LEXINGTON, KY — Sometimes truth and legend make strange bedfellows. Take for example, George Gipp, unquestionably one of the greatest players in Notre Dame football history. His accomplishments on the football field are the kind that legends are made of but very few know that he could run, pass and kick. Most people remember him as the guy Ronald Reagan played in the movies, telling Knute Rockne to “win one for The Gipper.”
Gipp never graduated high school and he came to Notre Dame to play baseball, but legend says Rockne saw him kick a football one day and that’s how he became the first All-American football player for the Fighting Irish. He ran for 2,341 yards and passed for 1,789 yards, pretty impressive stats in an era when there wasn’t a whole lot of offensive imagination and the football was about 1.5 times larger than the one used today.
Gipp was a true football legend in his playing days. “The Gipper” is larger than life even 87 years after his death. It is part of Notre Dame lore that Gipp’s last words before his untimely death at age 25 were to tell Coach Knute Rockne to someday “win one for The Gipper.”
Whether those were actually Gipp’s last words is debatable. What isn’t debatable is that eight years after Gipp’s death, Rockne told the Fighting Irish at halftime of a game they were trailing about Gipp’s deathbed wish. Notre Dame rallied to win the game and “The Gipper” legend has become part of the mystique in South Bend, Indiana.
Michael Guilford never accumulated on the field stats that would make him a University of Florida football legend. He was a scout team quarterback that took his role seriously and the Florida Gators benefited from his willingness to do the tough work of portraying each week’s quarterback. I’m stealing a line from Andy Staples of the Tampa Tribune here, but Guilford probably played Troy Smith in practice better than Troy Smith played Troy Smith in the BCS National Championship Game in Glendale, Arizona back in January.
According to Coach Urban Meyer, Guilford was a real asset to the Florida Gators, a valued and valuable member of the team even if he didn’t throw the passes or score the touchdowns in the real games.
Because his death was probably instant when his fast traveling motorcycle hit an Archer Road median a week ago, there are no last words that Meyer can use to immortalize Guilford. The Florida football team will honor him by either wearing a patch on their jerseys or a sticker on their helmets the rest of the 2007 football season and possibly beyond. The kid everybody knew as “Sunshine” was loved by his teammates, who appreciated his contributions to Florida’s football success these last couple of years.
The number 14 Gators are facing eighth-ranked Kentucky Saturday (3:30 p.m., Commonwealth Stadium, CBS-TV) in a Southeastern Conference showdown of no small proportions and I’ve had it suggested to me via phone and email all week that Florida should dedicate this game and this season to the memory of Guilford.
I think that’s a great idea and if the Gators choose to use “Sunshine” as a rallying point for the rest of the season, I hope they will not see this necessarily as a reason to win one game or to win the rest of the games on the schedule. Certainly, we all hope the Gators do that, but I think it would be a disservice to Michael Guilford if all that he stood for was a reason to win some football games.
This is the SEC. That alone should be all the motivation the Gators need Saturday or any other Saturday the rest of this or any football season. This is the toughest football conference in America, the place where the best in college football is on display every single weekend during the fall months. Since 1992, there have been five national championships won by four SEC teams — Alabama 1992, Florida 1996, Tennessee 1998, LSU 2003, Florida 2006. There isn’t another conference in the country good enough to make a statement like that.
This is a conference so good that the motivation to win is always in place.
But, it is important to honor Guilford and it is important for him to be a catalyst for the Florida football team and here’s how it should be done.
Michael Guilford played on the scout team which means he played for the love of the game. He didn’t have a scholarship at Florida although at some point you know Urban Meyer would have given him one. Meyer loves to reward walkons that show the guys who are getting everything for free what the game is all about.
Often the measure that separates mediocre from good and good from excellent is that love of the game. The special players have it. They are the guys that would pay their way to school just for a chance to compete even if all they could do is practice with the guys that actually play in the real games.
At the college level it goes a step beyond just loving the game. It’s also about loving your team, in this case the Florida Gators. It’s about loving the Gators so much that you would play for free just to have that chance to run out of the tunnel on Saturdays when 90,000 screaming, raving lunatics in orange and blue erupt and for the next four hours turn The Swamp into the nation’s largest temporary asylum for the truly insane. The guys that really love the game with all their heart are the ones that love their team with every ounce of passion they can summon up and the rush they get from that crowd tells them they would pay their own way just for that opportunity to feel the electricity.
Michael Guilford, by all accounts, loved that adrenaline rush that he got when he put on his Florida uniform and ran through the tunnel. All the hard hits he took during the week, all the sweat, all the blood, all the sacrifice and all the times he wondered if he was about to collapse because his body was too tired and too beaten couldn’t trump that feeling when the crowd roared.
And if that adrenaline rush was #1 then #1A was the feeling he got when he watched those first team guys do their job the right way because the guys on the scout team had done their part during the week of practice.
Win or lose on Saturday, Michael Guilford was back on the practice field every Monday putting everything he had into his goal of helping the Florida Gators get better.
That’s what you call love of the game. That’s what you call love of the Florida Gators.
To pin these last six games on Guilford in terms of wins and losses would cheapen everything that Guilford stood for. Instead of saying “win this one for Sunshine” here’s a better idea.
Play every single play as hard as you can. Why? Because that’s the way the kid that loved the game with an indescribable passion did it. Because that’s the way it should be done.
Love the game so much that you’ll do anything to make the team better. If that means playing on the scout team and simulating an opponent, do it for the love of the game. Do it for the love of the Gators.
Love the game so much that you won’t care who scores the touchdown as long as it’s a Gator doing the scoring. Love the game so much that you’ll hold that block an extra split second so Tim Tebow can get his pass off. Love the game so much that you’ll hold onto the ball when you cross the middle even though you know the free safety is going to unload on you. Love the game so much that you’ll bite, scratch, claw and punch your way to the bottom of the pile to get that loose ball. Love the game so much that you’ll take on the double team in the offensive line so that Brandon Spikes can make the tackle. Love the game so much that you’ll dive for the extra inch for a first down. Love the game so much that you’ll keep the legs pushing so that your opponent can’t get to the first down marker.
That’s the way to honor “Sunshine.” Love the game. Love the Gators. If the Gators honor “Sunshine” by loving the game so much that they will play it with the same heart and determination and love that he had, then the wins and losses will take care of themselves.
That’s the right way to do it. Do it that way and it won’t take a phony legend to keep the memory of “Sunshine” alive.
FEARLESS FORECAST: The Gators and the Wildcats will play a very tight first half, but in the second half, Florida’s superior offensive line will punch enough holes in the Kentucky front seven that the Wildcats can’t stop the Gators from driving the ball. And, by controlling the ball and pounding away, the Gators will play some defense with their offense. The young defense will have fresh legs in the fourth quarter and make some stops of their own.
I like it Florida 37, Kentucky 20.