Moving the Chains: Gator Tales

By Scott Ludwig, [email protected]

Cindy and I are going away for a few days.  We’ll begin with a concert on Friday night at the Performing Arts Center in Walhalla, South Carolina.  

We go there often, and we’ve always stayed at a Hampton Inn in Seneca, which is located about 10 miles from the venue.  Seneca is even closer to Clemson, where there will be a football game Saturday against North Carolina.  

When we tried to make reservations, there weren’t any available rooms.  The entire hotel was sold out – as it always is, we were told – for game weekend.  Now for the punch line: had there been any rooms, they would have gone for $900 a night.  

Again, this was for a room at a Hampton Inn.  I realize they offer a free breakfast, but I thought $900 was a little steep.  Besides, have you seen Clemson play this year?  

My point, and I do have one, is that I won’t get to see much live college football action on Saturday.  I’ll record a few games to watch when I get back home and promise to include some of those highlights next week.

But for now, this is all I’ve got.  It’s a complete history of my up-close-and-personal encounters with some of the more famous sports personalities from my alma mater, the University of Florida.  

I’ll begin with golf.  

I tried out for the golf team my freshman year in college.  The year was 1973, which unfortunately was also the year future PGA player Andy Bean was a sophomore on the team.  I played in the foursome right behind him for one of the rounds during team tryouts.  

Here is a transcript of our entire conversation.  It took pace right after Bean hit his tee shot on the first hole; 280 yards straight down the middle of the fairway:

Me: Wow!  Great shot!

Andy Bean: Anyone see my tee?    

In all probability he probably wasn’t talking directly to me.  But he very well could have been.  Guess we’ll never know for sure.

Let’s switch over to basketball.

In 2018 the SEC held its annual Football Media Days in Atlanta’s Centennial Park.  Cindy and I accidentally bumped into former Gator basketball player Patric Young, although it’s debatable whether or not you can ‘accidentally’ bump into anyone who is 6’10”.  I guess we weren’t paying attention.  Regardless, we took the opportunity to ask him for a photo.  Once again, the entire conversation:

Me: Uhmmm …

Cindy: Could we get a photo with you?

Patric: Sure.  

Cindy: We sure enjoyed watching you play basketball in college, didn’t we?

Me: Uhmmm… 

Patric: Uhmmm … thanks.   

Now let’s move on to football.  For these I was a little more verbose.

Emmitt Smith was one of the featured speakers at a work conference in Chicago I attended.  After his presentation, he walked right by our table.  That’s when this scintillating and engaging conversation between the two of us took place:

Me: Go Gators!

Emmitt: Go Gators!

The chemistry we shared in that moment was absolutely electric.  

Over the years I had the good fortune to speak with three of the football team’s head coaches when they spoke to the Atlanta Gator Club: Urban Meyer, Will Muschamp, and Jim McElwain.  (Technically, Cindy and I sprung for the expensive tickets each time so we could talk to them afterwards and get their autographs.)

I’ll spare you the details of our conversations other than to tell you I was a little more articulate than I was with Bean, Young, and Smith (sounds like a law firm).  I’ll dispense with the dialogue because what I want to address are the autographs.  More specifically, the accompanying messages they wrote.

I asked each of them to sign the inside cover of my copy of a book published in 2002, Go Gators! 

Meyer was the first to sign (2007, the year between his two National Championships).  He simply wrote Go Gators! 

Muschamp took over as coach after Meyer left and was next to sign (2011).  He rubbed his hand over his predecessor’s name – for luck, he said – and wrote Go Gators! as well.   That luck ran out in 2014 when he was fired.  

Then McElwain became the head coach and signed next (2015).  When he wrote Chomp Chomp instead of Go Gators! I knew he wouldn’t be in Gainesville very long.  He was fired in his third year.  

I know what you’re thinking.  Hasn’t he spoken with any of the players?         

First, I already mentioned the bond between me and Emmitt Smith.  If that’s not enough, then how about this conversation with A FORMER HEISMAN TROPHY RECIPIENT?

That’s right; I spoke to Danny Wuerffel, the recipient of award in 1996.  

Cindy and I were at an alumni gathering in 2013 that included both Wuerffel and Muschamp.  I took along my  copy of a 1996 Sports Illustrated with Wuerffel on the cover.  The photo was taken during the National Championship game they won against Florida State.  I had it with me just in case I had the opportunity to ask him to sign it.

When I had the chance, I approached Wuerffel and said that I’d been carrying the magazine with me since 1996 (which had been 17 years ago) just in case he and I ever crossed paths.  

I thought it was pretty clever.  He apparently thought otherwise.  Here is his reply in its entirety.  

Wueffel: Do you have a pen?  

He eventually signed the cover.  After I found a pen, of course.  

I had my revenge a couple of years later when we took our grandson to the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.  Wuerffel was there that day speaking to visitors and posing for photographs.    

When it was our grandson’s turn to meet Wuerffel, we sat him down next to Wuerffel and introduced him as a former Gator quarterback who’d won both the Heisman trophy and a National Championship.  

Wuerffel tried to strike up a conversation with him.  It went like this:

Wuerrfel:  Hi, young man.  I like your Gator jacket.  What’s your name?

Krischan:  Do you have any snacks?