Gator Country

The One and Only Gator Country Magazine

The Gator Country Magazine is now the fastest growing full color magazine printed on high quality glossy paper that’s dedicated to bringing you the best in-depth feature coverage of the Florida Gators. Our magazine is the only one that has award winning writers and columnists on staff so you can truly enjoy reading about your beloved Florida Gators.

There are ten issues a year and each issue is packed with feature stories & information, the latest recruiting news, excellent commentary, and outstanding photographs not found anywhere else. Unlike most magazines, we have fewer advertisements so as to allow us to pack more content for your reading pleasure.

VIP subscribers will receive the magazine as part of their Gator Country subscription. Magazine only subscriptions are also available… Looking for back or single issues? Try the Gator Country Store!

• GC CARAVAN SCRAPBOOK
  The Gator Country Caravan Scrapbook
  
  Gator Nation came out in great numbers during the summer to listen as the Gator Country Caravan traveled around the Sunshine State and even into enemy territory (Alabama) to spread the football gospel. The first caravan, which started off in Palatka and followed with stops in Gainesville, Ocala, Jacksonville, Destin, Tampa and Orlando, also visited Gator Club gatherings in Huntsville, Ala., and Birmingham, Ala., the site of the SEC Football Media Days in late July.

• ‘OH MY!’
  It’s been quite a ride for the Voice of the Gators, Mick Hubert
  
  “Oh, My!” in 19 years as Voice of the Gators, he has called the most golden of University of Florida sports conquests, two national championships apiece in football and men’s basketball, but Mick Hubert says his greatest and most defining moment at a UF microphone came in September 1993, a game against SEC middleweight Kentucky as Steve Spurrier was building a program that would captivate America.

  Florida’s new football coach, and old (1966) Heisman Trophy quarterback, the controversial and saucy tongued Spurrier commanded the Gators to a first-ever Southeastern Conference championship in 1991, but his operation had not yet become a full brother to NCAA dynasties like Alabama, Notre Dame, Nebraska, Penn State, Michigan, Ohio State, Southern California, Miami, Texas and Oklahoma.

  Florida began its ’93 SEC work in Lexington, quarterbacked by Terry Dean and freshman Danny Wuerffel whose future would deliver the school’s first national championship as well as its second Heisman in 1996. But that warm September evening in Kentucky, the Gators were still searching for building blocks that could lead to plateaus of football conquest that Gator Country was yet to know.

• EMBEDDED IN ENEMY TERRITORY
  Gator Gal is surrounded by fans of Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Tennessee, and Georgia
  
  Hello Fellow Members of Gator County. I am writing to you from Florala, Ala., just across the Florida stateline. I know you are thinking that I am only surrounded by Alabama and Auburn fans, but you can add Louisiana State, Georgia, Tennessee, Ole Miss and Florida State fans as well. It is like waking up in a movie by M. Night Shyamalan, who wrote and directed “The Sixth Sense.” The nightmare of being surrounded by so many anti-Gator fans, some of whom aren’t even educated on what’s going on with their own schools, is non-ending. I know you think you feel the terror and pain I feel every day, but did I happen to mention that some of those enemy voices are in my own family? It’s like being trapped in Hades with only a glass of ice water.

• GOING ‘URBAN’S WAY’
  The cul-de-sac of Champions
  
  Urban Meyer and Billy Donovan were on a roll, with two national titles in the bank as the year 2007 began — a college sports precedent labeled The Gator Slam by fans.

  Following the Gator football team’s victory over Ohio State in January, the Bling Brothers on the Cul-de-Sac of Champions had their bookend national championship trophies in football and basketball. In four months, Donovan would have yet another.

• QB POWER
  Why it is tough to stop Tim Tebow’s Fourth-Down Runs
  
  How many times over the last two seasons of Florida football on third-and-short or even fourth-and-short did you lean next to the fan beside you and say “Here comes the Tebow run?”

  Have you wondered to yourself, “If I know what is coming then how in the world can the defense not know the Tebow run is coming?”

  The play — Quarterback Power (QB Power) — is the signature play of the Tim Tebow era. It combines true power with superb execution to provide the simplest of results: First downs.

  Now to understand the play you must first understand the key parts of its success.

  The origin of this play was likely perfected by the Washington Redskins with John Riggins running from the I formation. When Miami won its last national championship, the Hurricanes bloodied many opponents with their power running game.

• MIAMI’S VICE
  Rivals for 70 years, Miami is back on the Florida football schedule and the Gators hope the Hurricanes’ grip on the series has loosened.
  
  It’s a little different Gainesville than when the Miami Hurricanes came to town last time. The forgotten rival and occasional visitor to the Florida football schedule used to own a piece of Gainesville, but that was before it became the real Titletown USA.

  The Hurricanes do have possession of the War Canoe Trophy. Now that would matter, if only anybody knew what the War Canoe Trophy actually was. You remember Miami — that city where fantasies like CSI, Miami Vice and numerous other TV shows played out.

  You remember Miami – that college football program with five national titles in the last 25 years.

• STAFF CHANGES, PLAYER RETURNS, RECORD ASSAULTS
  What was heaven in 2007 could be great in 2008
  
  There are four new additions to the Florida football staff for 2008. The Gators have a new defensive line coach in Dan McCarney, who moves up I-75 from South Florida. Florida also added cornerbacks coach Vance Bedford, the former secondary coach at Michigan, and running backs coach Kenny Carter, who was running backs coach and recruiting coordinator at Vanderbilt.

  The final addition is a homecoming of sorts. Former Florida running back Terry Jackson returns to campus as Meyer’s new Director of Player and Community Relations.

  McCarney brings 30 years of coaching experience to the Gators program. He has served as an offensive line coach at Iowa in 1977, head coach at Iowa State and defensive line coach for South Florida. McCarney was named Big 12 Coach of the Year in 2004 when his Iowa State Cyclones finished as Big 12 North Co-Champions. He was named the Gators assistant head coach and defensive line coach last spring. Perhaps McCarney’s most impressive recent work was last season with defensive end George Selvie, who became a consensus first team All- American as a Bulls sophomore. Selvie was the national leader in tackles for loss (46.5) and finished second in the nation in sacks with 20. Expect McCarney’s high-intensity attitude to be visible throughout the season on the Gators defensive front.

• COLLEGE FOOTBALL’S HATFIELDS AND MCCOYS
  Florida and Tennessee gridiron rivalry fueled by common threads
  
  If you believe the legend and since there aren’t any players still alive who actually played in the game to verify it anymore, then on the night of Dec. 7, 1928, Captain Bob Neyland — he didn’t become General Neyland until World War II — left the hoses running for several hours at Shields-Watkins Field in Knoxville.

  It was the eve of a historic showdown between the Florida Gators and Neyland’s Tennessee Volunteers, and both the Southern Conference championship and a possible berth in the Rose Bowl were on the line for the undefeated Gators, coached by Charles Bachman. The Gators were the highest scoring team in the nation, led by Clyde “Cannonball” Crabtree, the ambidextrous quarterback, and end Dale Van Sickel, a consensus All-American.

  The Gators were just as good on defense. They had allowed only 31 points all season going into that showdown game with the Vols. They were favored to beat a good Tennessee team (8-0-1) that had only a 0-0 tie with Kentucky standing in the way of an unbeaten, untied season which could have put the Vols in the Rose Bowl. This part is all true.

• MR. COLLEGE FOOTBALL RECALLS THE ‘CRAZIEST SEASON EVER’
  By Tony Barnhardt, CBS Analyst
  
  About this time a year ago I got my first indication that the 2007 college football season was going to be something pretty special.

  I was trying to generate ideas for my blog (Mr. College Football) at the Atlanta Journal- Constitution when I decided to jump on a conference call with Jerry Moore, the head coach at Appalachian State. The Mountaineers were scheduled to play their opener at Michigan in a game that was expected to be little more than a scrimmage for the nationally-ranked Wolverines.

  I asked coach Moore if he had talked to his team about the aura and the mystique of playing in Michigan’s famed “Big House.”

  Coach Moore said, in effect: “We haven’t talked a whole lot about aura. We have talked about what plays we think will work against their defense.” That final, in case you missed it, was Appalachian State 34, Michigan 32.

• KEEPING STREAK ALIVE
  Gators’ volleyball team seeking its 18th straight SEC title under Mary Wise
  
  The only motivation Elyse Cusack needs hangs from the rafters of the volleyball practice facility within the Lemerand Center on the University of Florida campus. Those banners which represent 17 straight Southeastern Conference volleyball championships are both her fear and her inspiration. Fear because she doesn’t want to be part of the team that finally breaks the streak of championships; motivation because she will do everything in her power to keep the streak alive.

  “We try never to focus on the streak but every day when we come to practice we see those banners and you have to think about it,” said Cusack, a junior libero who is widely regarded as the best defensive player in the SEC. “It’s always in the back of our minds because the tradition is up there on the wall and that makes us focus hard and work harder than anyone else because that’s what it takes to win

• IT’S WHAT THEY AREN’T TELLING US
  Buddy Martin’s column
  
  There is nothing like the Great American Sport of guessing. It’s what we do when we really don’t know what we are talking about.

  “Educated” guessing means we know just a little bit — enough to get the names and places correct and maybe glean enough data to justify our opinion.

  You know, sort of like the weathermen.
  
  

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  Prior Gator Country Magazine Issues:

  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November/December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • August 2008