THE GAME

By ROBBIE ANDREU
Sun sports writer

Urban Meyer hopes to keep his team motivated. [ DOUG FINGER/ The Gainesville Sun ]

Steve Spurrier will be walking the opposing sideline today at The Swamp. Urban Meyer hopes to keep his team motivated.

The trip to Columbia, S.C., a year ago had many painful and defining moments for the Florida football team. None more than the final act.

Following a long and silent flight back to Gainesville, the team plane came to a rest on the tarmac. That's when UF coach Urban Meyer ordered everyone off the plane except the players. For the next 30 minutes, an emotional (and sometimes angry) Meyer had a heart-to-heart talk with his players about selfishness and commitment.

He was brutally honest at times.
"It wasn't fun," senior center Steve Rissler said. "It's something you'd never want to go through. Everyone was quiet. We're going to try and stay away from those kind of meetings."

A few hours earlier, the Gators had seemed almost lifeless in a 30-22 loss to Steve Spurrier and the Gamecocks in a defeat that turned out to cost Florida the SEC's Eastern Division title.

The loss was the third devastating SEC road loss in Meyer's first season and the head coach had doubts about the commitment of some of his players. He questioned whether they were buying into his program and the team-over-everything-else mentality he'd brought to Florida from Utah.

"It was awful. I can't think of a worse moment than that," Meyer said earlier this week. "We went through a lot last year. There were a lot of things going on. There were a lot of interesting things being said that night. We became a better team. I would say that was the beginning of the University of Florida becoming somewhat unselfish."

Whatever was said in that meeting had an impact.

Florida has been a different team since.
Two weeks after the meeting, the Gators put together their most impressive team performance of the season in a 34-7 victory over arch-rival Florida State. They followed up with a victory over Iowa in the Outback Bowl to finish 9-3 in Meyer's first season.

Now, a year after the meeting on the plane, the Gators are 8-1, Eastern Division champions and remain alive in the national title hunt.

Since the painful loss to the Gamecocks, Florida has won 10 of 11 games.

"That woke a lot of guys up," defensive tackle Clint McMillan said of the loss and subsequent meeting on the plane. "We were just eight points away from the SEC Championship Game. That's a feeling nobody ever wants to have on this team again. We were so close and we lost it."

The Gators weren't good enough to close the deal last November.

Florida stumbled around and fell to the Gamecocks in an early afternoon game in Columbia. The loss became even worse later that night when Auburn beat Georgia in Athens. Had the Gators won earlier in the day, they would have been celebrating a division championship.

Instead, they were left feeling numb by the defeat and the meeting that had followed.

"It hurt," junior middle linebacker Brandon Siler said. "The team meeting didn't hurt as much as just losing that game. That hurt big time. We saw our dream get away from us in a game we know we could have won."

Siler said the Gators emerged from the losing weekend in Columbia a better team. A team that a year later would win the division title.

"Last year, right around the Florida State game (which followed the loss to USC), you could see the difference just in the way people walked and their attitude and the way they were watching film and studying the game," Siler said. "There was a different tempo in practice. It wasn't people asking, 'How long do we have left?' It was, 'Didn't practice go by fast today.' "

Siler said that approach, that attitude, carried over to this season, where Florida has been a much different team than a year ago.

The Gators say they're eager to show South Carolina (and Spurrier) just how different they are from the team that rolled over so easily in Columbia a year ago.

"We're looking forward to playing South Carolina this year," Rissler said. "We're a different team now. We started playing a lot better football after that game last year.

"We knew we let one get away. We're going to try and avoid that this time. We're going to be really motivated this week playing South Carolina."

The memory of the meeting on the plane is part of the motivation, Rissler said.

"Coach Meyer was pretty upset," Rissler said. "I don't think any of us were happy with it. It sucked. We don't ever want to have another meeting like that."

Robbie Andreu can be reached at 352-374-5022 or andreur@gvillesun.com