TrackTown, USA: Would You Rather Florida Be An Everything School Or Just Football?
The Florida Gators won the national championship in outdoor track field for both the men and women this past weekend in Eugene, Oregon. Florida has now won 12 national championships in track and field under coach Mike Holloway since 2010.
When the women won the indoor national championship earlier this year, it continued a streak for the University of Florida athletics department where it has won a national championship in at least one sport in all but two years since 2006 (Florida was shutout in 2009 and in 2020, but also we can all agree to forget about 2020).
Since Florida last won a national championship in football in 2008, the Gators have won 12 titles in track, three in gymnastics, three in women’s tennis, two in softball, one in men’s tennis and one in baseball.
Compare that to the University of Alabama that, in the same timespan, have two titles in men’s golf, two in gymnastics, one in softball and one in women’s golf.
They also have a few in football, we’ll get to those in a second.
The Georgia Bulldogs have won three in women’s swimming, one in men’s outdoor track and one in women’s indoor track.
They also won a football title and also have claimed three equestrian titles (which it turns out that UF also has an equestrian team).
One More Title Shot
The Florida Gators football teams over the last decade have been decent. Certainly not the dumpster fire we have seen out of Knoxville. In the last 10 seasons, Florida football has had four seasons of 10 or more wins and four appearances in the SEC title game.
But they have no SEC titles since 2008, no playoff appearances, and no national titles.
So the question for Gator fans is:
"Would you trade in the success of every other sport in exchange for one more national title for the football team?"
The Case For Exchanging
Success in football and success in other sports do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Georgia for example was ranked first in the nation for men’s track and field in the USTFCCCA computer rankings prior to the national championship. Alabama this year had a better ranked softball team than Florida heading into the NCAA tournament before faltering.
Be honest with yourself though, do you own any piece of memorabilia commemorating any of the previously mentioned national championships Florida has won outside of football?
How much of the four day track and field national championship meet did you watch?
How many players from the 2017 baseball team could you name compared to how many players off the 2006 or 2008 football team?
Without looking, could you name the team Florida volleyball played against in the 2017 national title game?
Who beat Gator gymnastics this year in a nail biting finish at the national championship meet?
When Gator athletics does something great, Gator Nation will click like on Twitter, upvote it on Reddit, use it in a meme, and go back to wondering “What if Mullen had fired Grantham prior to the 2020 season? Could Florida have won the national title that year?”
Most people who identify themselves as a fan of the Florida Gators are football fans first and foremost. Until recently my wife had more pictures of Tim Tebow on our walls than of our own child.
The reality is that The Swamp gets 90,000 people to show up and sweat their tail off for four hours. When softball hosted regionals in May, it topped out at 1,262 people showing up. Baseball maxed out at 5,472 when it hosted regionals.
If you were to ask a Georgia fan how they are feeling after entering the men’s track championships ranked number one and leaving without any team hardware they would probably respond with “Meh.”
Again, teams can be successful without being a determent to the football team.
It is no secret though that most sports benefit from the revenue that football brings in.
In a recent interview with the Gator Nation Podcast, Florida Athletic Director Scott Stricklin talked about how the US Olympic Committee is very concerned about the increasing money required to keep up in college football’s arms race and how that might impact all the Olympic based sports that universities across the country are the main catalyst for.
Whether or not funding other sports was a factor we won’t know for sure, but it took Florida until 2015 to have an indoor practice facility for football.
Alabama has had this since 2013.
And they upgraded to a 288 million dollar facility last year.
Florida has agreed to provide Billy Napier with an assistant coaches salary pool of 7.5 million dollars, which is actually in line with what Alabama is providing their assistant coaches.
As recently as 2017, Florida was only providing 4.7 million dollars for assistants.
How many Florida fans are thinking to themselves that the estimated 76 million dollars recently used to upgrade the baseball and softball stadiums could have been siphoned off to make the assistant coaches salary pool even greater than Alabama?
The Case Against Exchanging Titles
Now is a time for a really important disclaimer about myself.
I ran track and field and cross country at the D1 level. Not for Florida, I wasn’t good enough, but at a lower level/FCS level school.
We acknowledge that football is king, but not because the players work harder compared to the athletes in any other sport.
I used to wake up at 5 AM to get my summer runs in before having to work a full day at summer camp because I wasn’t getting a full scholarship or NIL money.
I was getting $800 a year in athletic aid.
Football is king though because more people are entertained by it compared to other sports.
At its core, sports is an entertainment product.
But as is the case with any entertainment product, if you build it they will come.
22.6 million people tuned in to watch the college football national championship game back in January.
35 million people have watched Ryan Trahan race strangers in an airport.
Women’s softball is demonstrating that if you provide an entertaining product, people will eventually find their way to you. The Women’s College World Series, of which Florida was in and Georgia and Alabama were not, had multiple games that topped one million viewers.
The Men’s College World Series last year saw similar numbers.
No, these numbers don’t match football and probably never will. But as participation in football continues to decrease, universities are wise to position themselves to provide positive headlines throughout the year and not just in the fall.
At its core, Florida Gator football is a total of 12 Saturdays a year. And if it is a non Power 5 opponent, the level of investment from most of Gator Nation is less than 12.
If you are like my father-in-law, who is as die hard of a Gator fan as them come, you probably have consumed more than 12 Florida Gator sporting events that were not football over the last year.
And these programs do serve a purpose. They attract high level athletes from around the world, which drive even further exposure to Florida’s brand and reputation (as long as those athletes are more like Caeleb Dressel and less like Ryan Lochte. Or like a certain member of the 2008 football team that played tight end).
And ultimately while winning in football is nice, if you are a student at the University of Florida or an alumni, your main concern is that you want your degree to matter and hold value.
Yes, winning the title in football in January is great, and I am sure the fine folks of Georgia are happy now.
But between 1981 and 2020, when Georgia’s season would inevitably end without a national title, what exactly did they have to look forward to from January all the way to September?
Blowing Super Bowl leads? Watching the Braves fail in the postseason? Gaining a hockey team and watching it leave 12 years later?
Isn’t it nice to have something to cheer for during football’s offseason?
Final Question For Florida Fans
With the case for sacrificing everything for football and the case against it really comes down to one philosophical question:
"Would you rather have one moment of catharsis, or multiple little pick-me-ups along the way?"
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