GAINESVILLE, Fla. — What you are reading is perhaps the most rambling set of sentences I have ever scribbled on the Gators. I could recite the details from Florida's 39-36 overtime loss to Arkansas to fill the screen, but considering the targeted audience, would anyone read beyond the first paragraph?
If still here, you can click
this or
that or
this for an extended play of Saturday's defeat at The Swamp, the most disheartening loss of the season for Florida in the view of this knight of the keyboard.
Once the press conferences were over, a press box pal jokingly walked by and offered, "What can you write off this, Scott?" A similar scenario unfolded the previous weekend in Jacksonville, with the press box comic suggesting I write extensively about the Gators' first drive against Georgia and their last drive and leave everything out in the middle.
That's life on the playground where we work, and all the banter is met with good humor, considering no one with a notepad influences the outcome. I recall vividly the moment it struck me that documenting the Gators with authenticity could be more challenging than I suspected.
It happened late on the night of Oct. 2, 2010, at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
I was still in my first month on the job and arrived deeply embedded in the Tampa Bay professional sports scene, so I was somewhat unaware of the storm on the horizon for the Gators in what turned out to be Urban Meyer's final season. The Gators lost 31-6 at Alabama that evening, and late in the game, I turned to Steve McClain, then communications chief of the football program, and quipped: "I'm going to have to earn my money tonight."
The Gators owned a 24-game regular-season win streak entering the game, and the loss, coupled with a defeat to the Crimson Tide in the previous season's SEC Championship Game, officially stamped the end of their Southeastern Conference dominance. I wrote a
nuts-and-bolts column that relied heavily on player/coach reaction, a staple from the playbook for games such as that one.
If I did the same from Saturday's defeat, here are some of the most notable quotes:
- "I feel for our players because I do think that in that game, I thought we competed. I thought our players played with effort. They played well. We showed a lot of fight. We get down 14-0, and we have to fight our way back into that thing. We go to the locker room with a tie game at the half, and it was a battle." — Gators head coach Billy Napier
- Napier on the critics yelling after the loss: "It's not my job to preach patience. It's my job to coach the team. When you lose games, there's going to be criticism. I understand it. I've grown up in this profession. It comes with the territory. We knew this was going to be a challenge, and we're right in the middle of it."
- "A bunch of opportunities that we should have made that we didn't. It's frustrating. But I'm sure when you go back and look at the film, it'll all make sense on what we didn't do well, what we did well, and where we need to go." — Quarterback Graham Mertz on the loss
- "This was a big deal to come to Florida and win. There ain't but one first." — Razorbacks coach Sam Pittman on his program's first win at The Swamp
- "There's no question that there was some confusion there … that's one that I haven't been around before." — Napier on the illegal substitution penalty at the end of regulation that cost Florida five yards and led to a missed field goal by Trey Smack
-  "It's not going to be a challenge to keep this team together. This team is so close. The love we have for each other that's something you build throughout the season. This is extremely disappointing, but this needs to fuel this team, and we'll make sure it does." — Mertz on the team not splintering after such a difficult loss
In the aftermath, the question on everyone's mind this morning is what does Saturday's loss mean for the future? Or, for veterans of the press box, the time-tested where-do-they-go-from-here angle.
The Gators are 5-4, 3-3 in the SEC heading into next week's trip to Baton Rouge to face a talented LSU team that lost to Alabama on Saturday night. Then, a road trip to Missouri, followed by a home game against undefeated Florida State. Even the most optimistic Gators fans admit that losing all three games seems a distinct possibility, putting the Gators at 5-7 and a third consecutive losing season for the first time in 76 years. They needed to beat Arkansas to become bowl eligible, another spoon of salt in Saturday's wound.
And, of course, what does it mean in the bigger picture? Napier is 11-11 in his first 22 games as Florida's coach, and in fairness, he inherited arguably the worst UF roster since Charley Pell stepped foot in Gainesville in 1979. This was not a quick turnaround based on Napier's holistic approach to rebuilding a program. The optics have not helped his cause, perhaps most notably the gaffe Saturday when the field-goal unit ran onto the field on the final drive of regulation as Mertz was about to spike the ball and stop the clock. TV cameras showed Mertz's salty displeasure at the confusion.
Instead, the miscue and ensuing 5-yard penalty turned a 39-yard field goal attempt in windy conditions into a 44-yard attempt by
Trey Smack that sailed wide right, setting the stage for the final scene in overtime. Playing in all-black uniforms for the first time, you sensed death had called upon any chance of a Florida victory at that moment. We all know what happened in overtime.
You see this scene play out in college football season after season, with every fan base in America expecting instant results. Deion Sanders is preaching "the process" after another close Colorado loss. Clemson's Dabo Swinney barked back at Tyler from Spartanburg with a big win on Saturday. Iowa's Kirk Ferentz seems to live in the oven.
On and on it goes, with Napier and the Gators sure to be under the microscope for the final three games of the regular season. This morning, a glance at social media confirmed the authenticity of that claim, with UF athletic director Scott Stricklin and president Ben Sasse well aware of the mood if they have glanced at their mentions.
Back in this space, apologies for the ramblings. There is always something to write about, sometimes more than your targeted audience would prefer.
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