Untold: Swamp Kings Review 2023 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
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.
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.
