Titletown

Gators 84, Buckeyes 75

Well....looks like I need to buy a National Champs t- shirt with a little velcro patch, so I can attach a little football and basketball, depending on the time of year.

Seriously, what a year for the Gators!

Admittedly, I'm not much of a basketball fan, but it is amazing what this team accomplished. In this day and age, it is rare for a team that accomplished so much, so early, to come back and go for it again......especially in basketball! They are a team, in a time in which the sport is defined by individuals. Kudos to Noah and company!

Can't wait for Tebow to come out firing in the fall to defend the 'other' championship....

The Horror of Technology

Orwell was right. Technology will be the death of society....at least mine. I had a near catastrophe with my computer last night. After hunkering down to a nice replay of the 1995 Florida-Florida State football game (thanks again Mike!), I decided to install iTunes to my laptop, thereby accessing my 100 GB of music files for portable listening. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Well, after 12 hours of file reading, initialization, etc...I awoke this morning to the horrible realization that over 50 GBs of music was missing from my external hard drive. Good grief!! Although I had drank some Tonas last night, I hadn't had enough to do something stupid enough to erase 600 CDs worth of music off my hard drive!!! Anyway, with Mike's visit 4 days away, I knew I'd catch a lot of grief if I didn't have the 50 or so Rolling Stones albums that he sent me!! Well, to make a long story short, somehow the half of my music library ended up on my laptop harddrive. How it got there, I haven't a clue....

Technology is to be feared... The day I understand it, is the day I also understand women....two of life's greatest mysteries.

Shock and Awe...Urban Warfare In The Desert!

GATORS WIN. NATIONAL CHAMPS ONCE AGAIN!!!!!

That has to be my favorite football game of all-time. From a purely selfish standpoint, it couldn't have gone any better had I scripted it. It was like when I used to play Atari football when I was a kid, manipulating both joysticks, so the 'blue guys' could dominate the 'red guys.' I would pretend that the blue team was Florida, while the red team was the Dawgs. Well....last night, they were the Buckeyes...

After the opening kickoff TD, two thoughts quickly raced into my head. First, and foremost, I was afraid that Ohio State was going to match the Gators speed and play more physically. Ted Ginn sure made everyone look slow on that play. The other, lesser thought, running around in my noggin was, maybe this play is an anomoly. I remember a Florida-Miami game when Zook was coach, when Devin Hester returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown, and Florida went on to completely dominate...(only to ultimately lose in grand-Zook fashion.) Anyways, I can't talk about Zook right now! Simply put, Ohio State had no answer for Florida's defensive line...They were too quick, like bookends firing through the line every snap. Florida had too many weapons, and it was an ugly, ugly game for objective viewers. I can't really articulate much more right now, but suffice it to say, I will probably never enjoy a blowout football game any more than the one I witnessed last night. I sure hope Urban Meyer doesn't want anything to do with the NFL!

Signing Day for recruiting promises to be a fun one this year..........

Are You Ready For Some Football?

Long time since I last posted...We're getting ready for a little New Year's football. I can't wait for the the big showdown in Glendale...a week from Monday, we're going to find out who's No.1....Numero Uno...The Big Enchilada. Grandaddy Of Them All....

Meanwhile, we've been inundated with some lesser bowls this week. It was nice to see Alabama get their coachless hearts broken in the Poulan Independence Bowl. Today, we get Spurrier's Gamecocks v. an underrated potent Houston Cougars team. Should be interesting. But back to 'The Game'.

The pundits, my friends, and seemingly everyone else, save Mark May and I, aren't giving the Gators a shot at this thing. Heisman winner Troy Smith and the Buckeyes are the consensus pick to roll over the Gators and expose them for the charlatans that they seemingly.

Not so fast my friend! Ohio State does have speed and talent at the skilled positions. Fact. They've scored a ton of points vs. weak Big 10 opponents, shutting down anemic offenses like Michigan State, Penn State, Illinois, Indiana, et al. They shut down a good Texas team as well. But, it should be noted that Texas was a quite different ball club early in the year, before they established Colt McCoy as their starting quarterback! (think Arkansas' offense without McFadden v. Southern Cal in the opener) Further, they didn't shut down the only other potent offense they faced (Michigan).

On offense, Ohio State overwhelmed slower, sometimes smaller defenses, with an array of skilled players, coming from all angles. 3-4 capable, future pro prospects lined up on any given play, with a mobile, accurate, poised QB at the helm.....the stuff National Championships are made of. Ask Gino Toretta how good it must've felt, cruising through a regular season with innumerable weapons in his arsenal, facing the Boston Colleges of the world with fast NFL receivers.

Enter 1992 Alabama! Win or lose, I think that Troy Smith will face a defense that he isn't accustomed to.

On the other side of the ball, Florida counters with its own stable of WRs and RBs destined for the NFL. Percy Harvin leads this charge. The electrifying super Frosh enters this game as the key component of the Gator attack. Under-utilized and oft-injured in the regular season, Harvin came into his own during the F$U and Arkansas games. How Ohio State defends against him will be a big story of the game. Also, senior Deshawn Wynn will start his final game in his somewhat disappointing Gator career. The Cincinnati native was once considered the 'other guy' in the state, behind Maurice Clarett in the recruiting wars for the prized Ohio RBs. He has a chance to end his career with an exclamation point. But, most of all, Chris Leak is the guy that I'm going to be thinking mostly of.

Leak came to Florida as the heralded wonder boy...a cool cucumber, dedicated, talented, and focused on bringing glory to the Gators. Well.....it just didn't turn out quite that way! In fact, poor Chris Leak had to endure 3 offensive coordinators, 2 head coaches, and a radical shift in offensive philosophy (imagine if Danny Wuerffel had been asked to run the spread option!). Compounding this fact, he endured possibly the most polarizing epoch in Gator football history, the Zook years. In ways, he personified the era. He was the prototypical Zook recruit, a guy promised early playing time, a stable of talent surrounding him, and the opportunity to win championships in a 'non-Spurrier' fashion. (Well, it proved to be non-Spurrier alright! )

Leak began studying the Zook/Zaunbrecher offense, shortly after his much publicized committment to the orange and blue, proclaiming that he'd bring championships to the Gator Nation. He helped recruit several other blue chippers by his mere presence, notably Andre Caldwell and Chad Jackson. At any rate, he studied and played his way into the starting job as a true freshman, at one point, defeating the eventual No.1 LSU Tigers and highly ranked Dawgs. As would be the case with the 'Zook years' however, the SEC title eluded him.

In year 2, Zook replaced Zaunbrecher with Larry Fedora, presenting Leak with new challenges, learning a new offense in year 2. In what would be Zook's swan song as coach, Leak managed to see the ultimate highs and lows (a lowly loss to Miss.St and the first road win vs. F$U in over 15 years). Year 3 promised to be an improvement, right? Well, the coaching got better, but Leak was asked to learn yet another offense, this time the cooky West Coast spread option...Leak regressed, as he went from a prodigy QB to a bumbling veteran, getting sacked and looking confused for much of the year. Luckily, the team got better, and covered his mistakes and ineptitude. After beating Georgia, Tennessee, and F$U, the SEC title still eluded him, as that pain in the ass Spurrier ironically denied the Gators a trip to Atlanta.

So.....enter year 4. Same offense, same coach. Beat Tennessee, Beat Georgia, Beat L$U, Beat F$U....even Beat South Carolina (thanks to 2 blocked FGS!)...SEC Title.....Yet, poor Chris Leak is dismissed as a bumbling square peg in a round hole. A player not equipped to run the Urban Meyer offense. At one point in the season, he was booed at home when the new prodigy, Tim Tebow, was yanked in favor of the veteran one-time star. How bad can it get for a 4 year starter that is about to play for the National Championship?! Well...all that can be erased if ole Chris Leak just plays like Chris Leak. He doesn't have to do anything special, he just needs to ooze the character, leadership, and moxy that he has demonstrated for these 4 tumultuous years. He does that, and I think he'll go out with the one thing he promised after the 2002 Army All-American High School Game, when he donned the Gator hat and told America that he was bringing a championship to Gainesville....In the end, he'll probably go down as one of my 3 favorite Gators of All-Time. (Leak, Emmitt Smith, and Ciatrick Fason) Ironically, none (aside from Leak) won any championships at Florida. Smith and Fason excelled for some subpar Gator squads, yet I loved the way they carried the football (and the team when need be) in the non-Spurrier days.

Well....there you have it! Speaking of Spurrier, I'm going to check the TV and see how he's doing against that tough little Conference USA opponent. hehehehe

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays, one and all. As of today, only a select few of you are receiving this beacon of goodwill from the banana republic. I'm holding off on going 'public' until I get a handle on this blog business. Then, watch out! Total propaganda of his 'Bob-ness', Leadbelly, Florida Football, Braves Baseball, and killing coral snakes with machetes.

For those of you that didn't know it already, I butchered a coral snake in our front yard. Seems he was trying to trick-or-treat at the Atkinsons house. Brodie actually found him, mistaking him for the great legless, banded iguana. Jorge and I quickly dispatched him into serpent la-la land. Upon consulting with our community, we were given advice to stake out the perimeter of our residence with garlic. I guess we'll kill two birds with one stone.....no Dracula, no coral snakes! At any rate, we're preparing for the holidays. I'm making cds for our employees, as they can't get enough rock-n-roll...So, I'm obliging them. Cds cost about 20-25 dollars a piece and the average Nica that is fortunate enough to be working, makes about 150/month. So...there you have it.

We are reminded every day how truly blessed each of us are. Nicaragua is a sobering place.