This is the game we learn something about the Florida Gators. They’ve gone through the toughest stretch any Gator team has had in the Urban Meyer era with three losses in their last four games, and now Vanderbilt comes to town (12:30 p.m., Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, Lincoln Financial TV) looking to do something that hasn’t been done since 1982. That was the last time Vanderbilt posted a winning season and went to a bowl game.
Vandy is 5-3, needing only one win to become bowl eligible and feeling very capable of beating a Florida team that gave up 107 points in three games in October. With four games to go and just one win for bowl-eligibility and two for a winning season, Vanderbilt is a dangerous, motivated opponent. The Gators (5-3, 3-2 SEC East) have won the last 19 games against the Commodores dating back to a 31-29 loss in 1982 when Charley Pell coached the Gators.
This is a wounded Florida team that desperately needs some good things to happen. Florida has plenty to play for — winning the SEC East Division championship isn’t completely out of the question — but injuries and a lack of experience have taken quite a toll over the last month. Now the Gators are facing real adversity and how they handle it will determine the rest of the season. A win would go a long way toward righting a listing ship. A loss and the Gators are in grave danger of seeing a season spiral out of control.
Back in 1962, the Gators were also in dire circumstances. A 17-0 loss to eighth-ranked Georgia Tech and a 28-21 loss to Duke in which they blew a 21-0 halftime lead had the team teetering on the verge of total collapse. Texas A&M was coming to town and the Aggies had a very good football team that year. On Thursday night, October 11, Florida’s defensive coordinator Gene Ellenson sensed the need to pull this team together. A genuine war hero as a young officer under General Patton’s command during World War II, Coach Ellenson knew adverse conditions so he used his war experience to pen a letter to the Gators, hoping it would cause the Gators to a man to rally together to overcome adversity.
This is Gene Ellenson’s letter to the Gators:
Dear _____ :
It’s late at night. The offices are all quiet and everyone has finally gone home. Once again my thoughts turn to you all.
The reason I feel I have something to say to you is because what need now more than anything else are a little guidance and maybe a little starch for your backbone. You are still youngsters and unknowingly, you have not steeled yourselves for the demanding task of 60 full minutes of exertion required to master a determined opponent. This sort of exertion takes two kinds of hardness. Physical, which is why you are pushed hard in practice-and mental, which comes only from having to meet adversity and whipping it.
Now all of us have adversity-different kinds maybe-but adversity. Just how we meet these troubles determines how solid a foundation we are building our life on; and just how many of you stand together to face our team adversity will determine how solid a foundation our team has built for the rest of the season.
No one cruises along without problems. It isn’t easy to earn your way through college on football scholarship. It isn’t easy to do what is expected of you by the academic and the athletic. It isn’t easy to remain fighting when others are curling around you or when your opponent seems to be getting stronger while you seem to be getting weaker. It isn’t easy to continue good work when others don’t appreciate what you’re doing. It isn’t easy to go hard when bedeviled by aches, pains and muscle sprains. It isn’t easy to rise up when you are down. The pure facts of life are that nothing is easy. You only get what you earn and there isn’t such a thing as “something for nothing.” When you truly realize this — then and only then will you begin to whip your adversities.
If you’ll bear with a little story, I’ll try to prove my point. One midnight, January 14, l945, six pitiful American soldiers were hanging onto a small piece of high ground in a forest somewhere near Bastone, Belgium. This high ground had been the objective of an attack launched by 1,000 men that morning. Only these six made it. The others had been turned back, wounded, lost or killed in action. These grimy, cruddy six men were all that were left of a magnificent thrust of 1,000 men. They hadn’t had any sleep other than catnaps for over 72 hours. The weather was cold enough to freeze the water in their canteens. They had no entrenching tools, no radio, no food — only ammunition and adversity. Twice a good-sized counter attack had been launched by the enemy, only to be beaten back because of the dark and some pretty fair grenade heaving.
The rest of the time there were incessant mortars falling in the general area and the trees made for dreaded tree bursts, which scatter shrapnel like buckshot. The attackers were beginning to sense the location of the six defenders. Then things began to happen. First, a sergeant had a chunk of shrapnel tear into his hip. Then a corporal went into shock and started sobbing.
After more than six hours of the constant mortar barrage and two close counter attacks, and no food since maybe the day before yesterday, this was some first-class adversity. Then another counter attack, this one making it to the small position. Hand-to-hand fighting is a routine military expression. I have not the imagination to tell you what this is really like. A man standing up to fight with a shattered hip bone, saliva frothing at his mouth, gouging, lashing with a bayonet, even strangling with his bare hands. The lonesome five fought (the corporal was out of his mind) until the attackers quit.
Then the mortars began again. All this time the route to the rear lay open, but never did this little group take the road back. As early dawn a full company of airborne troopers relieved this tiny force. It still wasn’t quite light yet. One of the group, a lieutenant, picked up the sergeant with the broken hip and carried him like a baby. The other led the incoherent corporal like a dog on a leash. The other two of the gallant six lay dead in the snow. It took hours for this strange little group to get back to where they had started from 24 hours earlier. They were like ghosts returning. The lieutenant and one remaining healthy sergeant, after 10 hours of sleep and a hot meal, were sent on a mission 12 miles behind the German lines and helped make the link that closed the Bulge.
Today, two of the faithful six lay in Belgium graves, one is a career army man, and one is a permanent resident of the army hospital for the insane in Texas, one is a stiff-legged repairman in Ohio, and one is an assistant football coach at the University of Florida.
This story is no documentary or self-indulgence. It was told to you only to show you that whatever you find adverse now, others before you have had as bad or worse and still hung on to do the job. Many of you are made of exactly the same stuff as the six men in the story, yet you haven’t pooled your collective guts to present a united fight for a full 60 minutes. Your egos are a little shook-so what? Nothing good can come from moping about it. Cheer up and stand up. Fight an honest fight, square off in front of your particular adversity and whip it. You’ll be a better man for it, and the next adversity won’t be so tough. Breaking training now is complete failure to meet your problems. Quitting the first time is the hardest — it gets easier the second time and so forth.
I’d like to see a glint in your eye Saturday about 2 p.m. with some real depth to it-not just a little lip service-not just a couple of weak hurrahs and down the drain again, but some real steel-some real backbone and 60 full fighting minutes. Then and only then will you be on the road to becoming a real man. The kind you like to see when you shave every morning.
As in most letters, I’d like to close by wishing you well and leave you with this one thought. “Self-pity is a roommate with cowardice.” Stay away from feeling sorry for yourself. The wins and losses aren’t nearly as important as what kind of man you become. I hope I’ve given you something to think about-and remember, somebody up there still loves you.
Sincerely,
Gene Ellenson
The day after they read that letter, the Gators took the field and totally dominated Texas A&M, 42-6. The Gators grew up that day and they kept on growing the rest of the season. The Gators would go on to beat then unbeaten and fifth-ranked Auburn and they beat Penn State, ranked ninth in the nation and winner of the Lambert Trophy as the number one team in the East, in the Gator Bowl to cap a marvelous turnaround of a season that could have gone totally sour.
The difference in a season that could have gone bad and a season that finished strong was the way the Gators to a man reacted to Gene Ellenson’s letter. They tackled their adversity with a vengeance and finished that season strong.
The Gators of 2007 can salvage a season that began with so much promise if they win this Homecoming encounter with Vanderbilt. I don’t know what motivational ploy that Coach Urban Meyer will use to get the Gators ready for this game, but I hope that it is something that makes the team realize that tough times don’t last but tough teams do. There is a lot to play for in this last month of the season. Consider this a four-game season that starts with Vanderbilt.
FEARLESS FORECAST: I know the defense has not played well in a month and with all the injuries on that side of the ball plus Tim Tebow playing with a badly bruised shoulder, there are a lot of negatives going against the Gators. I believe the Gators are going to get a huge boost from a Homecoming crowd in The Swamp that is going to do its part and I have a feeling that the Florida defense begins the road toward maturity even with all the injuries and adversity.
I like Gators in this one, 31-21.