Florida Gators

The Gators ended the season on a sour note for the first time in Urban Meyer's tenure as a head coach, losing to Michigan 41-35 in the Capital One Bowl in Orlando. My hat is off to Michigan for playing their hearts out for the retiring Lloyd Carr. In the process, Michigan played unquestionably their best game of the season and delivered by far their most significant win of the season.

Michigan did it by dominating both lines of scrimmage the way the Big 10 Conference teams have always done it, but also by showing some surprising speed, especially in their wide receivers. We all knew that WR Mario Manningham was the real deal, but where did Adrian Arrington come from?

This might be the most conflicted I have ever been as a Smackdown writer - so much to say, yet so little room.

Do I talk about the upcoming game with Michigan? I have to. What about the Heisman that Tebow won? I have to talk about that as well. And what about that early Christmas present that Santa left me just this morning on the front page of Yahoo.com? That's right. I am talking about the academic scandal that is rocking FSU right now. Do I talk about that too? You betcha!

I'll talk first about Michigan. We are playing a team that lost to Appalachian State to open the season, followed it with a loss to Oregon, but then got pretty good the rest of the way only losing to a couple of respectable opponents (Wisconsin and Ohio State) late in the season. Still, they are a Big 10 team so I think they'll have trouble with our team's speed. Their players will be playing their last game for Lloyd Carr who is retiring though, so they could be fired up.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about leftovers in my entire life. Not Thanksgiving leftovers mind you, but the leftovers from W.D.’s column from last week that I am about to spend the next 600 words or so carving up. Like you, I was absolutely floored when I read his pathetic little piece of writing last week, but knew it would only make it sweeter when he had to follow up Thanksgiving with his 4-year-old Seminole tradition of eating first turkey, then crow on the last weekend in November.

Let’s start with his comment about Meyer winning last year with Zook’s players and then not following it up with his own players this year. It is true we had a better year last year, but how could he tell the difference between Zook’s and Meyer’s players? At this point, Meyer has beaten FSU soundly with ANY players he has used. In addition, we are a top 10 team right now playing 75 percent freshmen and sophomores — kids all recruited by Meyer.

The Gators had a date with the Ole Ball Coach this weekend to wrap up their conference schedule for 2007. The fall weather is officially here, and the weather couldn’t have been any better for football Saturday afternoon in Columbia. The problem, however, was that we played at night. By the time toe met leather, the temperatures had dropped to the low 50s, and I had been sent scrambling to the trunk of my car to find a sweatshirt I forgot I owned and a towel for my dad to wrap around his legs at the game.

South Carolina provided the Gator fans with the usual seats you’d expect for any away game, but Section 906? Has anyone ever even heard of a Section 906 in a stadium? Turns out they were located up in the breeze of the south end zone. What a great way to break my dad in on his first UF road trip, or his first UF road trip with me, at least. Dad pointed out to me on the drive up to South Carolina that he also attended the only Gator game played in Athens in recent memory. Trey, do you remember that day? (Hint: 52)

The Gators pasted Vandy this weekend 49-22 in front of a football-starved homecoming crowd of 90,222. Due to three road games and a bye week, the Gators had not played in The Swamp in five weeks. I wondered before the season how this young team would react to not playing in front of the home crowd for the entire month of October and, looking back on it, I think the team handled it about as well as could be expected, losing a heartbreaker to LSU, getting a big win against a highly ranked Kentucky team, and then playing its worst game of the year against Georgia. All was forgotten about the road trip very quickly, though, as the team took the field and jumped all over Vandy early and often.

Classless. Flagrant. Over-the-top. Cheap. Dramatic. Brilliant. Effective. Gutsy. Passionate. Desperate. Emotional. Cathartic. Ingenious. Gamesmanship. Memorable. Hypocritical. Genius. Unprecedented. Brazen. Orchestrated. Disrespectful. Unnecessary.

A quick scan of the message boards and media Web sites Sunday morning revealed each of the words above used to describe the premeditated celebration by the entire Georgia team that took place in the end zone following Georgia’s first score of Saturday’s game. After Knowshon Moreno capped off an eight-play, all-run drive by diving over the pile and extending the ball over the goal line, the entire team left the sideline to join the offensive unit in the end zone for an extended celebration of dancing, jumping, taunting and yelling.

Hey W.D., I have a multiple choice question for you: What was that “beep … beep … beep” sound we all heard emanating from T-Town Saturday night? Was it
a) The moving truck (paid for by boosters) backing up to Saint Bobby’s house;
b) The ’Noles backing out of the Top 25 one week by losing to Wake and into obscurity the next week by losing to the Hurricanes;
c) Coach Bowden backing out of the lead for all-time D-I coaching wins;
or d) all of the above?
You guessed it! It was d) all of the above. Congratulations. You win another disappointing season.

Even I was rooting for the ’Noles this week. It is, in fact, the only day all year long that I admit to rooting for the ’Noles. After my trip to the Orange Bowl in 2003, I decided I disliked the ’Canes fans worse than I disliked the ’Noles fans, so every year since I have rooted for the dreaded enemy one, and only one, day per year. Alas, the ’Noles imploded again and another game/season slips away.

The Gators had the weekend off to heal and to prepare for a road trip to Lexington to play the surprising Wildcats of Kentucky.

Before the season started, I remember wishing we’d had that extra week before, rather than after, facing LSU. In the crazy college football season of 2007 it turns out that we can really use that extra week of preparation for Kentucky as well. Because, in case you missed it, Kentucky shocked the college football world by beating LSU Saturday evening in triple overtime. I’d like to think we softened LSU up a bit before they headed to Lexington and perhaps we had something to do with the upset, but really it looked like the Wildcats just wanted it more and they alone deserved all the credit for taking down the No. 1 team in the land.

I have never been a big saver of ticket stubs from sporting events — maybe I should be as the stubs from 13 out of 14 games last season would have made a great keepsake. However, I will save my ticket stub from Saturday’s game against LSU.

That game, more than any other I have ever attended, had everything that makes SEC football the best conference in college football and everything that makes college football the best sport in the land. Even in defeat, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the game and that it will be a game I’ll remember as long as I follow sports.

The Gators were bitten by the upset bug that spread like a full-fledged epidemic across the entire football bowl division Saturday, a day that saw seven of the top 13 go down to defeat (UF, WVU, Oklahoma, Texas, Oregon, Rutgers and Clemson) and the Nos. 1 and 8 teams (USC and Wisconsin) narrowly escape.

The Gators lost yet another heartbreaker to Auburn, the team that has always seemed to have our number, no matter our ranking or record. Credit Auburn for containing Tim Tebow on the many, many draw plays he ran — no other team has managed to do it. Also credit them for minimizing the damage done by Percy Harvin, but when you can count on 75 percent of the plays to end up in one of two players’ hands, it must make the job easier.