No. 1 was never really in doubt.
When the Gainesville Sun wrapped up its Top 30 countdown from Florida’s 1996 national championship team, Danny Wuerffel landed where he belonged at the top. The quarterback drove a Florida offense that was impossible to keep quiet, powering the nation’s best attack at 503.9 yards per game and helping the Gators set an SEC scoring mark that still stands at 47.0 points per game.
The season also belonged to Wuerffel individually. He won the Heisman Trophy in 1996 and threw for 3,931 yards and 42 touchdowns in 13 starts, guiding Florida to the first national title in school history nearly 30 years ago.
“It is hard to believe, and then every now and then I'll look in the mirror and then I'll recognize that we're 30 years away,” Wuerffel told The Sun. “Time is a very interesting thing, but in some ways, it feels like it was three lifetimes ago - and in some ways, it feels like it was three weeks ago.”
For Wuerffel, the season’s turning point came after Florida’s 24-21 loss at rival Florida State on Nov. 30, a defeat that dropped the Gators to No. 4 in all major polls. He said the team’s leadership kept the group from unraveling.
“When you look at Lawrence Wright and James Bates, myself and many others, after we lost that game to Florida State it was really a pivotal moment, and we could have just tucked our heads down and went on.” Wuerffel said. “Instead, we could control one thing, and that was playing Alabama.”
Florida did exactly that, beating Alabama 45-30 in the SEC title game. Then Texas upset No.
3 Nebraska in the Big 12 title game, opening the door for a Florida-Florida State rematch in the Sugar Bowl. Wuerffel responded with 306 passing yards and three touchdowns in New Orleans, and the Gators rolled past the Seminoles 52-20 to finish the job.
“The leadership of our team through that time is really what finalized the magic that allowed that to happen,” Wuerffel said.
After Florida, Wuerffel was chosen in the fourth round of the 1997 NFL Draft by the New Orleans Saints and spent six seasons in the NFL and NFL Europe. His impact, though, reached far beyond football.
In the early 2000s, he started Desire Street Ministries, a nonprofit based in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward that offered programs and aid in one of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Hurricane Katrina badly damaged the ministry in 2005, but Wuerffel came back to help with recovery efforts.
He later moved Desire Street Ministries to Atlanta and expanded its work to inner-city areas across the U.S. South.
Wuerffel also remains tied to Florida’s present, serving on the search committee that helped bring in new UF coach Jon Sumrall.
Now 52, he still carries the relationships from that era close, along with the bronze tribute outside The Swamp, where his statue stands with mentor Steve Spurrier and fellow Heisman winner Tim Tebow.
“There’s just memories that you can’t take away and just grateful for that group,” Wuerffel said. “Coach Spurrier used to tell us you will have a lot of memories as a football player, but the ones you will never forget is if you can ever win a championship, and he was right.”
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