Gainesville enthusiastically greeted the start of another football season yesterday. The morning rains gave way and once again we were treated to Gator football. The team struggled in some areas but still came away with a 21 point victory and enough positives to leave us with hope for a successful season.

Each year as we assemble for the opening game we take stock of the changes, but we also take comfort in the sameness we see in the traditions that we share season after season. These changes and traditions make each new year exciting and mysterious yet familiar and comfortable. New players on a team full of promise and talent give us hope for a great season and stir our anticipation. Tailgating and getting to see more familiar faces of friends we have shared these games with for years let us know that when we are together at UF we are home. There were no great upheavals in Gainesville itself to mar the start of the season; a few racquetball courts gone, no pass-outs from the games and all the students look a year younger than they did this time last season, but nothing much has really changed. Similar minor alterations occur every year – even the changes are deceptive in their a familiar consistency.

My family and my best friend’s family went to the first game together as we often have over the last ten years. It comes at a time when getting together is easier; the kids aren’t buried by school projects or Sunday school obligations, the weather is usually nice and it serves as an apt event for the closing of summer. My friend Fred and I have known each other since before we came to the University of Florida. While at UF we lived in several apartments and houses together; played endless pickup games in the old Florida gym and at Westside courts; drank an ocean of beer and ate a ranch worth of wings. We introduced each other to our respective wives and share many, many Gator memories. As we took a pre-game walk around campus we laughed and talked while looking at the special places where the four of us lived and studied, triumphed and struggled, during our under-grad days. We walked past my wife’s old Murphree dorm room, around the Hub and under the "french fries" we waved at the web cam at Turlington (it’ll always be the GPA to us) and chuckled as our daughters critiqued the "sculpture" encircled by benches in front of the building. We joked about the sturdiness of Century Tower and pointed out to our children in the distance the upper floors of Shands from Newell Drive, hazy in the humid summer air. It’s our literal stroll down memory lane, where we grew from children to adults and learned ever so very much; I’m sure more outside the classrooms than in them. The campus is alive during football weekends unlike any other time. To us every game is homecoming. We kicked loose a few long forgotten memories and drank deeply of the sights and sounds of our alma mater as we tried to share our feelings for the uniqueness and magic of the UF campus with our children.

Still a couple of hours before kickoff, we walked along Museum road heading down toward North/South Drive. As we reached the intersection I looked up and took notice of Hume Hall. Now I’ve lived in this town for over 20 years. I work at Shands and often I cut through campus - right past this building - on my way home from work. I must have seen Hume a thousand-thousand times since I moved here, but this time I saw it differently. I saw it as it was in the summer of 1979 on the first night I ever spent at UF. My throat closed and my eyes teared, my legs became a little unsteady. That year I came up to the university for the Preview session with my father and we bunked together in that dorm. And as the moment, the location and the memory coalesced in my mind I realized that this would be the first year that my father would not be sharing a Gator football season with me, a shadow had unexpectedly stretched across the dawn of this football season.

My father passed away this summer after a cruel and nasty fight with cancer. In three short months my rock, my anchor, the compass that showed me the way in life was laid to waste until all that remained was the shell of a great man, a man I loved and now watched die. He was 80 years old and left behind a loving wife and family along with wonderful memories of a long and happy life. My father was not a sports enthusiast. He was a survivor of the depression and WWII. He valued "practical" things above all. A man who came of age when a job, any job, seemed a miracle. He worked hard, had a good marriage of 57 years and raised a family through some lean times and some very good times. Born last, I was the baby and his only son. I arrived late in his life and he indulged me. Perhaps you could say I was spoiled. However, my father and I never really connected as friends when I was a boy. He had my respect and I loved him, but there was a distance between us - we weren't buddies. I was interested in sports and games, jokes and good times; while he was a machinist, a craftsman, a hunter - a practical man. I rarely took to the things that he enjoyed and found interesting. I liked to play and what he found pleasure in was much too close to work for me. I didn’t see the gap that was growing larger between us as my adolescence began. But as I eased through high school and toward college he realized that there was in fact a gulf between us and if he wanted us to be closer it would have to be his decision to find our mutual interests. This he accomplished, for we found common ground in Gator football.

My first year at UF he came up for two games, the Alabama and the FSU contests. He was hooked. Seeing a team so obviously out-manned continue to fight when all hope was lost appealed to his sense of duty, commitment and toughness. That 0-10-1 team has a very special place in my heart because they brought my father and me together. That season he bought a Gator cap and Gator t-shirt and wore them proudly, for he saw them as evidence of our link –– a bond between father and son. He never failed to mention to his neighbors and those he met that, "My son goes to UF, you know – where the Gators are." That first Christmas home from college I gave him a personalized Gator license plate. When he opened it on Christmas morning he stopped, got up, slipped on his shoes and went right outside to put it on his car – and then made sure we all came out to see how it looked too.

Every Saturday night when he was at home and I was in Gainesville I’d call him and we'd discuss the game and what had happened. We talked of 0-10-1 and Wilbur’s signature effort against USC. We commiserated about a sure victory over Georgia that was so cruelly snatched away. We spoke of an SEC title and the bitterness of its subsequent loss and the shame of probation. A tie with Rutgers left us dazed with disbelief. Each of us marveled at the courage and determination it took for Kerwin Bell to rally the team and painfully hobble those last few yards for those final two points against Auburn. We wondered aloud if there was any back in America who meant as much to his team as Emmitt. We discussed the hiring of UF’s favorite son as the new head coach and we reveled in the miraculous change in Gator fortunes. In ‘91 we laughed that now we had an SEC title we could keep. We shared our bitter disbelief in the ‘94 collapse at FSU. There was a 2AM call to celebrate the Gators National Championship together. We rejoiced in their success and felt privileged to have shared it. We spoke of these Gator moments and many more – far too many to count and each of them far too precious to ever forget a single one. And as these conversations went on through the years I found that we were talking about other things too, like the girl I was dating who would become my wife, about the job he took because he was just too bored by retirement, about family and friends and good times past and good times yet to come. We talked about life. Those phone calls were one-on-one, just him and me. No mom or wife or daughter or friend intruded. It was our time to be candid and share with one another. We grew closer and I learned about my father, not just as my Dad, but as the man he was to others. Season after season those Saturday phone calls became a part of life, as sure and necessary as sunrise - permanent and ongoing.

Saturday’s game passed and the Gators notched another victory, but I saw it all through a veil of sadness. The realization that there wouldn’t be any call following this game was too much with me. I missed my father, my friend. My heart ached as I wished to speak with him as I always had. Saturday night after our friends had left and my wife had gone to bed I walked into the kitchen where I stood alone staring at the phone on the wall; knowing what I wanted to do… and knowing I couldn’t do it. But then I took the phone off the hook and walked out into our backyard with it. I sat on a bench and dialed his number. As I leaned back against the picnic table and looked heavenward I saw that the clouds had parted and I gazed at the sprinkle of stars across an infinite sky, sparkling like crystallized tears against a black velvet canvas; I held the phone to my ear. We had a wonderful talk, Dad and I, about the game... and about life. And when we finished I said my goodbye as I always have, "I wish you could have been here Dad. I love you. Take care and go Gators."