Recently I was on a cruise to Alaska. While on my cruise I met a couple from South Dakota and naturally the topic of Mount Rushmore came up.
The actual Mount Rushmore honors George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
In the sports world however, Mount Rushmore is often used as a vessel of debate to determine the four best players for a given league or team.
The Florida Gators already have three statues built outside The Swamp.
Steve Spurrier, Danny Wuerffel, and Tim Tebow have all won the Heisman Trophy and most of Gator Nation would probably agree that a Florida Gators Mount Rushmore should include those three.
But figuring out the fourth member of this group might be a little more difficult.
Players such as Emmitt Smith, Chris Doering, Reidel Anthony, Alex Brown, and Sammy Green would all have valid arguments to join the group
For the sake of continuity though, we are going to explore which quarterback in Florida Gators history should be the fourth member of Gainesville’s Mount Rushmore
Chris Leak
It’s well known within Gator football lore that Tim Tebow won two national titles during his time in Gainesville.
It almost feels forgotten at times that Tim Tebow wasn’t the starter for the 2006 national championship squad.
It also almost feels like a trick question that the answer to “Who holds record for most passing yards in Florida Gators history” is actually Chris Leak.
But with 11,213 career passing yards, Leak was a consistent performer all four years with Florida.
Leak is pushed down Florida QB rankings because he only topped 3,000 yards passing once, never topped 30 passing TDs, and had a respectable but not earth shattering career completion percentage of 61%.
Leak also won a national title as a player, something not even Mount Rushmore lock Steve Spurrier can say.
Leak also kept Florida relevant and afloat during the Ron Zook years and helped pave the way into the Urban Meyer era of dominance.
Shane Matthews
Speaking of Spurrier, his transition from being head coach at Duke to head coach at Florida was made far easier by the play of Shane Matthews.
Had Matthews played for all four seasons while in Gainesville he would easily be sitting atop the all-time passing list for Florida.
As it was, Matthews topped 3,000 yards passing in both 1991 and 1992.
He was named SEC player of the year in 1990 and 1991.
Florida also won their first official SEC championship with Matthews at the helm in 1991.
Matthews would go on to a long career in the NFL that lasted until 2006.
He did plead guilty in 2017 to health care fraud and spent three months in prison.
Last year he started working his way back into the good graces of Gator Nation and provided color commentary during away games.
Rex Grossman
There is a really good argument to be made that this debate of Florida’s fourth member of Mount Rushmore wouldn’t even need to happen is the Heisman voting committee did their job properly in 2001.
Grossman had 3,896 yards passing in 2001 and 34 TDs.
He was beat out by Eric Crouch’s 1,510 yards passing and 1,115 yards rushing that year.
The college football gods took note and have smited Nebraska ever since.
Grossman currently sits 5th on Florida’s all time passing yards list with 9,164 yards and 4th in all time passing touchdowns with 77.
Grossman would go on to a long NFL career and helped lead the Chicago Bears to a Super Bowl appearance in 2006.
Kyle Trask
Making a list is always hard because you don’t want to fall into recency bias
But if Grossman is a contender for Mount Rushmore because he was slighted from a Heisman, Kyle Trask might have a better argument.
Trask might have become the starter by accident and unfortunate circumstances to Feleipe Franks, but his quality of play was anything but an accident.
Trask threw for 4,283 yards and 43 TDs in 2020.
As a reminder, the 2020 schedule was against only SEC opponents and didn’t include the usual cupcakes QBs use to pad their stats.
Okay, Tennessee was still on the schedule. You get the point though.
If Florida doesn’t throw a show against LSU and had a defensive coordinator who knew how to do anything besides blitz eight guys and get burned against Alabama, there is a better than 50% chance Trask wins the Heisman in 2020 and Florida wins the national title.
Florida’s fourth member of Mount Rushmore is…….
Kyle Trask has been Florida’s best QB since Tebow and might be one of Florida’s best QBs of all time.
Rex Grossman was probably robbed of Heisman.
Shane Matthews kick started Florida being relevant on national stage.
But there is room on Mount Rushmore for a legacy spot.
Chris Leak kept Florida relevant for three years and led them to the promise land in his fourth.
He is the all time passing yards leader in Florida Gators history.
Leak wasn’t a better QB than the previously mentioned three QBs, but his all-around contribution to the program lands him on Florida’s Mount Rushmore of QBs.