Saying goodbye to the man behind Florida’s football legends
Legend has it that nobody ever said a bad word about Norm Carlson. That’s not quite true.
It was at a Florida basketball practice 70 years ago. A walk-on was trying to impress the skeptics at Alligator Alley. It wasn’t working.
“You’re the worst player in the history of Gator basketball,” coach John Mauer said.
Approximately 50 years later, Carlson retired as one of the most influential people in the history of Florida athletics. To which anyone too young to have seen Danny Wuerffel play might say, “Norm Who?”
Carlson was Florida’s “Sports Publicity Director,” at least that was the job title when he was hired in 1963. It changed to “Sports Information Director” to “Assistant Athletic Director” over the years. None of which capture the role Carlson played at UF.
He was a publicity whiz, a crisis manager, a diplomat, a confidant and a friend to generations of coaches, players and people and around Florida and the SEC. He passed away Friday at age 90.
“Norm’s legacy, to me, was the most incredibly kind, respected and wise people I ever came across,” Jeremy Foley said. “When I became AD, I was a young buck trying to figure it all out. Norm was always there for advice and presented it in such a professional and caring manner.”
Carlson politicked for Foley to be promoted to athletic director in 1992. With his personal touch, he was often called “Mr. C” or “Normie.”
It feels detached for me to refer to him as “Carlson” here. So I’d like to tell you about Norm.
I’d like to, but it would take a book to capture his impact at Florida. He wrote three of them about the Gators.
You can do that when you’ve worked 462 straight football games and watched about 5,000 practices.
Norm wasn’t just a witness to history, however. He helped shape it.
You’ve heard of Heisman campaigns? Norm basically invented them in 1966, when he made weekly calls, mailed updates and film clips to Heisman voters on behalf of one Steve Spurrier.
“Some people think he won the Heisman for me,” Spurrier said. “He had a big hand in it, I know that.”
If they gave a Heisman for building relationships, Norm would be Archie Griffin. I’d say he would have made a great salesman, but Norm was a complete flop at it.
He majored in business at UF, and his first job was selling insurance in Houston.
“He hated it,” said Doug Carlson, one of Norm’s sons.
He’d minored in journalism and longed to write about sports. He applied to newspapers around the South and got a call from the Atlanta Journal.
It needed an experienced pressman. Norm convinced the interviewer that was just the man for the job. Then he ran out and bought a book on how to operate a newspaper press.
As his first wife, Peetie, drove the car to Atlanta, Norm crammed like a kid studying for a final. He pulled it off and got to know people in the Sports Department.
That led to him covering Georgia Tech, where he got to know an assistant named Ray Graves. Norm eventually moved on to become Auburn’s publicity director.
Graves moved on to become Florida’s football coach and athletic director. When he needed a publicity guy in 1963, he knew who to call.
Norm didn’t have to study how to do the job as he drove to Gainesville, though the book on media relations has certainly changed. UF’s sports communications office now has 15 people on staff.
When Norm arrived, it was him, a student assistant and a part-time secretary. Instead of today’s corporate ethos, the athletic department had a mom-and-pop feel.
Norm became one of the guys. A trusted advisor to the movers and shakers.
“He wrote about half my speeches and quotes,” Graves said in 2002. “You knew he was in touch and in tune with all areas.”
Norm was a lifelong buddy to UF legends. When Spurrier returned to coach in 1990, he and Norm teamed up to win the SEC Media Days golf scramble. For the next 34 years, they’d wink at each other and say, “SEC media champs, 1990!”
When Norm was dating Peetie, she’d entered the Miss UF contest. For the talent competition, she didn’t sing or play the flute. She cooked fried chicken.
Twenty years later, Norm would regularly have players over to his house to enjoy the recipe. It was probably an NCAA violation, but the feast was worth the risk.
There were actual NCAA investigations to deal with, of course. When reporters swarmed during the darkest days of the Charlie Pell era, Gary Rolle suddenly became the de facto team spokesman.
Rolle had transferred from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was a microbiology major. A spit-and-polished face to represent UF to a dubious world.
Norm at work.
“Talk about brand,” Foley said. “We like to do things a certain way and represent us a certain way. No one represented the Gator brand better than Norm.”
He wasn’t just a spin doctor. The Sugar Bowl tried to hire Norm as executive director. George Steinbrenner tried to hire him to run the Yankees media operation.
NFL teams came after him, but Norm would not budge from Florida.
“That was his family,” Doug Carlson said. “The Gators were his life.”
And what a life it was. Norm celebrated on the plane ride home after UF handed Bear Bryant his first loss in Tuscaloosa in 1963. He anguished in disbelief as Georgia’s Lindsay Scott took a pass 93 yards in the final minute in 1980.
He chronicled the glories of the 1990s. He became such a repository of all things orange and blue, the university didn’t let him totally retire in 2002.
After naming the press deck at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in his honor, it made Norm the athletic department historian. He kept an office through the Urban Meyer days, still exerting his Norm-ness on everyone he met.
“I’ve been really lucky, blessed,” he said.
It turned out Norm was a great salesman. He just needed a product he truly believed in.
So he made a career helping Gators become legends. In the process, Norm became one himself.
David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. Follow him on X @DavidEWhitley
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Carlson quietly shaped Florida football for 40 years
