The 1984 Florida Gators football team will finally get the spotlight this weekend. But barring a Spielberg-like plot twist, that team’s ultimate accomplishment will not make an appearance.

If you look hard enough, you can find “1984 SEC Championship” posters, T-shirts and paperweights for sale on the internet. But no matter how hard anyone looks, they can’t find the 1984 SEC championship trophy.

Not that UF has looked very hard, mind you.

Consider that a small wrong in Florida’s attempt to make things right with the greatest team in school history. While that claim is debatable, there’s no question it is the most forsaken team to ever wear orange and blue.

After 51 seasons of wandering the SEC desert, the Gators won the conference football title. Generations of fans could finally die in peace.

Then the SEC stripped the title, and the fear of God/NCAA investigators was seared into UF’s soul. The University Athletic Association wanted 1984 to never happen again, which was perfectly understandable.

Not so understandable was what happened to the players. It was as if UF divorced itself from a rocky marriage and didn’t want anything to do with the kids.

The kids couldn’t help but notice. They resented being airbrushed out of UF history, especially since the arrival of NIL. The illegal perks a few of them got would all fit into the glove box of Carson Beck’s $300,000 Lamborghini.

“We love the University of Florida,” former Florida offensive lineman Lomas Brown said. “We just want the school to love us the way we love it.”

UF will show some love at Homecoming Weekend. The Boys of ’84 will be recognized at the Kentucky game. John L. Williams will be Mr. Two Bits.

He was one of three first-round NFL draft picks UF had at tailback that year. Every starter on the offensive line would make All-SEC in their careers. The major polls wouldn’t recognize teams on probation, but The Sporting News and the New York Times declared Florida national champions.

With four decades of catching up to do, it should be quite a reunion. But I can’t help thinking something will be missing.

And boy, do I mean missing.

The last known sighting of the SEC championship trophy was Labor Day Weekend in 1985. It had been locked in a glass case on the floor outside the UAA office at Florida Field.

“It’s somewhere around here, collecting cobwebs,” assistant athletic director Norm Carlson told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. “I went up to (coach) Galen Hall and asked him if he knew where it was, and he said, ‘No, do you?”

The UAA secretary joked she’d taken karate lessons to protect the trophy in case SEC came for it. But commissioner Boyd McWhorter said the SEC was not going to send repo men to Gainesville.

“The trophy to me, as I’ve said all along, is symbolic,” McWhorter said. “The official records show we have no conference champion for 1984, that the title was vacated. Any trophy to the contrary, notwithstanding, doesn’t mean anything.”

Maybe not to him. To Florida fans, the trophy was more sacred than the Ark of the Covenant. But UAA officials apparently feared that merely looking at it might make their faces melt.

Yes, I’m channeling the final couple of scenes in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” They make a perfect metaphor for the drama that’s run for 40 years.

UF officials are confident the trophy is somewhere in the nooks, crannies and storage rooms under the West stands of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. But nobody knows where.

I’m not sure they want to know. Maybe 1984 is still a tad taboo, but the 2006 and 2008 SEC championship trophies are proudly displayed at the Heavener football complex.

Over at the F Club, there is an SEC championship trophy. It’s from the 1955 cross-country meet.

That’s just one of the thousands of pieces of hardware UF teams have won over the years. Most are in storage, but none have the historical significance of the Ark of the 1984 Covenant.

In Steven Spielberg’s movie, the Nazis opened the Ark and a firestorm of spirits burst out. Gestapo henchman Arnold Toth stared at the Angel of Death and his face melted like a gas candle.

In the next scene, Indiana Jones is back in Washington D.C., arguing that the Ark needs to be studied. Army Intelligence bureaucrat Maj. Eaton told Jones his assistance is no longer needed, and that top men would handle further research.

“Who?” Jones asked.

“Top… men,” Eaton replied.

Then the camera cuts to a big wooden crate being slowly wheeled into Hangar 51, a massive warehouse stuffed with identical crates.

Hangar 51, meet the underbelly of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

To their credit, Top Men at UF decided it was time to excavate the past. They are giving the Boys of ’84 a long-overdue hug.

It just would have been nice to let them hoist the 1984 SEC championship trophy at midfield as 90,000 fans cheered. I’m pretty sure nobody’s face would have melted.

There would have been only smiles over finally reuniting with a long, lost friend.