Bianchi: Goodbye and good riddance, Billy Ball — Sumrall’s Gators rout FAU in fun Swamp debut

GAINESVILLE — “Our long national nightmare is over.”

Gerald Ford famously uttered those words in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace and Ford inherited a nation desperate for a fresh start.

Read more Philo, Baugh lead explosive Gators past FAU in Sumrall’s record-setting debut 66-21

OK, so maybe replacing Billy Napier with Jon Sumrall isn’t quite Watergate.

But judging by the mood inside a sold-out Swamp on Saturday night, Gator Nation was ready to celebrate Liberation Day, too.

Florida blew out FAU 66-21 in Sumrall’s inaugural game and scored more points than a UF team ever has in a head coach’s debut, but this didn’t feel like another season opener against an overmatched opponent.

After four years of Napier, it felt like an exorcism.

The crowd of 90,295 – the fifth-largest opening day crowd in school history – was loud. The sidelines were alive. The offense had juice. The head coach had a pulse.

Florida football felt like Florida football again.

That alone was worth celebrating.

“Running out of the tunnel for the first time exceeded my expectations and I had pretty high expectations,” Sumrall said of the greeting he and his team received when they sprinted onto the field before kickoff. “It was exhilarating. The stadium was on fire.”

Meanwhile, Napier made his coaching debut at James Madison on Saturday, and – no joke – the Dukes were penalized 15 yards before the game even started. Napier wasn’t just a losing coach at Florida. He was a boring coach, which at UF might be the more unforgivable sin. His news conferences often sounded like quarterly earnings calls. If Napier had been captain of the Titanic, he would have calmly explained that the organization was experiencing some temporary buoyancy challenges.

Sumrall?

He probably would have punched the iceberg and broken it up into cubes.

That’s the difference Gator fans have embraced since Sumrall arrived from Tulane preaching urgency, toughness and accountability. Saturday night, they finally got to see whether all that talk translated to football.

It did.

The most anticipated debut besides Sumrall belonged to quarterback Aaron Philo, operating new offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner’s system to near perfection. Philo completed 16-of-21 passes for 275 yards and three touchdowns. He launched a perfectly placed 63-yard bomb to TJ Abrams to set up another score..

More important than the numbers was the feeling. Florida played offense with pace, aggression and explosiveness. Philo’s passing was precision; Jadan Baugh’s running (14 carries, 160 yards and three TDs) was violent and explosive. Vernell Brown’s receiving (six catches for 117 yards and a touchdown) was electric.

There was purpose in the offense. There was creativity. There was – dare we say it? – fun. The Gators finished with a whopping 624 yards of total offense.

“I want our guys to have fun out there,” Sumrall said of the offensive performance. “When you’re growing up as a kid, you never said, ‘I want to go work football today.’ You always said, ‘I want to go play football today.’ Now that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take hard work, but the work should be fun, competing is fun and making plays is fun.”

Faulkner came to Gainesville after constructing one of America’s most productive offenses at Georgia Tech, which averaged 460 yards per game last season. Two nights before his Florida debut, we received an interesting little reminder of Faulkner’s value when Georgia Tech, now operating without him, managed just 13 points in a 14-13 upset loss to what is expected to be a bad Colorado team.

Coincidence?

Maybe.

But after four years when Florida’s offense too often resembled a three-hour hostage negotiation, Gator fans aren’t going to apologize for enjoying competence.

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There was even a new symbol on Florida Field for this new era: the XRP cryptocurrency logo, plastered on each 25-yard line as part of Florida’s multiyear partnership with Ripple (no, not that deliciously cheap sweet wine of yesteryear) The agreement is reportedly worth $5 million annually.

Only in modern college football could a university celebrate tradition by putting cryptocurrency logos on Steve Spurrier-Florida Field. Then again, considering Florida’s upcoming $1.45 billion stadium renovation and the escalating cost of big-time college athletics, maybe the Gators ought to paint a Venmo QR code in the end zone, too.

Whatever it takes.

Florida is betting enormous money on the football program becoming nationally relevant again, and Saturday night was the first installment.

And perhaps Gator Nation should also send Lane Kiffin a thank-you card.

Remember when Florida fans were devastated because Kiffin chose LSU and the Gators ended up with Sumrall? Suddenly, that rejection is looking increasingly like the football equivalent of being stood up at the altar and later discovering your runaway bride was wanted in three states.

Kiffin has quickly become college football’s chief agent of chaos. His attempt at LSU to add two of his former Ole Miss players after their brief NFL stints has helped ignite an extraordinary legal battle involving LSU, the SEC, a state judge and a federal court. The SEC actually sued LSU and Kiffin over the issue, and LSU ultimately left both players off its opening-game roster Saturday.

Florida wanted the Lane Train.

Maybe it dodged the Lane Lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Sumrall has spent his first nine months selling something considerably less complicated: toughness, enthusiasm, accountability and belief. Of course, beating Florida Atlantic proves almost nothing about whether Sumrall will ultimately succeed.

The SEC is coming.

Georgia is coming.

There will be Saturdays when motivational speeches won’t matter, the offense won’t hum and Florida will have to beat teams with just as much talent; if not more.

Sumrall knows that.

“The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step,” he said. “This was step one.”

In other words, Saturday night wasn’t really about proving Florida is back.

It was about proving Florida could feel alive again.

For four years, Gator Nation kept waiting for Napier’s process to produce something resembling progress. Instead, the program became increasingly joyless, predictable and irrelevant.

Saturday night, the Swamp shook again.

The offense entertained again.

The fans believed again.

And the new coach didn’t sound like somebody presenting PowerPoint slides to the board of directors.

Jon Sumrall’s first victory won’t rank among the most important wins in Florida history, but perhaps it represented something more basic:

A beginning.

Gerald Ford’s declaration came after America survived Watergate.

The Gators merely survived four years of bad, boring football.

Either way, the message Saturday night sounded pretty much the same:

The long Napier nightmare is finally over.

Email me at [email protected]. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my radio show “Game On” every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen.

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