In a game marked by vicious hits, Will Muschamp, former SEC safety, just wanted a piece of somebody. Finally, with a 14-6 upset of No. 4 LSU in the bank, Florida’s next championship coach got his wish.
Muschamp and Jeff Dillman, the Gators’ new director of strength and conditioning, took turns slamming and shoving into one another on the sidelines, each of them probably hoping they left a mark.
These, after all, are the men most responsible for making Florida a top-10 program again, a mission that began with Muschamp’s rock-bottom assessment at the end of last season that the Gators had become “a soft team.”
Well, here’s the hard news, and it’s racing around the SEC today like a bull through the streets of Pamplona.
The Gators, 5-0 and flexing, are a serious problem again, and that statement stands even if South Carolina and Georgia aren’t as easy to overcome as LSU was.
Florida has yet to allow a point in the fourth quarter this season, has come back on three conference opponents after trailing at halftime and, best of all, has developed a running game that not even the talented Tigers could tame.
The Gators, in other words, have developed a backbone, and consequently the Swamp has found its voice again, all gravelly and grand, like an echo from another time.
“That was typical 1980 SEC ball right there today,” said Muschamp, harkening back to an era when legendary running backs Herschel Walker and Bo Jackson typically salted away games with power running that raised more bruises as their games went along. “That’s the difference in playing in this league and all these other leagues you see on TV.”
Don’t like watching a quarterback win with eight completions for 61 yards? Tough, because the Gators were satisfied to run the ball 58 times Saturday, and 25 times straight to end the game, and that’s how Muschamp got his first career win over a top-10 opponent.
Don’t get a big kick out of watching one team dominate another by clamping down on defense rather than by sprinkling glittery numbers across the scoreboard? Too bad, because holding LSU without a touchdown for the first time this season is how the Gators won their first October home game since Tim Tebow played here.
It’s the Will Muschamp way, punctuated by Mike Gillislee’s 146-yard rushing day, and it’s not much different from the way Steve Spurrier wins at South Carolina these days, and the way Nick Saban rules the entire world at Alabama.
In Muschamp’s first year as Florida coach, the Gators weren’t stubborn enough to control both sides of the line of scrimmage, weren’t salty enough to crash their running back or their quarterback into the line on third-and-short and come away grinning.
Think back to last season’s 41-11 destruction at the hands of LSU. The Tigers scored five touchdowns that day. This time around they managed just five first downs, if you don’t count the ones that came by penalty. Why, if not for a Jeff Driskel sack and fumble at the end of the half, Les Miles, the most improvisational mind in college coaching, would have left Gainesville with just one field goal to show for his efforts.
None of this means that the time has come for Florida to recapture all those national championship dreams, but LSU was in the BCS title game last year. The power in America’s most powerful league is beginning to pivot, if nothing else.
“There was a whole bunch of regret left on the field at LSU’s stadium last year,” said Florida’s 321-pound guard Jon Halapio. “Today … our offensive line was running off the ball. We were finishing blocks. Pancakes here, knockouts there. It was just a great game. Last year we felt like were outtoughed, and we don’t want that feeling again.”
Maybe outtoughed isn’t really a word, but you get the picture. It’s the same when Muschamp says Florida is “a more enduranced team.” The winner gets to write the story and choose the words. In 2011, when the Gators needed a bowl win over Ohio State to finish 7-6, there really wasn’t that much to say.
All that frustration was flushed out of the system Saturday, replaced by a longing to get back to Atlanta, where the SEC title game is played.
Now South Carolina’s visit to the Swamp in a couple of weeks is turning into more than just another Spurrier homecoming. There’s a division to be won, and a multiplication of spectacularly solid efforts like this one suddenly on rush order.
“This is just one win,” Muschamp said. “It doesn’t count for one-and-a-half, and it doesn’t count for two.”
What beating LSU counts for is actually much more. It means the Gators have a championship coach again, the same guy who served as defensive coordinator on LSU’s 2003 national title team and had those Tigers allowing just 11 points per game on average.
Doesn’t matter what year it is, 1980 or 2003 or 2012. That’s the right stuff, and Florida, which has allowed six points in the last two SEC games combined, is on the right track.
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