GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida receiver Jacob Copeland and Alabama coach Nick Saban shared a moment several years ago that became a lifetime memory for a teenager from Florida’s Panhandle.
A phone call to Copeland in Pensacola led to a visit to Saban’s Tuscaloosa office and a difficult decision ahead.
Copeland ultimately chose the Gators while the Crimson Tide moved on to the next top-100 recruit. Even so, Saban’s ability to turn on the charm left quite an impression.
“You can go visit him and you chilling with him, like kicking it with him, a good vibes-type deal,” Copeland recalled this week. “But just knowing that the end of the day, that’s in the past now. I’m here. I’m with Dan Mullen now, so it is what it is.
“I’ve got to do what I do.”
The 69-year-old Saban, winner of a record seven national titles, will aim to do what he does when he and Copeland cross paths again at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in the Swamp.
Copeland, the 11th-ranked Gators (2-0) and a sellout crowd will be on hand to welcome the Crimson Tide’s coaching legend and the defending national champions to Gainesville for each team’s SEC opener.
Copeland can hardly contain his excitement.
“It’s going to be a live environment, for sure,” he said. “We’re playing Bama. Nick’s gonna be here.”
Copeland left Saban’s office years ago on a first-name basis. But once a player signs elsewhere he often becomes just another face in the crowd witnessing Alabama’s relentless championship march.
Copeland and the Gators were the Tide’s most recent SEC victim, falling 52-46 to Alabama during the 2020 conference title game.
“We were close,” Copeland said. “They executed more than us. We just have to take that to the chin and build off that for the next year. That’s what we’re doing. That’s what we did in the offseason; that’s what we did in camp: and now we’re here.”
After ruminating on the rematch for months, the Gators finally can talk openly about it.
The Crimson Tide have been in the back of the minds, but football’s single-minded focus has suppressed all but the occasional public slip of the tongue.
“We’ve been talking about this game for a long time,” defensive end Zach Carter said. “Obviously it’s one of the most anticipated games this year. It’s a big game, but we can’t let the stage be too big.”
The top-ranked Crimson Tide (2-0) have won seven straight meetings and are a 15.5-point favorite on the Gators’ home field, making UF a double-digit home underdog for just the second time in decades.
“That’s what somebody else thinks,” UF linebacker Mohamoud Diabate said. “They don’t know what goes on in our building. They don’t know what goes on Alabama’s building. We’re not worried about what they got to say. You chuckle at it, but at the end of the day, we got our own motivation.
“Momma’s gonna be in the stands. Do you really need any more motivation than that?”
Playing for family, friends and Florida fans in a sold-out Swamp have carried the Gators to some of the program’s biggest wins.
To end the Crimson Tide’s grip on the Gators and Saban’s superiority over Mullen, who is 0-10 head-to-head dating to his days at Mississippi State, UF will have to raise its level of play after being FAU and USF comfortably but not in overly impressive fashion.
Carter’s four sacks in two games, Copeland’s touchdown grabs of 75 and 41 yards last weekend against USF and the big-play ability of backup quarterback Anthony Richardson have stood out against a back-drop of hit-or-miss individual performances. The Gators’ offensive line has paved the way for 763 rushing yards.
Richardson, who has scoring runs of 80 and 73 yards along with a 75-yard touchdown throw, strained his right hamstring against USF, but Mullen said he’s on track to play Saturday.
Mullen is sure to have an ace or two up his sleeve, too.
“Everybody is saying this and that about us in the first two games, but we all know, they haven’t seen everything,” Copeland said. “We haven’t showed so much because we like, ‘You can’t expose your hand like that before you see Saban.’ He’ll build off that and it’s over.”
The Gators will need every piece to fall in place to pull off the upset.
Few know this better than graduate transfer defensive tackle Daquan Newkirk, an Orlando native who transferred from Auburn. There, Newkirk’s teams were 1-2 during one of the game’s most-heated in-state rivalries, winning the 2019 meeting with Alabama 48-45.
“You basically gotta have to have a perfect game,” Newkirk said. “You gotta come with your A-game just like they do all the time.”
