FlashBack Friday with the Florida Gators: Chris Doering and Kentucky 1993

There are moments in history that we seem to be able to remember with great clarity. Every moment, every feeling, every aspect of the event. This is especially true in sports, when fans can recall at the drop of a hat the factors of a memorable play better than they can recall their own wedding anniversary.

Hoping to help provide a unique point of view to those moments, we here at GatorCountry.com have asked former Florida Gators football players to take us back to their most memorable moment. Sometimes it’s their favorite, sometimes it’s the one that still gives them nightmares and sometimes it’s a whole game.

There are stories that still get told about these moments, often embellished and maybe with a tinge of notoriety that makes them bigger than they really were. So in an effort to strip these memories back down to their original roots and told in a way that only those that truly experienced them can tell, we present this week’s player moment, in its unfiltered form.

Chris Doering

1993 Florida versus Kentucky in Lexington. Doering caught the game-winning touchdown with 3 seconds left.

“I think the play that stands out most in my mind and the one I’m most widely remembered for amongst the Gator fans is the play against Kentucky when I had the opportunity to catch the game winner with three seconds left. It’s something you dream about as a kid especially for me growing up here in Gainesville, having the goal of playing for the Gators, it was such a quick ascent to me to walk on to catching my first career touchdown pass there early in the 4^th quarter, to catching the game winner there later in that game with 3 seconds to go. It’s really surreal almost.”

How nerve-wracking is it when you know the final, and most important play is coming to you?

“I think the interesting thing is it really is more nerve-wracking to watch it as a fan. Now in my post playing days I get nervous watching Florida play more so than I did when I was playing because I think you have more control over it as a player. So at the time I don’t really remember being all that nervous but I think if I had to go back and do it all again, and that ball coming in the air as slow as it seemed to, I’d probably be a lot more nervous knowing the implications of dropping that football and how it would have changed my life.”

Could you still run the route and make it work?

“Danny [Wuerffel] and I still at this age, every once and a while we get together and run some routes. I still feel like in my mind at 41 years old I can still get open but not so sure it would happen in reality though.”

You didn’t get to hear it at the time, but years later, how cool is it when you hear the Mick Hubert radio call from the game and he screams the famous “Doering’s got a touchdown!”

“I think that’s the thing that was cool for both Mick and I was, Mick was relatively new here as the voice of the Gators and I was just a sophomore. So everybody kind of remembers me for that call. And the ironic thing is, games weren’t on TV as much as they are now and I think he and I will forever be linked because of the way that he made that call. And in fact more people probably heard it on the radio then they saw it on the broadcast.”