Nelson Put it all in Perspective

The Florida Gators could not have finished their season on a better note, and for some players, they did not want the game to end. Senior wide receiver David Nelson was the last member of the team to come off the field, and long after most of the team exited for the bus and the rest got dressed, he was still sitting at his locker dressed in his uniform.

“I don’t want to get undressed, I don’t want to take this uniform off. It’s been a special ride, an amazing ride, and I just don’t want to take this uniform off,” Nelson said. “I want to stay here and enjoy it a little more, but it’s sad it’s all coming to an end.”

The senior credited the loss to Alabama as the rallying point to come out and prove to the nation that Gators were not the team that showed up in Atlanta for the Southeastern Conference Game against the Crimson Tide.

He didn’t care who lined up across from him he wanted to prove a point in the Sugar Bowl.

“We really didn’t care who we were playing tonight. We were going to come out and we were going to prove,” Nelson said. “We pointed this game as a statement game. We wanted to prove to the nation, to the Gator Nation, to ourselves that we are who we should be, who we thought we were at the beginning of the season.”

Despite the team responding so well to the loss, Nelson doesn’t want to think about what could have happen if the team got the wake-up call before losing to Alabama.

“It’s always easier to say we should have done this and we should have done this, and that’s why we played the way we did today because we didn’t feel sorry for ourselves, we didn’t blame each other for different faults and different things. We all came together and said we have one more opportunity to play with each other and we’re going to make the most of our opportunity.”

Nelson finished the game with just two catches for 37 yards, but he will go down as part of the winningest class in UF’s history. As part of head coach Urban Meyer’s first recruiting class, he played an integral part in help rebuild Florida back to the program it was in the '90s.

“When we first came in here, Florida was kind of in a transition period,” Nelson said. “Back in the 90s it was a dominant program, and for a couple years there, it was middle level in the SEC. And Florida is capable of being top-tiered every year, and that was something, not really my class, but the ’06 class when they came it wanted to start a dynasty.”