What is it like to be a Florida Gator football walk-on?

[Escambia94]

Jesse Schmitt opened up a nice Q&A session on Reddit for anyone wanting to know what it was like to be a walk-on at UF. [READ MORE]

Jesse offers some unique insight into the program that only a walk-on could capture. Note that Jesse was a former Marine, so he sees things differently than most other players. Some key notes:

• Will Muschamp's intensity:

  Muschamp is intense, no doubt about it. But our TE coach, Derek Lewis, has him beat. Muschamp is kind of on a leash, really. He's the head coach and the face of the program. He can't go ALL out, because he's representing more than himself. Coach Lewis has no such restrictions.

• Derek Lewis punching through a whiteboard and having to go to the hospital:
  

  After we won that game (against LSU), he joyously yelled out in the locker room "I'm gonna damn near kill myself before every game! Get me another board! I'll punch that one too!"
  
  So yeah... intensity is a pretty common trait in football coaches, but at Florida it's another level entirely.

• The loss to Louisville:
  

  We got out coached and out played. Nothing else to it. There's no "The gators were out on bourbon street the night before!" scandal to tell. We were playing behind from the very first FREAKING snap, on a straight up unlucky play. Their WRs made 2 insane circus catches to get their touchdowns. It wasn't bad coverage by our DBs (maybe it was above-average, at worst), they just made great plays. Bridgewater is a special athlete, to be certain. And their coaches had an answer for everything we tried to do offensively.
  
  Nothing more than the nature of athletic competition; They played a better game than we did, so they won. I think if we had played 10 games, UF would've won 6 and Louisville 4, simply because (and I'm obviously biased) I think we had a deeper roster with better athletes at more positions. But they played a hell of a game, and congratulations to them for it.

  To be fair, there wasn't an air of grim preparation for a dogfight like there was before LSU or GA. But we still practiced hard, we knew they were a good team, and we treated them like any other opponent.

• Locker room fun:

  You have not LIVED until you've seen defensive linemen dancing in nothing but towels. Our locker room had a nice stereo system the guys would plug their music into, and everyone knows that Dominique Easley likes to dance. That shit was always funny. Beyond that, standard locker room highjinks. Towel-whipping, etc. Some of these guys really are nothing but gigantic 11 year olds. Sharrif and Easley spring to mind.

• Jeff Driskel:
  

  Jeff is absolutely fine. He made probably 3 or 4 bad throws/decisions on Saturday. Yes, you want to cut down on those, and yes they hurt us. But every football players makes a few mistakes every game, don't delude yourself to think otherwise. There are plenty of Gators who had worse games than Jeff on Saturday, including one of my best friends on the team Trey Burton. It just is was it is, people have bad days. They know it, they recognize mistakes, and they work to never commit them again. That's part of being an athlete.
  
  Jeff is a great guy, an incredible athlete, and I am 100% confident in him moving forward. And I'm equally sure that if you asked everyone in the locker room that same question, they would say the exact same thing.