Media members mourn longtime Florida football icon

Longtime University of Florida sports information director and historian Norm Carlson died on Friday at 90.

Known affectionately as “Mr. C,” Carlson spent over 60 years ago leading the athletic program’s public relations department. Although he officially retired in 2022, he spent another decade as the official historian of the Florida Gators football team.

“Dad was recruited to Gainesville by Ray and Opal Graves, accepting his dream job in 1963 and never leaving,” son Doug Carlson, a former sportswriter at the Tampa Tribune , wrote Saturday, via the school . “He had opportunities in the NFL, in Major League Baseball and with countless other universities and bowl games because people liked him and he was good at what he did. But he was a Gator to his core and didn’t care if there was more money to be made elsewhere. He had found his home and he was smart enough to stay with the thing that made him happiest — being part of the Gator family.”

Carlson began his professional career as a sportswriter at the Atlanta Journal but eventually swapped sides and became Auburn’s sports information director in 1959. In 1963, he moved over to Florida and never really left.

“When the University of Florida was moved from Lake City to Gainesville in 1906, Norm Carlson was driving the lead wagon,” Steve Spurrier once said . Carlson was considered essential in helping Spurrier win the Spurrier win the Heisman Trophy in 1966, working the phones after each Florida game with national sports writers and sending film of the star quarterback to TV stations around the country.

“I’m gonna miss Uncle Norm,” Spurrier said Friday night, via the Orlando Sentinel . “Everybody loved Norm. He built relationships with the media throughout the country.”

In his career at the school, Carlson worked 462 consecutive Florida football games and attended over 5,000 practice sessions, often working the crowd of media members.

The Orlando Sentinel’s Mike Bianchi wrote about how when he was a student-reporter at UF, Carlson would make sure they got to eat lunch with the head football coach and get exclusive interviews with players. He also noted that Carlson would run a “press social” at the house of the head coach every Saturday night after home games so reporters could drink beers with the coach and get the inside scoop about why the team won or lost.

Naturally, there was an outpouring of tributes for Carlson on social media over the weekend.

[ University of Florida , Orlando Sentinel ]

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