Florida’s place in the 2000s still carries weight, even with the program now trying to climb back into the national championship picture under new head coach Jon Sumrall. The Gators are expected to be ranked this season, but they are not being treated like a preseason title favorite. Sumrall will need time to recruit and build the roster his way before Florida is ready to chase a fourth national championship.
That return to the top starts with remembering how high the program once sat. Early in his time at Florida, Sumrall invited former head coaches Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer to visit the program and coaching staff this spring, a clear nod to the standard they helped establish. Spurrier helped turn Florida into a real football power, and Meyer pushed it even further with two national championships during the 2000s.
That decade is now getting fresh attention, thanks to CBS Sports’ Chip Patterson, who named Florida the “ greatest college football team” of the 2000s. Patterson placed the Gators just ahead of LSU, Texas, and Oklahoma in his ranking of the first decade of the century.
“And it really is in that Florida-LSU debate that we find ourselves trying to identify one team as the decade's best,” Patterson wrote. “Nick Saban got things started in Baton Rouge, and Les Miles added another ring in 2007, and we have given credit for a program getting multiple titles under different coaches in the same decade.
“But to truly extend the parameters to the end of the decade, the Gators can claim Steve Spurrier's last SEC Championship from 2000 and carry that success through two-time champion Tim Tebow, who led the Gators to No. 3 overall with a 13-1 record in 2009. With two national championships, three conference championships, and five SEC Championship Game appearances in a decade when the league ascended to the top of the sport, Florida gets to take the honor as the team of the decade.”
Patterson also pointed to USC and Miami as major powers from that era, while noting that both programs took a “slight step back” late in the decade. Miami’s decline came earlier than USC’s.
Still, the USC case is a strong one if consistency is the standard. Florida’s own early-2000s stretch under Zook included a 23-14 run from 2002 to 2004, while USC rolled to a 97-19 record under Pete Carroll from 2001 to 2009. The Trojans’ last national title came in 2004, and they also reached the BCS national championship game in 2005, where they lost a classic to Vince Young and Texas late in the fourth quarter.
USC stayed in the title mix in 2006, 2007, and 2008, dropping only five games across those three seasons. Then came 2009, when the Trojans slipped to 9-4 and fell off the map.
It’s hard not to wonder what would have happened if USC and Florida had met for the national championship while Meyer was still in Gainesville. A Carroll-Meyer title game would have been the kind of matchup that settled a lot of arguments in one night. Even without that showdown, Florida’s edge in the back half of the decade is clear.
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