Untold: Swamp Kings

Let's go.

The whole game!

The whole game, go full speed! Seek the win!

I'm telling you, on the sideline, bitch, you better be up for every play!

You better be into this motherfucker here, boy!

Yeah!

Rest of the season here! This determines the rest of our season.

Get out there! Leave it out there, boy!

When you come to Florida, football is the world here, you know?

Losing was unacceptable,

and when you did lose, you paid for it.

All right, listen up, let's go.

May the best team win. You got the edge. You got toughness, you got togetherness.

There's nothing like the locker room, there's nothing like a huddle.

I want them to embrace the heart, embrace the hurt,

embrace the pain, embrace the brotherhood.

No matter how talented you are, it still comes down to that brotherhood

of playing for one another.

It's all about now. It's all about now.

You work your whole life for a couple moments.

You got that moment right now.

You know, football was my way out. Out of the hood.

So I was willing to do whatever it took.

Bring it on, baby! Bring it on!

Motivation, baby!

In a moment in time,

between 2005 and 2010...

National Championship, baby! Number one.

...it looked like Urban Meyer and Florida

were going to win the National Championship every year.

Let's go! Let's go!

We were The Beatles, you know? We really were.

It was crazy.

Girls are falling out, fainting. All... Man, you'd be like, "What the...?"

I'm sorry. Um, extremely sorry.

And then somehow, it all slipped away.

Put them motherfuckers away, man! Come on, man.

The pain of greatness is real.

And it's not meant for everybody.

Two University of Florida athletes have been suspended.

All right, another Florida Gator has been arrested.

We got 30 minutes...

Let's go!

...for the rest of our lives!

I was ready to fight. "It's time to fight."

People don't realize the level of stress and anxiety and pressure

because they really do not know

what it's like to give so much to something.

That's everything.

This is going to be un-fucking-believable.

Thank y'all for coming this afternoon.

Obviously, this is a, um, special day for the University of Florida.

The day that I walked into The Swamp, it was like a dream.

Ladies and gentlemen, Coach Urban Meyer.

I walked down to the 50-yard-line, I see the bright blue skies.

It's 80 degrees, everything is beautiful.

And I thought, "Let's go win a national title."

Thank you very much. I would like to thank Dr. Machen

and Jeremy Foley for the opportunity to coach the Gators.

Florida had this incredible run in the '90s under Steve Spurrier,

playing for national championships every year.

The 1996 National Champions!

That was almost a period of just drunken joy for Gator fans.

But by 2005, Florida was not winning.

We were letting down the people that were counting on us by losing,

by not being who we supposed to be,

not doing the things we supposed to do.

The team, just in general, wasn't really respected with...

throughout the community of Gainesville.

We... We wasn't winning games, so no free drinks at the bars.

They were a sleeping giant.

And then, of course, Urban was the hot name.

I mean, the feeling was that, with going out and getting Urban Meyer,

Florida could restore what they had lost.

But while it was an exciting hire,

you... you were getting someone that was virtually unknown.

Meyer had only been a head coach four years at two different places.

Florida fans wanted a winner,

and they're not patient people.

Florida play in the Southeastern Conference.

We call it the SEC.

And college football in the South is like a life-and-death experience.

Watching Florida play Tennessee or Florida play Georgia

is no different than watching gladiators fight to the death.

It's the same emotion.

"Kill or be killed."

Urban Meyer did not know the SEC, he did not know the South,

and sometimes that can be a problem.

You win games, everybody loves you.

If you lose one, or one big game,

that's when the criticism really starts flying.

And it can get out of hand quick.

I came from a hardcore background.

My father was in the Army.

My sister was in the Air Force.

So I've always been that kind of approach,

a militaristic approach to your team.

And there was a narrative about the Gators,

about lack of discipline.

And I got after 'em pretty good.

'Cause I knew, you get discipline into those players,

you should win most games.

Ready?

Coach really... I mean, he ripped into us.

He called us to the stadium at five o'clock in the morning,

and he made us run every step in the stadium.

He called everybody out.

Said whether you got in trouble with the police,

or with the school or whatever,

that we would not have any of these problems.

I mean, I'm from Miami, you know?

A fistfight is... was nothing for us.

Coach Meyer got there and kicked all of us out of the home locker room.

Made us get dressed in the visitors' locker room.

Told us we couldn't wear any Gator stuff.

Like, "You have to earn the right to be a Florida Gator."

To say it was warm welcoming?

Not at all.

If I was to win big,

I needed to build this team, and I need to know who's in and who's out.

Let's go!

Mat drills completely changed the game.

One person would get down, the other person would jump on his back,

and you gotta stop him from crawling.

Just the most grueling physical pain

you can be in, right? And there's a winner and there's a loser.

Everybody's screaming, teammates cheering you on.

I mean, it was... it was Vietnam.

It was... When I say "hard,"

the hardest thing I ever went through in my life.

You are fucking giving in. Stop faking it, bro.

My attempt was to get people that weren't committed to quit the team,

and find out who was going to be all-in.

It was unmerciful.

Fuck. I'll get your stuff.

When I take over a team, I need to find the leaders.

And the guy that started to rise to the top was a guy named Brandon Siler.

When Urban showed up, my very first impression of him was bad.

I'm like, "I don't like this guy. I don't know who this guy is."

I grew up in Pine Hills,

which is the projects and all that, though.

If you want to play Grand Theft Auto for real,

go to Pine Hills after dark.

So that's where I'm from.

I knew that I wanted something different.

And then when I got on campus,

it was a little bit of a culture shock.

Where I come from,

there's not a lot of, um, white people, you know?

But real quickly, you start to understand

that there's another world out there

that's different from the one that you were brought up in.

When Urban came to University of Florida, he wants you to work out to the death.

I want to work out to the death!

I'll take the big boy.

I'll take the fullback!

He wanted to win. I want to win!

I'll take the fullback down.

And this is where I bought in.

It wasn't about lifting weights.

Go, go, go!

- It was about mental toughness. - Go!

He wanted to understand what happens after he breaks you.

Straight arms. Straight arms!

Are you gonna just push through it,

or you gonna cry like a baby? You gonna quit?

- One, two, three! - Straight arms!

Most people grab their bag and go home.

- I'm going clutch. - Let's go! Push that shit up!

You know what Brandon Silers do? That's when they get better.

I mean, he was vocal, a great player,

tough as nails, and all-in.

He was the perfect leader.

But he was far from easy to manage.

Everything I did, I did it to the death.

And I drank a lot, right? I like to drink.

So one day, Urban calls me in the office. He says, "You know what?"

"I'm calling your parents up. I'mma have a talk with 'em."

My mom's a character.

My step-dad, he had 13 gold teeth in his mouth.

My mom got gold teeth in her mouth. They both got ten tattoos.

So, they show up to campus, they've been drinking all day.

And my mama says, "Meyers, listen."

"My son come here to win a National Championship

and go to the NFL."

"So if you ain't here to do that, then you need to get out the way."

"This ain't Utah."

I don't understand his world. I don't know the streets, you know?

That's why I was so shocked.

They have this whole conversation, they walk out the door.

He says, "Come here."

Gives me a hug. He says...

"You just keep doing what you're doing."

"That's the craziest set of parents I've ever met."

The season started in '05, and...

I thought I knew big-time football.

You don't know big-time football until you start messing around

in that Southeastern Conference.

A new ingredient into this bitter stew,

the Urban Meyer experience.