Sports Scene’s Steve Russell Reflects on the Athletic Year for Gator Sports

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) – The 2023/2024 Gator athletic year is almost in the books with just Gator baseball left to be completed. Was it a good year? Certainly, a lot of Gator sports performed well as Gator track won a national title with the women finishing second, Gator softball made it to the College World Series and Gator gymnastics made it to the NCAA finals as well. Several other teams made NCAA tournaments too. And the outlook for Gator Sports for the upcoming year looks good as well.

But you have to admit, with Oklahoma and Texas coming into the league starting in the fall, there will be a new jolt of energy. Those schools are good nationally in a lot of sports, but will they be just as good competing in the SEC as opposed to playing in the Big 12 where the competition overall was probably in most cases not as stiff? But the addition of those two schools should create new rivalries, and most of the schedules have been changed from what they were in years past because they’re coming into the league, and that too should create some new excitement for fans.

At heart, I’m a traditionalist, and change is sometimes hard to accept in athletics, like in life. We grow used to the cherished rivalries that have been nurtured and created over long periods of years and some of those have gone away because of expansions of leagues or from teams leaving leagues. But then new ones grow out of realignment and expansion and we get to see more teams play in different years on a schedule and that is especially true with football with schools and fans getting a chance to see more schools more often.

As we broil in the summer heat, and go through the major league baseball season, the MLB draft, and NFL training camps to get to the fall and college athletics, realize that a new era in the SEC is set to begin along with a new era for the college athlete and fan that includes nil, pay for play, and that lawsuit settlement the NCAA recently agreed to that will allow schools to directly pay players while figuring out how title ix will factor into this and whether or not collectives will continue to exist or become in house entities.

All of this, if you think hard about it, can be hard to swallow all in one sitting and there’s no doubt there will be many more questions to be answered going forward. But the one constant I believe is this…When August 31st rolls around and Gator football is hosting Miami to start the season, no one will be thinking of all those complicated issues…Florida fans will just be cheering on their team to beat the Canes. After all of the changes we have seen, and will undoubtedly still see, it will be nice to finally start a new era in the SEC with a simple game where fans will just root for their team to win.

TRENDING: Gainesville city manager points finger at GRU Authority ahead of budget meeting

Click here to subscribe to our newsletter.

Copyright 2024 WCJB. All rights reserved.