Titles Town: Florida's remarkable run of recent national championships

Florida softball's second national championship, added to the growing trophy case belonging to one of the best athletics programs in the country on Wedneday, is really just the latest for the Gators, who have won so many (35 now) that a debate over the "greatest" of them is difficult to even begin.

That championship does, however, put Florida's recent success in rarefied air.

Per GatorZone, Wednesday's national title was the 26th Florida has earned under Jeremy Foley, tying him with UCLA's Dan Guerrerro for most national championships claimed under a sitting athletic director. It also gives Florida as many national championships as any team in the country since 2006 and 2008; the Gators are tied with USC in both regards.

Here, though, is the kicker:

Florida is the only school in the nation that has captured multiple national championships in each of the last six years.

For more than half a decade, Florida has come away from every academic year with not just one, but (at least) two national championships.

You've heard of Title Town? Gainesville, since 2009-10, has been Titles Town.

Florida detractors — of whom there are many; as it turns out, celebrating Florida's all-around excellence in athletics with a pithy sobriquet can make some non-affiliated folks mad! — will point out that Florida has lacked some success in the "prestige" or "revenue" sports of football, men's basketball, or baseball during that time span.

But since 2009-10, the beginning of that string of multiple national titles — Gators teams have won 13 since the 2009-10 academic year, for the record — Florida has also played in a BCS bowl, made a Final Four (and three other Elite Eights), and been to the College World Series three times (with another trip possible this year) and the championship series of it once.

Arguably, given the past successes of Florida's "prestige"/"revenue" sports, like the only back-to-back national championships in men's basketball this century, or the unprecedented and unequaled capture of national championships in football and men's basketball in the same academic year, this really is a "down" period for Florida athletics.

If that argument holds, though, one shudders to think of just how dominant Florida will be when it combines success in those "more important" sports with success in the "lesser" sports the Gators have come to dominate of late.