Gators Named Bowl Season's Big Winner

The Gators' finish to the season, how they won the Gasparilla Bowl, earned them the title of a winner of the bowl season

The Gators stood out during the bowl season to finish the season / Doug Engle/Gainesville Sun / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Florida Gators' strong finish to the season gained them some recognition in the early part of this bowl season. 

Bleacher Reports’ David Kenyon named the Gators one of the biggest winners of the Bowl Season thus far (Dec. 14 to Dec. 20) due to their second-half surge in the Gasparilla Bowl. 

Kenyon credited the Gators for finding their footing offensively in the second half. 

“Through one half, though, the offense had been mediocre,” he wrote. “Star freshman DJ Lagway threw a pair of interceptions, and Florida headed to the locker room holding just a 6-0 lead. But the final 30 minutes were considerably better for UF. Aided by that stingy defense, the Gators quickly made it a blowout.” 

The Gators finally found the end zone halfway through the third quarter and that got the ball rolling. They put up three touchdowns and another field goal to turn a 9-0 defensive dogfight into a 33-8 dominant finish. 

Kenyon points out the Gators' strong finish to the season as well. 

“Florida was on the verge of a miserable year in mid-November, but the outlook of the program is far more stable after the Gators rattled off four straight wins to finish 8-5.”

While he doesn’t point this out - he’s simply stating the Gators' full-season situation - it’s almost fitting to have that mentioned when discussing a slow first half and a strong second half. 

It’s also fitting that Lagway had a slow first half and then went on to set the passing yards record for the game and was named its MVP. He was the backup quarterback and once he got going as the starter, the Gators took off. 

It’s not an exact parallel, but you see where this is going. 

All of these moments in the second half will be better remembered than the slow first half. It’s just like how the 2024 season will be remembered better for how they finished. If the Gators take a step forward in 2025, that will especially be the case. It will have become the turning point. 

That storyline alone and the poetry of the game solidifies them as one of the biggest winners so far during bowl season.