As the season winds down, Florida still struggling to find its way
Florida has always had the talent. That’s never been the question. The potential is always there. Over the years, Florida has proven that when the pieces are put together right, as happened most recently with Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer, this team can deliver a gut punch that will stagger anybody. In the SEC, other teams eye Florida like a smoking volcano, knowing it can erupt at any time and treading lightly when they are around it.
The problem is that in recent years, the eruptions have been few and far between. Jon Sumrall was hired to change that, to fix it, and he genuinely believes that he can. He is not overconfident, but he has a definite view of how the pieces fit and thought they could be put back in place fairly quickly, like even this year.
There appears to have been progress, but a lack of consistency has kept Florida from grabbing the top rung, from taking its place with Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Texas and maybe a couple others who annually fight for supremacy in what is, with apologies to no one, not the Big 10 or anyone else, the best conference in college football.
So what now? The season is winding down and Florida has no more statement games on its schedule and it will not win an SEC championship. But it saw what it’s like to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the big boys. It tasted that respect when Ole Miss, then the No. 4 team in the country, came into Gainesville fresh off an extremely emotional win over LSU and staggered out of town after taking a 52-17 pounding from Florida.
And the next week, now ranked No. 8 nationally and with everybody pointing at the Gators and saying ‘watch out for those guys,’ Florida face planted at Missouri. And then it face planted again against South Carolina. The Ole Miss win was, it turned out, another brief moment of glory, something that was not sustainable.
With the Gators getting ready for Oklahoma, Sumrall reflected on all this at his weekly press conference as reported on Florida’s football website. Oklahoma is the first of the four games left to go. All are winnable but the Sooners and then Kentucky the following Saturday could be trouble, and Sumrall must get this team motivated and ready to play, or the bottom could fall out.
“Well, undefeated is clearly off the table but that has been for several weeks,” Sumrall began. “I told our team we’re 5-3 and 3-3 in the conference. I also told them we’ve got a lot left to play for. You know, we’re in a situation, as we enter November and November football, we haven’t had a winning SEC record here since 2020, I believe.
“We have a chance to do that and that’s a pretty substantial goal. It’s not like I’m comfortable just having a winning record, but we have to find ways to continue to grow as a program so that’s something to me and then look, we have to take it one day at a time,” Sumrall said. “We have 25-ish days left until the last regular season game.
“There’s a lot left to play for,” he repeated, “and I showed our team what that looks like. And to be honest with you, after you go into a game (Georgia) that’s as hyped up as last week’s was sometimes you wonder ‘man, how much gas is left in the tank emotionally?’
“It’s something I have to help them understand,” Sumrall commented. “It’s like guys, you sign up for the whole year and what does that look like? We got to finish this thing the right way. So there’s still, to me, a lot left to play for,” Sumrall said again. “And we have to have enough pride in ourselves to play hard no matter what’s out there.”
“How you finish matters,” he emphasized. “I think, as you look down this last stretch, we’ve got three conference games and a rivalry game (FSU) at the end. We need to finish strong to create some positive momentum as we go into the offseason.
“Just find a way to go 1-0 every week for the next four weeks and when you look up, who knows where you stand at that point in the chaos we’re all in in college football right now? Like if you can find your way to 9-3 at the end, man, there’s a lot of possibilities that can happen with what else is going on in the world.
“What we have to do a better job of is taking care of what’s right in front of us. I want to finish well, I want us to grow as a team and grow the program so that we can have a future here that goes ‘all right, we’re turning in the right direction and we’re about to get this thing really started,'” Sumrall said.
“I have championship expectations every day,” Sumrall went on. “We’re not there yet and that’s frustrating as hell but we’re going to get there, we are. I’m very confident of that.” Could be. But not this year.