Stream It Or Skip It: ‘UNTOLD: Swamp Kings’ on Netflix, a Look at the Urban Meyer-era Florida Gators Football Team

For a period in the late aughts, there was no tougher place to play in college football than “the Swamp,” the home field of the University of Florida Gators. Under head coach Urban Meyer, they won two national titles with a roster filled with future NFL stars. In Swamp Kings, a new four-episode miniseries under Netflix’s UNTOLD banner, we get a look at the rise and fall of one of the 21st century’s biggest teams.

UNTOLD: SWAMP KINGS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The Gators football team are fired up in the locker room at halftime of a game; this is a team that expects to win, and they’re ready to deliver on that feeling.

The Gist: Swamp Kings looks inside the Urban Meyer era at Florida with a number of voices–Meyer himself, but also former players, fellow coaches, and sports media personalities like Paul Finebaum. Like many sports documentaries, it’s primarily built around these interviews, along with a mixture of behind-the-scenes and game footage.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Oddly, this is a bit of a break from Netflix’s use of the UNTOLD branding so far. To date, the series has consisted of standalone documentaries, often on lesser-covered sports stories. Swamp Kings, however, is a four-episode arc, and it’s on one of the most covered teams of the past two decades. It’s a bit more like the kind of programming you’d see in the offseason on the SEC Network.

Our Take: Almost two decades on, the success of the Florida Gators under head coach Urban Meyer feels to have been preordained. Between his time at Florida and later at Ohio State, Meyer won three national titles and established himself as a future College Football Hall of Fame coach. So, it’s easy to forget that he had a lot to prove when he arrived in Gainesville after winning stints at Utah and Bowling Green, two schools with far lower bars for success at the time.

Over four episodes, Swamp Kings tells the story of how Meyer’s Gators teams went on to dominate in the SEC, winning national titles in 2006 and 2008 with rosters absolutely loaded with talent. We see Meyer’s recruitment of Tim Tebow, the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner and longtime sports-media darling, along with a host of other boldface names that would turn Ben Hill Griffin Stadium into a nightmare venue for visiting teams.

Off-the-field problems–a hallmark of Meyer’s teams–would come to haunt the program, though, and Meyer eventually crumpled under the strain of coaching a championship-level team, departing the program in 2010 due to stress-related health problems. (He would resurface after a year hiatus with OSU, and later have one of the shortest and worst NFL head-coaching careers in league history.)

Swamp Kings is a well-produced and comprehensive look at the era; most all of the key figures in this era of Gators football show up, along with a number of other figures in and around the sport. It’s packaged well, but it’s a bit unclear why this was Netflix’s next entry in the UNTOLD series. There’s no real hook here for someone who isn’t a diehard college football fan, and–speaking myself as a diehard college football fan–not much even for one who isn’t also a fan of the Florida Gators and/or Meyer. Being well-acquainted with Meyer’s work, between his long coaching career, occasional stints as a broadcaster, and forays into ghostwritten motivational business books, there’s not really anything I need to hear from the man, and there’s no new angle presented here. The same goes for Tim Tebow; he’s an interesting figure, and he had as good a run in college football as almost anyone, but there’s no aspect of Tebow’s life and career that hasn’t been covered to death in the past, and no attempt to uncover a previously-undiscovered one here.

If you’re a Florida Gators diehard, perhaps Swamp Kings will give you a chance to relive the glory days, considering that the team hasn’t won an SEC championship since Meyer’s time in Gainesville. Even then, though, you might just be sick of hearing from him.

Sex and Skin: There’s language and frank discussion of illegal actions, but there’s nothing ‘sexy’ here.

Parting Shot: The 2006 Gators–suddenly clicking with Tebow offering an additional weapon to starting quarterback Chris Leak–notch the first signature win of the Meyer era, knocking off Tennessee in Knoxville. They leave the field with the feeling that a national championship might be in the cards for them.

Sleeper Star: Urban Meyer’s the biggest name here, but former Gators and NFL linebacker Brandon Siler is the most interesting figure in the pilot episode, both for his story playing under Meyer and for his frank, entertaining way of recounting it.

Most Pilot-y Line: “It was so loud–110,000 people, national TV, and I just grab him and say, ‘it’s time’,” Meyer recalls of handing the ball to freshman Tim Tebow to get a crucial short-yardage first down late against Tennessee.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Netflix’s UNTOLD documentaries have been largely great to date, but unlike many of their previous entries, Swamp Kings doesn’t offer anything that would appeal to viewers who aren’t already invested in the subject.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.