One of the more interesting debates on the Gator roundtable is whether Tim Tebow can join Ohio State legend Archie Griffin in the Multiple Heisman club.

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Fine job, men. Fine job indeed.

Wish you hadn’t allowed that garbage TD to make it a semi-respectable score there at the end, but thank you for defending SEC pride.

SEC bowl record: 7-2. (Can’t believe Florida made up 50% of the ‘2′. Horrifying. But at least the crystal football came back to the right conference.)

I do take some small measure of satisfaction in the fact that Ohio State is now 0-9 against SEC teams in bowl games. Ouch!

THE SETUP

Prior to dropping the Auburn game it was assumed that Florida could lose to LSU in Baton Rouge, win the rematch and still play for a National Championship.  The odds of beating the Tigers twice in the season (barring a significant injury to key performers) is slim and winning AT LSU will be the much more difficult of the task.  Before Auburn Florida would have gone in having nothing to lose and a good showing, even in a loss, could have been beneficial in the minds of voters.

All that is now history.  After a lackadaisical performance against Auburn the Gators have no margin for error.  Every game left on the schedule is now an elimination game for national title contention.  Florida can still win the SEC East despite losing two in a row (every other SEC team besides Kentucky already has one SEC loss and all remain on the schedule.  Should the Gators lose to LSU and win out only a 7-1 Kentucky team could keep Florida out of an SEC Championship Game appearance.  Given the Wildcat’s remaining schedule that is an unlikely occurrence.

THE CONSEQUENCE

The Auburn loss can also drag on Florida in the polls.  Last year Auburn finished 10-2 and the loss seemed understandable given the tough play in the league.  This year Auburn is likely to drop twice that number of games (or more) giving voters more reason to question the Gators resume.  Still with the dominant impression of the league at an all time high this affect could be minimized.  The last thing the Gators need are some national pundits screaming that Florida lost to a mediocre Auburn team that lost to Mississippi State and Arkansas or Ole Miss as well as LSU, Georgia, etc.  That’s not good PR for swaying poll voters. (more…)

From NWI.com:

Speed versus speed: When Florida defeated Ohio State last January in the Fiesta Bowl to win the national title, a popular theory was that the Gators triumphed because of superior speed.

But according to Illinois coach Ron Zook, who coached in Gainesville before arriving in Champaign in 2005, the perception of Southeastern Conference teams being faster than those in the Big Ten is misguided.

“In my mind, there’s not any difference,” Zook said. “We have every bit the speed they have in the South. There’s no question in my mind this league can compete with anyone in the country (in that regard).”

Er, excuse me?  Ron Zook?

You’d think the Zooker would have credibility in this department.  After all, he did coach in the SEC for a number of years (and not just as a head coach) before heading up to Big Ten country.

Unfortunately, the SEC team he coached was our Gators.  And he succeeded only in the “less with more” department for three seasons at Florida, while irritating Gator Nation with his incomprehensible statements and useless thoughts on college football.

And this is another one of them.  I’ll agree with one thing: “SEC Speed” is an overrated concept. While our conference is definitely the fastest top to bottom, there are fast teams outside of the SEC: Southern Cal, Texas, and Oklahoma come to mind.  But “Big Ten Slowness” is not overrated.  It was dramatically featured in last year’s BCS National Championship game as well as the Rose Bowl matchup between USC and Michigan.

Ron, the fact that in your ‘mind’ you have no doubt about the Big Ten’s ability to compete speed-wise is nothing less than another validation that the Big Ten IS slow.  Because you almost always get it wrong, buddy.  You have for the last five years.  And this is one’s no exception.

Simple explanation:

Florida schedule	Michigan schedule

If you scroll your mental DVR back to December of 2006, you’ll remember the endless debates and infighting over who more deserved an opportunity to play Ohio State in the BCS National Championship game. On one hand, you had Michigan, who was 11-1 at that time, fresh off a loss to Ohio State in “The Game.” On the other, you had Florida, the SEC Champion, who was 12-1, fresh off a victory over Arkansas in the SEC CG.

In retrospect, the debate seems silly even before one considers the eventual outcome of the two Big 10 “powers” in their respective bowl games. Michigan was not a conference champion. Their strength of schedule was not even close to that of the Gators. Nor had they maintained a late season winning streak. They didn’t have as many wins as Florida, and they’d already played the same team they hoped to go up against again. On paper, it would appear obvious to any dispassionate observer that Michigan had shot their load and squandered their chance.

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Much has been made of the recent dominance of Florida over Ohio State. What is being lost in this cavalcade of gloating and smack talking (some friendly, some obnoxious) is a peculiar development in college athletics. Which has the less statistical probability: that one school would win both the football and basketball championships in the same year, or that the same two schools would play for both the football and basketball championships in the same year? I’d have to guess that the latter is the far more unlikely.

For one school to dominate the landscape of major college sports in a year is surely a remarkable achievement; but the two-year run of both schools is quite startling. What happens if we look at these schools together? In basketball the two schools have a combined record of 129 wins to 11 losses, 3 regular season conference Championships, 3 conference tournament championships, 3 Final Four appearances and two national championships. In football they combine for a record of 45 wins to 7 losses, 3 conference championships, 3 BCS bowl appearances, 2 BCS Bowl wins and a National Championship.

The accepted belief is that in the modern era it is much more difficult for a program to exist at the highest level and that any dynasty will be short lived. The University of Miami and University of Southern California both had a great three year run with a BCS championship sandwiched between being just left out of the game the year before and losing the game the year after. With approximately twice as many basketball programs as football the closest to a mini dynasty seems to be making two Final Fours in a row (Michigan State in 1999, 2000, Kansas in 2002, 2003, Florida and UCLA in 2006, 2007). Given the cyclical nature of even the top athletic programs can there be a reversal to this trend? Can a handful of mega-programs begin dominate across the athletic spectrum?

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In a landscape full of supposed “know it all” sports columists like Mike Lupica of New York, Bob Ryan of Boston, Dan LeBatard of Miami and Michael Wilbon of Washington DC perhaps the whiniest, crybabiest bitch of them all is Mitch Albom.  Granted, what do these guys have in common?  None of them know anything about college athletics: not college basketball, not college football, not college baseball, not anything college related.  They live in a pro sports world where they rarely travel to a college event unless it’s a “marquee event” that they are forced to cover. 

So when one of these reporters speaks out on a college issue it’s the intellectual equivalent of asking a wino which type of Chablis to serve with pork.  But in the BCS controversy Mitch Albom has an additional factor to consider.  Not only is he a clueless, elitist, self-righteous pseudo-intellectual but he also gathers one of his paychecks (and got his start) from a newspaper (the Detroit Free Press) located just an hour from Ann Arbor, Michigan (home of the University of Michigan).  So his impartiality on the BCS controversy was . . . well to put it mildly . . . questionable.  Several national writers have come out recently to admit they had it wrong but not Mitch . . . nooooooooooo . . . definitely not the self-important little ‘know nothing’ Mitch Albom. (more…)

The “Holy God Yes YES YES!!!!11one” Award

To all Gators everywhere. National champions. Joy.

Also, put Chris Leak in the Ring of Honor, he has earned it.
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In an interesting article in the Myrtle Beach newspaper entitled Gators expose frauds in title game, Terry Massey says the following. 

But the Gators didn’t just expose Ohio State as an overrated team playing in a soft conference. It also pulled the curtain open on the BCS as an even bigger fraud.

Remember how close this game was to not happening? By only a few decimal points, to be exact. That’s how near the nation came to being tricked into believing that a rematch between Big Ten powers (and I use that term very loosely) Ohio State and Michigan should determine the national championship.

Knowing what we know now, the idea was ludicrous. The Wolverines were spanked like school girls by Southern Cal in the Rose Bowl, then the Buckeyes got the beat-down by a Florida team that was ranked fourth before a handful of poll voters came to their senses at the end of the season.

This is an interesting point.  Despite all the claims by pro-Michigan sports pundits prior to the bowl games that the poll voters were being deceived and the SEC was overrated, it seems as if the opposite was true.  They claimed the Big Ten was top heavy while the SEC was just a bunch of good but not great teams.  In the end Big Ten seems to have been the overrated conference last year as the perceived strength of its top two teams proved to be false.  This goes back to the never ending question of which team is best and deserving.  Is a one loss SEC team more deserving than a one loss Big Ten team?  To further confuse the issue, USC can also claim (quite convincingly) to be better than Big Ten number two team Michigan and to have played a much tougher schedule than any Big Ten team.  After the bowl embarrassments of Ohio State and Michigan, don’t LSU and USC have stronger claims to be the best team in the country than the Big Ten elites? (more…)

In true blog style, I present an article with no real structure!

Lesson one: anything can happen.  Kentucky beat Clemson, the Big East went undefeated in Bowl Play, Georgia Tech fielded an actual Quarterback, Randy Moss left Oakland and now wears a number 8 for USC (attitude and skills, but sadly not the hair), Adrian Peterson’s dad jinxed another game,  Bobby Bowden and JoePa both improved their coaching records without actually doing any coaching, and Boise State created a real life, super-awesome Disney movie in Arizona (complete with a Ginger Quarterback).

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