Exhale, Florida fans. You deserve this.

You deserve to feel like one of your big-revenue programs is on the cusp of greatness and not floundering in mediocrity. Or at the very least, you deserve to make national headlines for something besides strange quarterback recruiting news.

Florida baseball provided that sigh of relief. Two thrilling victories in Omaha, 1 trip to the semifinals of the College World Series — and the right to dream even bigger.

A flower amidst a bed of weeds? That’s a fair thing to say about Florida baseball during this rare drought among big-revenue sports in Gainesville.

(With all due respect to the Florida men’s track and field team, who just won an outdoor national championship, this conversation is reserved for the big-revenue sports.)

In the past 2 school years up until this current Florida baseball run, the 4 major sports have been nothing to write home about:

  • Football
    • 2021
      • 6-7
      • Lost to UCF in bowl game
      • Dan Mullen fired
    • 2022
      • 6-7
      • Lost to Oregon State in bowl game
  • Men’s basketball
    • 2021-22
      • Missed NCAA Tournament
      • Mike White fired
    • 2022-23
      • Suffered first losing season in 8 years
      • Missed NCAA Tournament
  • Women’s basketball
    • 2021-22
      • Coach Cameron Newbauer resigned in July 2021 amidst player abuse allegations
      • Lost in Round 1 of NCAA Tournament
    • 2022-23
      • 5-11 in SEC play
      • Missed NCAA Tournament
  • Baseball
    • 2022
      • 15-15 in SEC play
      • Lost in Gainesville Regional

Woof. That’s rough.

It’s rough that Florida’s best football moment of the past 2 years happened in an early-September game, and you could argue Florida basketball’s best March moment in that stretch was watching former star Keyontae Johnson have a comeback season for the ages … at Kansas State.

To be fair, the Florida baseball team has been pulling its weight the whole time. But for the casual fan, that bandwagon is much easier to hop on board when those other big-revenue sports don’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.

It’s also easier to hop on a bandwagon with Florida’s style of play. Blink and you might miss a ball flying out of the yard. A record-setting home run total fueled the Gators’ deepest run in 5 years.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that continues. Kevin O’Sullivan referenced why his team might’ve benefitted from some favorable wind and that it could need to adjust in order to manufacture runs instead of being so home run-reliant.

But whatever way the wind blows, this should already feel like a monumental run after the way the last 2 years have gone. You know, the 2 years that saw Georgia roll the Gators in Jacksonville en route to consecutive national championships.

Sorry. That was mean.

That’s not just a football thing, though it does feel like any sort of “glory years” are synonymous with Florida competing for national titles on the gridiron. You could argue nobody in the 21st century had a better 4-year run in big-time athletics than any SEC program — and perhaps anyone — in the 21st century.

  • June 2005: Florida baseball reaches first ever CWS championship in program history
  • Sept. 2005: Urban Meyer coaches first game at Florida
  • April 2006: Florida hoops wins first NCAA Tournament in program history
  • April 2006: Florida’s entire starting 5 announces it’ll return for one more year at post-championship celebration
  • Jan. 2007: Florida football upsets Ohio State 41-14 to win BCS National Championship
  • April 2007: Florida hoops beats Ohio State 84-75 to repeat as NCAA Tournament champs
  • Dec. 2007: Tim Tebow becomes first sophomore to win Heisman Trophy
  • Jan. 2009: Florida football beats Oklahoma 24-14 to win BCS National Championship
  • Jan. 2009: Tebow announces he’ll return for senior season at post-championship celebration

Glory years? Absolutely. We’ll probably get more reminders of that star-studded era in Gainesville when Netflix releases the documentary “Swamp Kings” later this August. It’ll inevitably make Florida fans long for a time when it felt like the standard in college athletics.

So far, that hasn’t been the case in the 2020s. Winning a College World Series title wouldn’t suddenly flip that narrative, but it would at least serve as a reminder that Florida is always a threat to compete in a big-revenue sport.

Then again, who knows? It was a College World Series appearance that kicked off Florida’s aforementioned 4-year run from 2005-09. Who’s to say that Florida — less than a year removed from opening the doors its new $85 million football facility — is incapable of escaping punching bag status?

Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin wouldn’t say the football program has fallen to such lows, though consecutive losing seasons for the first time since the Jimmy Carter administration (1978-79) would beg to differ. Fair or not, Stricklin’s job security probably doesn’t undergo some drastic shift if Florida wins the College World Series. O’Sullivan wasn’t his hire — Billy Napier was. So was Todd Golden and Kelly Rae Finley.

But in the meantime, Stricklin’s future shouldn’t matter for the Florida fan sitting at home. Or rather, it shouldn’t matter for the Florida fan living and dying with every pitch in Omaha.

There’s something special about watching your team kick off the College World Series with 2 victories to slide into the winner’s bracket. You get the extra day of rest, which based on the nail-biters Florida found itself in, might be good for the short and long-term health of the Gator faithful. You get that security of knowing 1 victory is all it’ll take to play for a national championship.

Above all else, you get hope. That’s been hard to come by lately in Gainesville, where hope springs eternal.

Finally, perhaps, a Florida flower is ready to reach full bloom.