by Patrick Zier | Sep 30, 2026 |
Florida has always had great expectations. It hasn’t always met them, but it has always had them. For the most part, the Gators have been mired in mediocrity, a so-so SEC team that pulled off an upset now and then but usually ended the season with a ho-hum .500 record or thereabouts.
For a while, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. The Ray Graves era produced a 70-34-1 record including a 9-1-1 mark that was highlighted by an Orange Bowl win over SEC champion Tennessee, and of even more importance, introduced Florida fans to a brash young quarterback named Steve Spurrier, who left an indelible mark on the Gators as a player and, years later, would come back as a coach to take Florida to places it had never been before.
Spurrier is the longest tenured coach in Florida history, leading the team from 1990-2001, coaching 150 games and winning six SEC championships and one national title. That proved the Gators, with the right leadership and structure, could climb the highest mountains and maintain a pattern of excellence. Florida stumbled a bit right after Spurrier left, but quickly got back on track when it hired a relative unknown, Urban Meyer, to run the program. Over a five-year period, Meyer won a pair of SEC titles and two national championships, continuing to build on what Spurrier had started.
And then it all came tumbling down. Florida crashed back into mediocrity, and the Spurrier-Meyer years became just a memory. This was extremely frustrating for Florida Fans, who had seen the light and then watched as the program fell apart, with one coach after another trying to pick up the pieces and put them back together but unable to get the Gators out of the swamp.
This continued for 15 years after Meyer left until Scott Stricklin, Florida’s athletic director, turned to a successful Group of 6 coach, Tulane’s Jon Sumrall, after another Group of 6 coach, Billy Napier, became Florida’s latest failure, posting a 4-8 record in 2025.
Sumrall did not come on board without some controversy. Florida had reportedly made a big push to get Lane Kiffin, who bolted playoff bound Ole Miss and eventually wound up at LSU, and Sumrall stepped into the breach. But he immediately made an impression, brought new enthusiasm and energy to the program and didn’t really come off as a second choice.
And Sumrall took over a team that had a ton of talent, brought in some more and while people were talking about Georgia and Alabama and Texas A&M and Ole Miss and LSU and others in the SEC, everybody knew Florida had something going on if it could get its act together. And it did.
Speaking before the season started, Stricklin made the following observation as reported by the Gators’ football website. “He’s (Sumrall) obviously got great energy and kind of a can-do-it confidence that rubs off on people,” Stricklin said. “So, that’s No. 1. And I think he hired a really good staff, probably as good of a staff as we’ve had since, maybe since I’ve been here at UF. From a football standpoint, that’s critically important,” Stricklin commented.
Then all that was left was to wait, wait for the games to start and see whether or not Sumrall truly was the guy. Throwaway wins over Florida Atlantic and Campbell proved nothing, but then came Auburn, another team desperate to regain lost prestige, and Sumrall’s Gators established themselves with a 44-39 road win that, if nothing else, showed they had potential.
And last Saturday, it all came together. Ole Miss, fresh from getting revenge on Kiffin by whipping LSU and ranked No. 4 in the country, invaded Steve Spurrier-Florida Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and when the final seconds ticked away, Florida had a lopsided 52-28 victory.
Not that the Gators had gone unnoticed before beating Ole Miss. National observers were aware of the team’s talent and potential, and it was ranked 21st in the country after whipping Auburn. After beating Ole Miss, it is now eighth and there is talk that Florida may be a legitimate national title contender.
“A journey of a 1,000 miles starts with a single step, this was step one. The goal this week was to be 1-0 and now we go back to the drawing board,” Sumrall said after the Ole Miss win according to Florida’s football website. “I thought our guys came into the game with the right approach, the right mindset, but there’s a lot of things we’ve got to get a lot better at. We have high goals here,” Sumrall added.
“I’m excited about the direction we’re headed but we have not arrived yet,” he continued. “We have so much room to grow and get better and we have to do that. It’s got very little to do with me. I’m just the guy who tells everybody what direction to go and tries to make the standards really high.
“I’ve told them (the players) a million times good teams can be coached, great teams have to be led by the players. I feel like our player leadership is growing,” Sumrall went on. “I’m just proud they’re playing with confidence, edge, swagger and a little bit of demeanor about them to where we’re not going to bow down to anybody. I just want us to be good all the time.”
In just a few months, Sumrall has managed to flip Florida. Florida has changed from a team that should be good but wasn’t to one that is good and getting better. The Gators are no longer dormant. This is Spurrier’s Florida again with a slightly different vibe.
Florida is on its way to being relevant again. “We’re gonna get there,” Sumrall declared. “It’s coming. I promise you, I didn’t come here for us to be average.”
by Patrick Zier | Sep 21, 2026 |
Carson Hocevar is the man. The new image of NASCAR. Style over substance, if you will. And Hocevar is all about style. It’s his thing, and he never misses an opportunity to put himself front and center. Hocevar has only been on the Cup scene for going on three years, and hasn’t accomplished much on the track yet.
Off it, well, that’s another matter. He first attracted attention when he did burnout at Talladega after winning his first Cup race there. Winning a race at Talladega – or any superspeedway for that matter – is really no big deal. First, you have to avoid the “big wreck.” Then, you have to be fortunate enough to be in the right lane at the right time on the last lap.
It was what Hocevar did after leading the last lap that made him an instant fan favorite. He sent up plums of smoke while riding around half out the window on the burnout, and the crowd went wild. From that point on, Hocevar has had the bit in his teeth and he’s not about to spit it out. He does his thing when ever and where ever he can.
He has a reckless style on the track, smashing into the competition and knocking them out of the way in an effort to get where he wants to go. This hasn’t left him with many friends in the garage, but who needs friends when a little beatin’ and bangin’ pumps up the fans?
Some say he reminds them of the late great Dale Earnhardt. And while that’s a ridiculous comparison based on how much Earnhardt accomplished early in his career and how little Hocevar has done, it fits nicely with the image he is cultivating so he’ll take it.
Just 24, Hocevar is brash and unapologetic for what he says and does and thrives on controversy, all of which came to a head last Saturday night at Bristol. Racing Ryan Blaney for second place late in the race, Hocevar got up a head of steam and started to pass Blaney in the high lane.
Blaney immediately moved up to block the run, Hocevar didn’t lift, clipped Blaney’s rear bumper and sent him spinning into the wall. Furious; Blaney had led 202 laps, or about 40 percent of race, before being knocked out, Blaney confronted Hocevar in the garage and a fight broke out with the Bristol fans roaring their approval, since Hocevar seemed to get the better of it.
They even booed winner Joey Logano, who moved past Ty Gibbs to steal the win as Hocevar and Gibbs did some beating and banging on the closing laps, keeping either one from taking the top spot. “I wasn’t trying to wreck him Blaney),” Hocevar said on pit road according to NASCAR’s website. “It just looked like to me I got a run and kind of went left, and he spun; I spun him,” Hocevar said.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of talking,” Hocevar continued, referring now to the post race fight. “He (Blaney) just said one thing and then went after me, and I wasn’t going to take it. I mean that was fun with the 54 (Gibbs). I got ran into a lot. I mean that was for second place (the incident with Blaney) and he wants to come fight.”
“I don’t know what I did wrong there,” Hocevar continued. “I got a run to cross him over. It looked like he spun himself and then he wants to instigate a fight. I was going to finish that and, you know, it seemed like the crowd was pretty pumped up so I was going to play the audience for a second,” he said after acknowledging the fans.”
For his part, Blaney has said nothing, not after the fight or in the days following. But NASCAR, which usually frowns on such antics, has actually come out and encouraged it, this despite the fact that something like this can cause serious injury. Blaney, who fell backward in all the confusion after being hit by Hocevar, could easily have hit his head on the concrete floor and that could have been disastrous.
Speaking on the Racin’ With The Boys podcast, Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s CEO, said the following: “Where we’re at is if the drivers want to handle their business, great…We need rivalries, we need villians, right?” O’Donnell commented.
Welcome to the new NASCAR, where it’s no longer about the race. It’s all about the show.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Kansas Sunday: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Tyler Reddick, 3-Christopher Bell. Last year’s winner at Kansas: Chase Elliott. Top five at Kansas last year: 1-Elliott, 2-Hamlin, 3-Bell, 4-Chase Briscoe, 5-Bubba Wallace.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Bristol picks: 1-Ryan Blaney, 2-Joey Logano, 3-Ty Gibbs. Last week’s Bristol winner: Logano. OGS season record after 24 races: 13-11.
OGS competition index top 10 after 24 races: 1-Hamlin 574 points, 2-BelL 465, 3-Kyle Larson 411, 4-Reddick 383, 5-Gibbs 354, 6-Blaney 319, 7-Briscoe 316, 8-Logano 308, 9-Shane van Gisbergen 226, 10-Elliott 192.
OGS competition index top 10 on intermediate tracks (tracks most like Kansas): 1-Hamlin 428 points, 2-Reddick 271, 3-Bell 266, 4-Larson 213, 5-Briscoe 151, 6-Elliott 120, 7-William Byron 119, 8-Alex Bowman 80, 9-Corey Heim 78, 10-Logano 73.
by Patrick Zier | Sep 16, 2026 |
It was a beatdown the likes of which have rarely been seen in Cup racing this year. And taking all the blows was Toyota, which, if there has been a beatdown like this before, was the one who administered it. Not this time, though. Not last Sunday at St. Louis.
This time it was Kyle Larson and Chevy who put on the show, or more specifically, Hendrick Motorsports, Chevy’s top team, which has struggled to get competitive all season but demonstrated new life at St. Louis. When the race was finally over and the last mangled brake rotor had been cleaned up, Larson was in victory lane and there wasn’t a Toyota in sight.
The top Toyota finisher was Toyota’s top driver, Denny Hamlin, but he was a distant 9th. The next closest was Ty Gibbs in 18th. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen to Toyota, or at least it hasn’t happened this year. There was not a single Toyota in the top five, and discounting the three superspeedways, that’s the first time this season Toyota has been shut out. If you want to throw in the superspeedways, it also happened at Talladega this spring.
But even more shocking then that, Toyota never led a single lap. That’s right. For the first time in 28 races, superspeedways included, there was never a Toyota leading the race. That most likely is a one-off, and almost assuredly won’t happen again, the Toyota’s are simply too strong, but it does give Larson and the Chevys (more so than the Fords) a glimmer of hope.
For the record, the four Hendrick Chevys finished first (Larson), second (Alex Bowman), fourth (William Byron) and 31st (Chase Elliott). Elliott actually ran well during the race, staying in the top 10 and often running as high as fifth before a brake rotor exploded on lap 214 putting him out of commission.
Meanwhile, the other power team in the sport, and the team which has been crushing the competition – including Hendrick – all year, JGR, struggled for the first time this season, its four cars finishing ninth (Hamlin), 18th (Gibbs), 19th (Christopher Bell) and 32nd (Chase Briscoe). According to lapraptor.com, Briscoe was running sixth when Elliott’s brake rotor broke and he was caught up in the wreck, making him collateral damage.
The big question here, of course, is can Hendrick keep this up? Has it finally solved the balance problems that have been holding Chevy back all year? And if it has, what took so long? This team has as many resources as anybody and probably more than everybody except JGR.
The answer is lack of communication. Unlike the JGR cars who share openly with each other and also with Michael Jordan’s 23XI team, the Hendrick cars didn’t share information and were actually centered on gaining an advantage over their teammates. This is one reason they’ve had so much difficulty adjusting to the new car. Everybody working together is better than everybody working for themselves, and it seems they’ve finally figured that out.
Larson, Hendrick’s top driver and really the only competitive Hendrick car this season, went 51 races without a win (including last year’s NASCAR championship, which shows how ridiculous the NASCAR point system is) until Sunday at St. Louis.
He says he never doubted that he and Hendrick would make a comeback. “We’ve definitely been building to get back to victory lane,” Larson said at his postrace press conference according to NASCAR’s website. “I don’t know that we’re to a point where we can go dominate like we have in the past, but a day like today (Sunday) definitely gives you confidence…It’s just been neat to see all the hard work pay off,” Larson commented.
Although he is behind the top three Toyotas of Hamlin, Bell and Tyler Reddick, Larson has been the strongest non-Toyota on NASCAR’s intermediate tracks all season according to the Old Guy Sport competition index. Hamlin leads with 428 points, Reddick has 271, Bell 266 and Larson 213.
This is important because if he’s going to make a run at the championship, he’ll have to do it on the intermediate ovals which comprise six of the 10 chase championship races. And so far, in the first two of those, Larson has a fifth at Darlington, where he got more OGS points for leading laps under green than anybody, and the win at St. Louis, where he and Ford’s Joey Logano dominated the race, leading 80% of the green flag laps.
“I’m just proud of everyone at Hendrick Motorsports for working hard but staying patient,” Larson commented. “just doing everything possible to try and find some grip and speed and all the things it takes…I always had trust in our team, the trust in (crew chief) Cliff Daniels. It’s not like we’ve gotten worse as a team or have forgotten how to build fast race cars.”
No, they haven’t. But it sure took them a long time to figure it out.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Bristol: 1-Ryan Blaney, 2-Joey Logano, 3-Ty Gibbs. Last year’s winner at Bristol: Christopher Bell. Top five at Bristol last year: 1-Bell, 2-Brad Keselowski, 3-Zane Smith, 4-Blaney, 5-Logano.
Last week’s OGS St. Louis picks: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Tyler Reddick, 3-Bell. St. Louis winner: Kyle Larson. OGS season record: 12-11.
OGS competition index top 10 after 23 races: 1-Hamlin 574 points, 2-Bell 445, 3-Reddick 383, 4-Larson 367, 5-Gibbs 335, 6-Chase Briscoe 316, 7-Blaney 300, 8-Logano 250, 9-Shane van Gisbergen 236, 10-Chase Elliott 192.
OGS competition index top 10 on short tracks (tracks most like Bristol): 1-Blaney 235, 2-Logano 177, 3-Gibbs 169, 4-Hamlin 146, 5-Bell 139, 6-Briscoe 101, 7-Larson 96, 8-Elliott 72, 9-Josh Berry 61, 10-Bubba Wallace 49.
