Florida’s equipment truck caught on fire while traveling back from Mississippi State earlier this week.
The destroyed and damaged equipment includes helmets, shoulder pads, protective braces, the training staff’s medical gear, coolers, cleats, staff bags, travel clothes and various other items required when the team is on the road.
Here are details from UF:
The team travels 70 players to Southeastern Conference road games and McGrew said all the helmets and shoulder pads of those players must be replaced. He spent Monday speaking with representatives from equipment manufacturers such as Riddell, Schutt and other vendors to expedite orders. The team had enough equipment in inventory to practice as usual heading into Saturday’s game against No. 5 LSU.
“Monday was a long day,” McGrew said. “My staff has been amazing. We worked like crazy. Everyone did a really good job of getting that done quickly and early so we could get some orders placed with the vendors.”
McGrew said about 30 helmets were burned to a crisp and all of them suffered damage to some degree, whether from smoke or the process of putting out the fire. A significant number of shoulder pads, knee braces, cleats and other items were also burned badly.
In a fortunate stroke of timing, the Gators already had plans to unveil a new Jordan Brand cleat for the LSU game. However, now most of Florida’s players will be breaking in new helmets and shoulder pads, too.
