be an oversimplification of things, but the fact that they are even in the conversation means things are trending in the right direction.
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And that’s all this Gator fan, or any of us, can ask for.
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