The Florida Gators, it seems, have been trudging through the desert of irrelevance for years.

Each step has been a battle — boots sinking into the endless sand, muscles burning, throat parched and skin scorched.

You can almost envision a beleaguered UF athletic director Scott Stricklin squinting into the relentless sun, scanning the horizon in search of something — anything — that could be considered shelter or shade.

But wait!

What’s that up ahead?

An oasis?

A glimmer of salvation?

A path out of this barren wasteland of futility and back to UF’s dominant days of athletic superiority?

Granted, maybe I’m being too melodramatic here and perhaps I’m overreacting, but is it so far-fetched to think this amazing UF basketball team has a chance to lead the school’s athletic program out of the wilderness and back to relevance?

The top-seeded Gators, who take on No. 4-seeded Maryland Thursday night in the Sweet 16, are the trendy pick to win the national championship. And if, by chance, that were to happen, it could well be the genesis of a Gator athletic awakening.

It seems almost unfathomable to many longtime fans that it’s been 17 years — almost an entire generation — since Gator Nation has experienced a national championship in the two sports that matter most — football and men’s basketball. But with Todd Golden’s basketball program playing as well — if not better — than any team in the country and Billy Napier’s football team finally showing signs of life, maybe the Gators are finally emerging from their years-long darkness retreat.

While much is being made about a football-centric conference like the SEC suddenly becoming the most powerful basketball conference in history, let us not forget that it was the Gators themselves who showed their league brethren that you could, in fact, be dominant in both sports.

Jeremy Foley, the legendary former athletic director at UF, made two of the greatest hires in modern college sports history when he plucked an unproven 29-year-old coach from Marshall named Billy Donovan to lead his basketball program and then outmaneuvered Notre Dame to hire football coach Urban Meyer.

Those two men ushered in the golden era of Gator athletics when UF simultaneously held national championships in football and basketball early in 2007 — the only school in modern history to accomplish such a feat. A few months later, Donovan’s Gators became the first school since the great Grant Hill-Christian Laettner Duke teams of 1992-93 to win back-to-back national championships. Meanwhile, Meyer’s Gators won two national championships in a three-year period from 2006 to 2008.

Gator Nation ruled the sports world back then with rock-star coaches and superstar players such as Tim Tebow and Percy Harvin in football and Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Corey Brewer in basketball. That famous UF rallying cry — “It’s great to be a Florida Gator!” — wasn’t just a cheer anymore; it was a reality that every other fan base in the country envied.

But then Meyer burned out and took a brief hiatus before ending up at Ohio State while Donovan left UF a few years later to make the jump to the NBA. And, sadly, the Gators slowly drifted downstream on the river of mediocrity.

Granted, UF has always had one of the top overall athletic programs in the country and continued to excel in other sports — baseball, softball, golf, track, swimming and gymnastics, to name a few — but it’s no secret that football and basketball define a program’s national identity.

A cavalcade of football coaches — Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen — each had their moments but ultimately failed to recapture the Meyer magic. Tasked with following in Donovan’s footsteps, Mike White had a respectable tenure at Florida, but he was battered and beaten by fan expectations. Unable to meet the impossibly lofty standard Donovan left behind, White ultimately departed for Georgia.

Now, at long last, there is literally and figuratively a “Golden” opportunity for the Gators to emerge from the darkness and into the national spotlight once again. The jury is still out on the football program, but Napier’s team ended last season on a four-game winning streak and have one of hottest young quarterbacks in the country — DJ Lagway — returning this season.

Golden’s basketball team has stormed through the SEC and NCAA Tournaments, proving itself as a legitimate championship contender. In his third season, Golden has implemented a brand of basketball that is both exciting and effective: fast-paced but disciplined. The Gators have the talent, the depth and swagger to win it all.

Of course, the journey is far from over and there is still a lot of work left to be done.

But at least there is hope.

At least there is a pathway out.

Is that a rainbow up ahead?

Is the relentless trudge through the desert almost over?

Will the Gators soon growl once again?

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