ATLANTA — David Nelson didn’t want to leave the field.
He had just let Florida’s final, last-grasp chance at pulling out a miracle victory slip through his fingers.
Hope had become slimmer and slimmer as time wasted away, and while the game clock read 7:28, this was the end.
Nelson began to walk off the field but couldn’t bring himself to get any closer to the sidelines than the outer hash mark.
He would eventually make it off with some consolation from Tim Tebow, who had just thrown the pass that Nelson dropped on fourth and 3 from the Alabama 13-yard line.
Florida’s offense would not take the field again.
“That’s it,” Nelson said. “We’ve worked for the past year for this moment, and everything we’ve done, everything we’ve trained for, everything we’ve worked for the past year since the Oklahoma game last year was for this moment, and it’s over. We didn’t take care of business.”
There probably couldn’t have been a more shocking finish to the Gators’ 22-game winning streak and their quest for a historic third national title in four years.
This is what the view from the other side looks like, Florida fans.
Remember when Florida celebrated a 41-14 win over Ohio State in the 2007 BCS National Championship Game?
The total domination the Gators exhibited over the Buckeyes came to mind as eerily similar to the way the Crimson Tide did whatever they wanted in the Southeastern Conference Championship Game. The reasons were different — UF was simply more athletic than OSU — but have you ever seen Urban Meyer look so bad with a team that was supposed to be so good?
Remember when UF would not be denied in a 31-20 win over Alabama in last year’s SEC title game?
The Gators outscored the Tide 14-0 in the fourth quarter of the 2008 affair. Tebow delivered a big-time performance on a national stage and seemed to will his team to victory.
The senior quarterback delivered a similar pep talk to his teammates before Saturday’s fourth quarter.
Nothing changed.
By the time it was over, the 2008 SEC champion Florida team outgained the 2009 runner-up Florida by 23 yards inside the Georgia Dome, but UF lost the time of possession battle Saturday by a whopping 19 minutes, likely due to an abandonment of the run game.
Offensive coordinator Steve Addazio, who regrettably was unavailable for comment afterward, called a game in which his two star running backs combined for three carries.
And while the offense continued to struggle in the red zone (zero touchdowns in three trips compared to four in six trips in ’08), there is nothing more puzzling than the defense allowing 490 yards.
But this one wasn’t one player, one coach or even one unit’s fault.
Alabama was just better in every facet of the game, and that was the biggest surprise of all.
“They came out and played tremendous,” Nelson said. “They came out and played like a national champion should play. And we didn’t.”
When Tebow announced that he would return for his senior season, he told fans he wanted to do it all again.
For 12 weeks, the 2009 UF football team seemed to be a team of destiny. It looked poised to put the final seal on Tebow’s promise with a defense that sought its place among the greats in history.
At the end of the day, the ending to the script was very simple, very cut and dry.
The greatest era in Florida football history came to a stumbling end Saturday, and no one really knew why.
That is life on the other side of the coin.
