Gainesville, Fla. – Florida’s locker room doesn’t have the same look, the same feel this season. Something is missing. The cliques are history. The only pressure on the head coach, for a change, is how he’ll get to work without getting hugged to death by adoring fans. Also, players aren’t sitting around their lockers comparing court dates.
However, something else is missing, something more symbolic. A life-size alligator head is gone from its perch. No longer can players touch it as they run onto the field, a tradition so steeped into this team that it was almost like losing a family pet.
New coach Urban Meyer got rid of it.
He didn’t throw it in the swamp. He just stored it. He wanted to teach his real Gators yet another lesson. He wanted to make sure they appreciated what it meant to be a Florida football player. When they stop taking it for granted, maybe he’ll bring it back.
“I really miss that gator head,” senior safety Jarvis Herring said.
When Meyer left Utah after busting down the Bowl Championship Series doors with a 12-0 record and No. 4 ranking, college football waited eagerly to see what magic his explosive spread offense would produce with Florida’s raw talent. That will be learned at 4 p.m. MDT Saturday when Wyoming visits 10th-ranked Florida in Meyer’s long-awaited debut.
What has been learned is the magical effects his discipline has had.
Similar to when he took over Utah in 2003, Meyer has changed the country club mind-set of the Florida Gators. His team has absorbed the tough love and, admittedly, some strange love, too.
Besides having Herring and other veterans making nightclub rounds checking on teammates, Meyer started a layered disciplinary system. He rewards players who do well in class and show maximum effort on and off the field with extra gear, compliments and a banquet at season’s end.
Those who don’t get ridden in practice, long and hard. At the banquet, they get scraps.
“It’s really clear what’s expected of them and what’s allowed,” Meyer said this week.
Called the Champions Club, it’s modeled after former UCLA coach John Wooden’s approach to star treatment. Remember any UCLA basketball players getting arrested in the 1960s and 1970s? Not one Florida Gator has been in trouble off the field since Meyer’s arrival in January.
“We thought it was stupid at first,” Herring said. “Everything he’d done, how strict he was and how he was making everybody go to class and all those things. We were like, ‘Man, this is stupid.’ We thought it was a childish thing like back in Pop Warner. Then we caught on and it was like, ‘Boy, this is really making a difference.”‘
Keep in mind Florida was one of the lead gunslingers in a Southeastern Conference with more than its share of outlaws. Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia combined for at least 23 legal scrapes this offseason, including 12 at Tennessee.
Under Meyer’s predecessor, Ron Zook, seven Gators had run-ins with the law last year. That doesn’t include one infamous dust-up when a dozen football players went to a fraternity looking for revenge after three teammates were involved in a fight. Zook arrived to calm the atmosphere and instead got into a shouting match with the fraternity.
Was it any coincidence this team lost to lowly Mississippi State last season? No one has drawn that conclusion, but Meyer isn’t taking any chances. He’s even making academics competitive.
Players who don’t miss a class or a quiz are called gold and don’t have classes checked and have no required study table. “Red” players are watched closely while the scarlet players have every class checked.
“Our players go to class,” Meyer said.
Part of his philosophy is based on wanting players to be thankful for what they have, an easy perspective for a coach whose previous head coaching stops were Bowling Green and Utah. Overwhelmed by Florida’s tradition, Meyer invited past Gators lettermen to a team cookout last Saturday. Before the Wyoming game he will unveil a Gator Walk, where players will walk through a tunnel of fans on their way into the stadium.
They will then walk onto the field through a mass alumni tunnel made up of former Gators players.
“What we’ve tried to do is make them appreciate what they have here,” Meyer said. “Are you kidding me? It’s just not like this, really, in any other place.”
He’s referring to fans who have bought into his system as much as his players. Only three years after Gators icon Steve Spurrier took his visor on an ill-advised trip to the NFL, Meyer broke attendance records at every Gator Club meeting at which he spoke.
After Meyer arrived, it took only a month to raise $850,000 for a new FieldTurf practice field.
Then again, Gators fans won’t care what grades players get if they fall on their faces against Wyoming. Meyer has his share of on-field issues. His top returning rusher, junior Skyler Thornton, gained only 230 yards last season, and none of the three tailbacks vying for the job has distinguished himself in practice.
Florida has almost no depth on the offensive line. Whatever kicker Meyer anoints will be making his debut.
However, junior quarterback Chris Leak, the All-American in waiting with his 5,632 career passing yards, started clicking this week with the offense, and Meyer has five offensive players who run the 40 in under 4.5. Utah had none last year, and it still averaged 45.3 points a game.
The gator may not be back, but Meyer’s bite may get the bite back in his Gators.
John Henderson can be reached at jhenderson@denverpost.com or 303-820-1299.
