MIAMI - You stumble in at around 5 in the morning. You're met headfirst with a view of your normal weight room, your sanctuary, warped into a Quentin Tarantino horror flick. You can't see anything besides the four walls, because the windows are blocked with panels - it feels like you're in jail.
All you can see is your normal workout gear with pictures of chainsaws and bloodied corpses surrounding the area. Ropes and chains are littered throughout the gym, symbols showing this isn't your sister's weight room.
Happy Valentine's Day, suckers.
Most of the Gators knew what was coming, and they had goosebumps to prove it. For those who had not been through it, they couldn't have imagined what UF strength and conditioning coach Mickey Marotti had planned for what he calls the "Valentine's Day Massacre." Unlike the actual Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929 in Chicago, when members of Al Capone's South Side Italian gang allegedly shot seven members of Bugs Moran's North Side gang, nobody dies in Marotti's version.
Death, however, doesn't seem that far off at the end of the morning.
Let's just say this: Freshman defensive lineman Matt Patchan and junior receiver David Nelson call it hell. Maybe they're referring to the stadium runs the team has to do after a two-hour workout, continuing each exercise - from leg and bench presses to sled pulls - until they physically cannot go on. Then, after they can't do any more on their own, trainers help the players pump out more reps. Try running a stadium after your legs are quivering from doing more leg presses than you ever have amid constant yells from players wearing war paint across their faces. Even the water carriers do some shouting.
If you're not careful, you may even witness a 50-pound dumbbell hurling across the gym toward you, courtesy of Marotti, of course.
When asked about the Massacre, players just start shaking their heads and laughing in resignation.
"The intent for those workouts is not to walk out of there," sophomore right guard Mike Pouncey says. "Most guys don't walk out of there."
Those who don't walk may be throwing up their late-night Five Star Pizza binge from the day before.
Marotti makes grunts that, according to Patchan, sounds like a "mating walrus."
"It's like an angry grunt," Patchan says. "It's real aggressive and loud. It's like the stuff that would scare children at night. He's the type of guy that you don't have him tell your son a bedtime story."
Those are some ways to describe that day. Here are some others:
A turning point for a previously immature, selfish and entitled team.
A challenge to see how this group of Gators will respond when they're at their weakest, when they're backed against a wall.
An opportunity to become the man you're capable of being. As Marotti puts it, coming face to face with your "genetic potential."
A time to learn you're not a group that will give up when others stand up to you.
And, maybe, a chance for the Gators to show they are capable of being one of the most dominant teams in college football history.
The Bad, The Worse, and the Ugly
The coaching staff knew it was imminent in January 2007.
When junior linebacker Brandon Siler told them he would be leaving early for the NFL, the last leadership pillar had fallen. Gone was Dallas Baker. Reggie Nelson would soon be grinning his goofy grin for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Jarvis Moss would also be lining up against the best in the world.
The triumph of a national championship led to a depressing exodus.
"The red flag went up fast," Meyer said.
He had good reason to be worried, too. Those players were replaced with younger, immature counterparts who were not ready to lead. Comparing the summer of 2006 to 2007 was like watching high school players try to keep pace with Percy Harvin.
"They just wanted to know, why are we doing this and we had to do this and questioning everything about everything," Marotti said.
The summer workouts weren't taken seriously. After all, the Gators had just won a championship and opponents were going to let them win another one, right?
"Guys just went through the motions," Nelson said. "We'd won it the year before, so we thought we had all the answers. We thought we'd come into this year and just expect to win. We just expected things to come to us."
Things didn't.
"Selfish players. Individuals," Brandon Hicks said of the 2007 team. "Anything you want to call us, we basically were."
What they were was a group of young players who didn't yet understand what it took to win at the college level. In high school, they were able to just show up and let their physical gifts take over.
"It really is sickening to my stomach when I watch film from 2007," junior linebacker Ryan Stamper said. "I see guys that just didn't play hard. We're playing for the Florida Gators, and that's pretty much a privilege. We had guys taking advantage of that. We have kids from all over the world wanting to play here."
Slacking like that doesn't work in the Southeastern Conference. When LSU converted five of five fourth-down attempts in the Tigers' 28-24 win, it became obvious the Gators could be socked in the mouth and kept down.
"When push came to shove, we felt when we were going to be challenged that we were going to have a hard time," Marotti said. "That's kind of what happened."
A sign in the team room says that talent gets you seven wins. As Meyer pointed out, the Gators had nine - the talent was there. Discipline gets you eight to nine wins, according to the sign, and leadership will get you a championship. Consider those last two parts graded an "I" for incomplete.
"Last year was a really bad team," Meyer said. "There was some good stuff, but that was not a good team. The accountability and leadership was almost minimal."
Those issues were already clear to the staff. Then they were shown to the nation as the Gators were embarrassed by a 41-35 loss in the Capital One Bowl against Michigan.
That's when Meyer had a conversation that lasted at least an hour and a half with middle linebacker Brandon Spikes in the spring. Quarterback Tim Tebow, offensive linemen Jason Watkins, Phil Trautwein and Jim Tartt and tight end Cornelius Ingram knew this was not what they wanted.
"We looked at each other and said, 'Man, we got to do it (in 2008)," Watkins said. "We can't have another year like this."
The Good, The Better, and The Winning
The following statement is unanimous: The summer of 2008 was completely different than the previous one had been.
Forget about overlooking workouts. Those were more important than ever for the UF football team. Bonds were built, and friendships that seemed unrealistic became commonplace. Before a workout, Marotti would grab a player and ask him about another player, someone Marotti knew the player wouldn't normally hang out with. If you didn't know the other, it was time to do some homework. Whether it was dinner out together or a Madden tournament, there would be no more individuals.
"The way we approached the off-season, guys wanted to get up every morning at 5:30 to try and get better," Spikes said. "We do a lot of things that people really don't do, and we do it in one day, at 5:30 in the morning. We look forward to the next day, the next challenge that our strength coach puts in front of us."
There was no more asking Marotti why they should do something. It was intangible, sure, and difficult to describe, but it existed.
"You can see it in their eyes when we're working out," sophomore free safety Major Wright said.
Now, when Marotti goes about screeching and slapping players on the back, they holler back - with similar intensity.
"Everybody's screaming and yelling," Pouncey said. "It's just crazy, man. That's why we win championships around here."
The players say Marotti has a lot of "juice." Now, that juice is available in fresh, drinkable bottles in every player's locker.
Perhaps Pouncey will down a couple sips while reading a statistic about an upcoming opponent that sacks the quarterback more than anyone else. Spikes may enjoy a comment about how opposing receivers think they can run past him. All that while Tebow laughs over the next defender opening his mouth about how Tebow's overrated or will finally have a bad game against them.
It's all about motivation with Marotti. Meyer even agrees he has had as much to do with the turnaround in 2008 as anybody.
"The motivation factor that (Marotti) brings to our whole program is the best I've been around from a strength coach," defensive line coach Dan McCarney said. "The best I've ever been around."
The Best?
Urban Meyer was standing before his team, giving them a pregame speech at the SEC Championship Game against Alabama on Dec. 6. That's until Mickey Marotti couldn't take it anymore. Marotti interrupted, blue in the face, blood splattered on his hand from the glass he had just shattered. Moments earlier, he had flipped offensive line coach Steve Addazio off his chair.
Marotti screamed that critics had called UF soft, a finesse team. He used language players said doesn't belong in a newspaper.
"That was genuine," junior Joey Sorrentino said.
Not even Marotti knows where this side of him comes from. Maybe it's that he was the undersized kid growing up in Pittsburgh who, as a sixth grader, wanted to play football and basketball with the eighth graders.
"He must've got picked on when he was little," senior Butch Rowley joked.
That's one way to put it.
"I just try to be bizarre and make the kids (say), 'What are you doing?'" Marotti said.
Whatever Marotti did, what the players did was win another SEC Championship.
Now they have an opportunity to show how much those extra bench presses mean. That running stadiums after the most difficult two-hour workout of their lives was worth it.
Hanging out with someone they wouldn't have before has led them to, perhaps, UF's third national championship.
Meyer has kept his team's emotions in check, made sure his players haven't released all their adrenaline before today.
That ends now. At 8:17 tonight, the Gators will take the final leap on a voyage that started last Valentine's Day.
It's their chance to have another massacre. This time, they may be the ones administering the pain.
