What do Florida’s championship coaches all have in common?

J.C. Deacon got a look at himself last week. Considering the surroundings, he couldn’t help liking what he saw.

“It’s awesome,” Florida’s golf coach said.

It is arguably the most coveted reward a coach can get for winning a national championship. Sure, there’s the adulation and a ring and a nice bonus. But winning a title at UF brings something more.

A Batesy.

It’s a portrait of the coach that hangs in the Championship Room at Spurrier’s Gridiron Grille. What looks like a private dining room to the uninitiated has become a must-see for Florida fans.

“We’ve had thousands and thousands of people who wanted to see this room,” said Fred Wehbe, the restaurant’s managing partner.

To Gator Nation, it’s like the Louvre — if Mona Lisa were wearing a UF visor. And if James Bates had been Leonardo da Vinci, she probably would be.

Like da Vinci, Bates is something of a Renaissance Man. The world first became aware of him as a captain of UF’s 1996 championship team.

He became a TV analyst, Emmy winner, college instructor and all-around Man About Gainesville. His main calling card is painting. It’s a passion he pursues with no formal training.

“I’m always kind of asking myself, ‘Am I doing this right? Should I be doing this differently?’” Bates said.

He must be doing something right. Since selling his first painting in 2005, Bates has become as popular as an artist as he was an All-SEC linebacker. That made him the obvious choice when Wehbe came up with the Championship Room concept.

“You’re looking at the Gator legacy,” Wehbe said.

And it’s looking back at you if you have a meal in the room. The folk-art faces begin with Buster Bishop, who coached the men’s golf team to the 1968 NCAA championship. To his left is the mustachioed Randy Reese, who led the men’s and women’s swimming teams to four titles.

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Follow the walls and you get to Andy Brandi, Becky Burleigh, Billy Donovan, Mike Holloway, Tim Walton and more. With Deacon’s addition, there are 19 portraits in all. At the bottom of each is a signature.

“Batesy.”

That’s what Spurrier began calling Bates 30 years ago. The name stuck, though the art has come a long way.

Bates got his start, sort of, when teammates got in trouble. He’d draw cartoons of them on the UF locker room whiteboard.

His roommate, quarterback Eric Kresser, was a pretty good artist. Bates asked him to paint a picture he’d give his fiancé for Christmas one year.

Kresser took the job but got swamped with other things. He’d seen Bates’s doodles and told him to just paint the present himself.

Bates winged it, painting a landscape of the Little Pigeon River in Tennessee, where he proposed to his wife-to-be.

“She loved it,” Bates said.

He got the painting bug. Bates started visiting galleries and conjuring artistic visions. His style quickly evolved into something colorful, comedic, funky, folksy – Batesy.

“I feel like I put my heart into art, and that’s why people like it, I guess,” he said.

Many of his pieces come with story-telling captions. Like the one of Spurrier telling players, “You can drink a few beers and still be a Gator. But you can’t smoke pot.”

There’s no verbiage on the portraits, though Bates did throw a few small personal touches. Like the vein sticking out of baseball coach Kevin O’Sullivan’s neck, inspired by one of Sully’s run-ins with umpires.

There’s the mole on Urban Meyer’s forehead. At last week’s event, Wehbe whipped out his phone to show a picture of Meyer standing in front of the painting, laughing while pointing at the mole.

Wehbe also has a picture of gymnastics coach Jenny Rowland, who’s come tantalizingly close to winning an NCAA title. She’s in the Championship Room, smiling and looking longingly at the portraits.

Then there’s one of Billy Napier grinning in front of a blank canvas.

What would fans give for that artistic vision to come true?

It’s never easy, but some coach is going to win another national championship at Florida. And when that day arrives, Leonardo da Bates will have his paintbrush raring to go.

David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidEWhitley

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: James Bates is painting the pictures of success at Florida