Quarterback Terry LeCount runs through a hole in the 1977 game against Florida State at Florida Field. (Photo: Florida archives)
Gators of 1977 Still Own School's NFL Draft Record
Thursday, August 17, 2017 | Football, Scott Carter
Forty years ago the Gators produced a draft class that stands alone at the top.
The man said his name was Alan Williams and that he played for the Gators in the 1970s. Not until I called back did I discover Williams uses that robust and smooth voice daily in his job as sports anchor for WVLT-TV in Knoxville, Tenn.
Williams was Florida's starting punter during the 1976 and '77 seasons and averaged 42.8 yards per punt as a senior, good enough to draw the interest of the New York Jets, who selected Williams in the 12th round of the 1978 NFL Draft.
However, Williams was not calling about his brief stint in the NFL, where he spent training camp that summer along with his former UF teammate, receiver Derrick Gaffney. While Gaffney went on to play parts of eight seasons with the Jets, Williams was soon off to begin a TV career that has treated him well in the decades since.
The reason Williams phoned was to call attention to a fact many people might not know or simply have forgotten: this is the 40th anniversary of the Florida team that produced the most NFL Draft picks in school history in a single season.
It's true, right there in black and white in the UF media guide. The 1977 Gators, who finished 6-4-1 and opened the season in Texas like the 2017 Gators will – they beat Rice 48-3 in Houston – had 10 players selected in the 1978 draft the following spring.
Florida had nine players selected in the draft three times since, including 1992, the last year before the draft was reduced to seven rounds. The Gators had nine players selected in the 2007 and 2010 drafts.
"During our '77 season, we had so much athletic ability,'' Williams said. "We were fast and strong. Unfortunately, our talent didn't echo our record."
The Gators started the season with three consecutive games on the road, winning at Rice and against Mississippi State in Jackson, before losing at LSU. In their home opener, they tied defending national champion Pittsburgh 17-17. The Gators beat Tennessee, Georgia and Miami, but a 37-9 loss to Florida State at home in the regular-season finale kept them out of a bowl game. It was former FSU coach Bobby Bowden's first win against Florida and snapped the Gators' nine-game win streak in the building rivalry.Florida's star in '77 was senior flanker Wes Chandler, who averaged 19.6 yards per catch and 5.8 per rush. Chandler scored 12 touchdowns and was a first-round pick of New Orleans. He later became an NFL standout in San Diego's "Air Coryell" pass-happy offense led by Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Fouts.
Meanwhile, UF's quarterback in '77 was Terry LeCount, who threw for 848 yards and added 628 yards rushing as director of UF's wishbone offense. LeCount went to the Vikings in the fourth round. Six of the 10 Gators selected in the '78 draft played in a regular-season game.
Perhaps the most interesting career among the group belongs to former UF running back Tony Green, who still ranks seventh in school history with 2,590 career yards.
The Redskins selected Green in the sixth round and he earned a spot on the NFC Pro Bowl team as a kick returner. Green racked up 1,313 yards returning kicks as a rookie, including an 80-yard punt return for a touchdown and a 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. He split the next season playing for the Giants and Seahawks and then disappeared from the league.
The draft had five more rounds back then, but 10 players drafted in a single class remains a record all these years later for a program that was far from reaching its peak in the fall of '77.
"We had tremendous players that weren't just position players, but true versatile athletes, like first-rounder Wes Chandler to my teammate Derrick Gaffney with the Jets,'' Williams said. "It's a proud moment in Gator history and I've held onto that for 40 years."
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