Anyone who wanted something truly interesting about the 2006-2009 Florida Gators will have to go elsewhere.
As a little kid growing up in Gainesville, FL, the Florida Gators basically ran the town. McDonalds were painted orange and blue, homecoming parades meant an entire family gathering, and that meant getting haircuts in the same barbershop as Jeff Demps and Chris Rainey.
I’ve always been intrigued by those Gator teams from 2006-2010, the ones that dominated college football but also got away with everything under the sun. My first idea for a Masters project was an investigative story about those teams and the price of making them gods of a small college town in North Central Florida. When ‘Swamp Kings’ was announced, I was super excited to see if we got any of the details and how those things got swept under the rug.
Four episodes later, and not a damn thing came from it.
The ‘Swamp Kings’ documentary serves one purpose, and one purpose only: to stroke the ego of Urban Meyer and attempt to absolve him of anything he did wrong during his time as head coach of the Gators. The documentary barely touches on the crimes some of the Gator players committed during their time on campus, and even when they did (a 5-7 minute part during episode 3), it was met with a “what was I supposed to do” type of response from Urban Meyer, who, as we all know, did next to nothing to curb this entire thing. Even outside of Meyer, there weren’t any voices that weren’t associated with football to discuss what was going on in the program. Hell, Paul Finebaum was the most objective person in the show when it came time for that discussion. The documentary really could’ve used some outside voices in that section.
In addition, the documentary leaves out many crucial aspects of why that UF team was so polarizing, mainly through people that weren’t discussed at all. Namely, Aaron Hernandez. The former Gator and New England Patriot tight end was involved in many issues at Florida, including being questioned in a shooting that happened in 2007. They didn’t talk about that on the documentary; must’ve slipped their mind. Hernandez gets brought up sparingly in this documentary. He was mentioned once when discussing the 2007 recruiting class — which featured Cam Newton (didn’t talk about why he left though) and the Pouncey Twins (who were not featured) — and when former Gator QB Tim Tebow talked about an altercation he and Hernandez got into with some other people at a bar, and Tebow says he could’ve done more to stop it.
The 2007 recruiting class is a crucial turning point in the history of that Gator football team. So many talented players, but so many had off field issues that, like the rest of the city did at the time, the documentary swept under the rug to keep Urban Meyer’s image pristine. Chalking that all up to “boys will be boys” and absolving Meyer of all of it makes the entire thing seem grimy.
Furthermore, the documentary just acts like 2010 never happened. Oh, if you don’t know what happened to Florida in 2010, here goes:
Urban steps down, then comes back a few weeks later
Tebow, LB Brandon Spikes and RB Brandon James all leave for the NFL along with most of the 2007 recruiting class
Chris Rainey allegedly threatened to kill his girlfriend. He was charged with aggravated stalking, but those charges were later dropped.
Meyer gets into a confrontation with reporter Jeremy Fowler at practice
The Gators go 8-5, Meyer leaves citing “spending time with family”, goes to Ohio State in 2011
The Auburn Tigers win the national title … with Cam Newton at QB, who won the Heisman
Yeah, a very crucial point in the story of the 2006-2010 Gator team is the downfall and why we’re at this point now, but the documentary simply refuses to go there, often choosing to reminisce about the glory days instead of actually doing investigative work.
It’s really a shame, because there’s so many more lives that were impacted by that Gator team, but all they choose to do is remember the heyday.
So if you want to watch a documentary about Tim Tebow’s “I Promise” speech, or about Brandon Spikes’ hit on Knowshown Moreno in the 2008 Florida-Georgia game, this is the documentary for you. If you want the actual reason why people were excited to see this documentary, you’ll have to look somewhere else.
