This weekend was quite the eventful one at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium as Florida fell to Texas Tech in game three on Sunday. At the center of the drama all weekend long was Mia Williams, the former Gator who transferred to Texas Tech in the offseason. Adding to the drama was Mia’s father, former Gator basketball player Jason Williams, seemingly going at it with Florida fans all weekend long.
Now that the dust is starting to settle, Jason Williams took to social media to try to explain why things happened the way they happened during Super Regionals.
Jason Williams tries to mend things over with Florida fans
In a two-minute video, Williams tried to explain that at his core, he was simply trying to stand up and cheer for his daughter, who did get hit five times during the series. It’s debatable whether Florida was doing it on purpose or if it was a simple case of trying to pitch in and missing their spot.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Among the other events that went down, Jason Williams was removed from the stadium for a brief time during game one after he claimed his other daughter was spat on. Williams was also seen after game three going at it with fans and doing the Gator Chomp in a mocking fashion.
He ended his video trying to soothe things over with Florida fans:
“Look, we’re moving on to the World Series. We want to do what’s right. We were cheering for our team, they were cheering for their team. Things got out of hand. They said some stuff that they wasn’t supposed to say, we said some stuff we probably wasn’t supposed to say, and that’s just sports. That’s what time it is. God knows what time it is in between the lines.
So with that all being said, I just want everybody know that I’m happy. I’m happy we won. I’m a Florida Gator in my blood. Without Florida, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today. So like I said, they said some things they shouldn’t have said and we said some things we shouldn’t have said. So, we’re sorry from our side. That’s all I can say.”
Legacy moving forward
His final line about “I’m a Florida Gator in my blood. Without Florida, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today” is part of what we critiqued on Monday, and that this whole saga has felt extremely over the top, going all the way back to when Mia Williams initially transferred away from Gainesville.
Nobody is going to fault Jason Williams for cheering on his own daughter, even if it is against the school that most would associate him with. But there was a level of toxicity in this series, a decent chunk of it coming from Williams, that rubbed a lot of Gator fans the wrong way.
Florida wasn’t blameless either, and their decision to walk away rather than shake hands has not gone over well in circles outside of Gainesville.
As we wrote yesterday, it’s going to be interesting to see how Florida athletics as a whole welcomes or doesn't welcome Williams to future events, given how this entire weekend went down.
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