Everybody take a deep breath. Notice how the air seems sweeter, the colors more vivid? That stale hot dog which you’d have spat out just 4 short weeks ago tastes better than the finest sirloin? That simply means that college football has finally, mercifully, arrived.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh.

In recent years it’s become somewhat of a tradition to watch South Carolina open the season. The Gamecocks typically face off against a) an uncompetitive SEC team, i.e. Mississippi State, or b) a mediocre ACC team. Being an SEC fan, it’s generally good to get a win for the conference, but Florida fans don’t want it to be too good. One certainly doesn’t want a Steve Spurrier-coached team getting any undue confidence, particularly in their offense.

By this standard, South Carolina has performed brilliantly these past few seasons. And your resident patron and host, Gatorpilot, an outspoken anti-Spurs advocate, certainly appreciates yet another uninspiring USC win, one which joyfully beckons to another season of frustration and disappointment for Spur-dog. Anything which hastens the retirement of the former Florida icon, and ends the awkward love-hate phase of this long relationship between fans and coach, is also welcome.

7-3. Seven-to-freakin’-three. Really? Against NC State? The Wolfpack is unlikely to be competitive in the Almost Competitive Conference. No worries, Gamecock fans, there’s no rush to book those tickets to Atlanta. Am I still a bit bitter? Why, yes. I still remember Spurrier smugly proclaiming that his team was good enough to compete for an SEC Championship as recently 2006.

Kiss the rings, fellas. Kiss the rings.

Anyway, tonight was just a tasty little morsel previewing what Gators everywhere hope will be a magnificent season for the boys in orange and blue. The SEC is ours for the taking, ladies and gentlemen.

The opening weekend is full of excellent football. Beyond the obvious Charleston Southern matchup at 7PM on Saturday, we have Georgia taking on Oklahoma State and a prime-time national telecast featuring Alabama vs. Virginia Tech. By the way, kudos to both of these SEC teams for adding to their already difficult slate by scheduling Top 25 opponents. Instead of ‘guarantee’ games we get must-watch TV. Sadly, UF is behind in this regard, but then again, if your goal is to go wire-to-wire wearing the #1 label, why make things any more difficult?

Orange and Blue Hue is back and ready to rock. GO GATORS.

A marginal Big 10 team smacked the crap out of a marginal — okay, I’m being generous here — SEC team.

The victor: Iowa. 8-4 coming into the Outback Bowl, a venue which must surely favor the Gamecocks.

It was a painful 31-10 loss for South Carolina. You want to see a haunted man, who bears the weight of failure like a thousand pounds on his shoulders? Watch Steve Spurrier’s post-game press conference. And watch his eyes closely.

They contain rage, pain, misery, confusion, and the melted veneer of countless sleepless nights. The eyes of a former champion, an unbeaten spirit, and a powerful competitor… reduced to a man wandering the halls with no answers for the evils that ail him.

“I don’t know.” Count how many times Spurrier admits to being lost. He’s a head coach who doesn’t understand why his team won’t respond to his coaching, why his gameplans don’t work, why his hires don’t pan out.

The backdrop to this horror: the jarring laughter of people who will never understand Spurrier. The entire press conference felt like a freak show, with Spurrier in the center cage, taking jeers and laughs alike in exchange for his pain.

Spurrier’s answers were, at times, as awkward as Steve Ericson’s introduction.

Spurrier’s legend dies a little more every day.

I can’t hate this man. This is not the Steve Spurrier who once led the mighty Gators. This man is a shell of his former self.

Losing is eating him up, bit by bit, piece by piece.

Coach… it’s time.

In the name of all that is holy, end this tragic comedy which is your South Carolina coaching career.

South Carolina players say the 2008 Gators are better than their ‘06 championship counterparts.

WR Kenny McKinley believes the current Gators would beat the ‘06 team that routed Ohio State 41-14 for the title.

“This Florida team is a lot better than that team, honestly,” McKinley said. “They’ve got a lot of speed. Their quarterback starter Chris Leak was pretty good then, but Tim Tebow is a monster. Their defense, to me, is a lot better now.”

LB Eric Norwood said, “It’s kind of crazy, but this Florida team is a lot faster” than the ‘06 Gators. “I don’t how much faster you can get.”

C Garrett Anderson agreed and added, “They’re a bigger team and they’re very knowledgeable about what they do. They don’t mess up a lot.

“You watch most teams on film and try to scheme against their defense, and you’ll see a play where something went wrong, like two guys ran into each other. You watch Florida, they don’t do that.”

It’s easy to see why the Gamecock players favor the 2008 Gators. They nearly beat the 2006 team, falling 17-16 at The Swamp after having two field goals and an extra point blocked. This year in Gainesville, Florida thrashed Carolina 56-6.

True that. It was South Carolina’s second ‘old school’ style thrashing at the hands of the Gators in as many years.

What’s most interesting about the comparison is that the ‘Cocks lauded the ‘08 defense as better than ‘06.
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Proof that God loves college football: the black leather Citadel purse

Just kidding. How can you hate Citadel? This is basically a glorified bye-week. Florida will get to double-digit wins under Meyer and the Gators will have a chance to prepare for FSU — not that the coaches will publicly admit anything of the sort. Ideally Tim Tebow will be done at halftime and John Brantley, Emmanuel Moody and the rest of the backups will get some much-needed playing time.

Some Citadel-week thoughts, in random order:

1) I looked closely at the USC game and determined that Florida’s offense still has plenty of room for improvement. Of Florida’s 10 first-half possessions, only 6 “count” in terms of an actual kickoff and “reasonable” starting field position — the other four were considered “NA” due to turnovers or end-of-half. Of those 6 possessions, there were two fumbles, three punts and a single TD. Not so great. In the second half, the Gators had 8 possessions, and four went for TDs. Two of those TD drives started inside USC’s 42-yard line — again, thanks to defense (one possession started at USC’s 40-yard line after an INT) and special teams. If the Gators didn’t enjoy such great field position, it’s hard to imagine that they’d have gotten four touchdowns out of that deal. What it boils down to is this: without a superlative special teams and defensive effort, the Gators would probably have scored 28 to 35 points in this game. It’s not a big stretch to imagine that without such great starting field position in the second half they might have been held to as few as 21. Our boys on the offense better be thinking about playing better — Bama and/or a possible Big 12 opponent will be a lot better at scoring points than South Carolina, and likely won’t be as turnover-prone.

2) Speaking of turnovers, the Gators have “made their own luck” this year. Turnovers in big games have helped a great deal. Versus Georgia, Matthew Stafford was intercepted three times. Against LSU, the Gators picked off human-turnover-machine Jarrett Lee twice and recovered a fumble. And against South Carolina, the Gators intercepted three Gamecock passes and scooped up a fumble on the 1-inch line on special teams. Those are the three best teams Florida has faced, and in every one the defense has put the offense in a position to capitalize. And they have certainly taken advantage of those opportunities… but does anyone remember what happened the last time we lost the turnover battle?

3) The real story of the 2008 Gators should be the fact that this is a great team as represented by all three units — and I’m not convinced that the defense isn’t superior to the offense right now.

4) Looking ahead, I expect FSU to be a tricky game. If the Gators can blow the game open early, the ‘Noles will fold quickly. They are not a team that likes to be punched in the mouth. But if they fail to do that, and FSU starts to have hope and belief in themselves, this one could get pretty tight. Let’s not forget that Florida has won in Doak Campbell precisely two times in the last 19 years, and both of those wins were damn close (20-13 in 2004 and 21-14 in 2006). And for FSU, this is the Superbowl. Beat UF, and the season is saved. Better go in ready for a cage match.

5) Kentucky looked pretty bad against North Carolina on Tuesday night. Their uniforms looked worse: the “shorts” now fall well below the knees and look like high-water waders. Please tell me that Florida will not succumb to this insane new look for college basketball unis. EPIC FAIL.

I’m the sort that thinks there’s far more to be learned from the opposing teams’ post-game pressers. After all, what do you expect Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow to say? It’s the standard stuff: keep the focus, we can still play better, guys stepped up and made plays today, etc. Meanwhile, you can get real gems out of Stephen Garcia (”that’s the fastest defense I’ve ever played”), Kenny McKlinley (”we got KILT”) and our formerly beloved head ball coach (”Percy Harvin would be running for 200 yards a game if he started for some other teams”). Enjoy.

    • Stephen Garcia and Kenny McKinley
    • Steve Spurrier
    • USC defensive coordinator and players

This is getting ridiculous.

Florida has defeated its last six opponents by a total of 299 to 63. That is not a misprint. I will state it once more: 299 to 63. In the SEC!

As a fan, even I sometimes feel the same bewilderment coaches such as Spurrier, Miles and Richt have felt when facing the Gators. It’s not fair — not even close. This is like the U.S. Air Force vs. Al Queda shooting bottle rockets out of caves. Like Andre the Giant vs. Pee-Wee Herman. Like… oh, hell, you get the picture.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe your 2008 Florida Gators could — could — possibly be the best team to take Florida Field in the history of this football program. Two important games remain against two good teams, and then the ultimate contest. Florida must win all three for to earn that title.

But right now, would you bet against them?

Can you believe we have guys like Chris Rainey and Emmanuel Moody to bring into play in the 4th quarter when the Gators already enjoy a 40+ point advantage? How in the world doesn’t Moody get more carries? Well, duh, because Jeff Demps is out there too. And Percy Harvin. The list never ends.

I believe it’s critical to recognize the fact that South Carolina and Georgia are good SEC teams. LSU is a talented team going through some rebuilding stages but are easily in the top fifth of college football.

Florida whipped the hell out of them.

This is unprecedented. If there is a more dominant streak than Florida’s last six games in all of college football — perhaps in the history of this sport — I’d like to see it.

More on the game shortly. But for now… I am still in shock. Pay homage to this team, to this coaching staff, to the amazing things they’ve accomplished so far this season. And with any luck, the best is yet to come.

Four more games. Four more wins, and Florida finds itself in Miami playing for a crystal football. It’s the last stage of the journey these Gators started in September. And winning this game is obviously of critical importance if success is to be achieved. This is an SEC contest, but in reality its conference implications are nil. This is a spoiler game for the ‘Cocks, and a national title elimination game for Florida.

Most feel the Gators should pull away in this game, and hopefully they will. Our team is facing a brilliant offensive mind and a defense which is 100% improved from 2007. And Spurrier will have the best two quarterbacks of his tenure at USCe alternating in and out of the game, much like we saw in the Swamp in 1997 when FSU came to play, ranked #1 in the nation. Remember how that one turned out?

Citadel is ‘in the bag’. This game is as far from the bag as you can get. This is a game the Gators can and will lose if they don’t demonstrate the gameday intensity they’ve been using to smash opponents for the last seven weeks. South Carolina’s three losses were by a touchdown or less. Would you feel less confident if Spurrier came into the Swamp 8-2 or 9-1 instead of 7-3? Well, the ‘Cocks are three or four plays away from being perfect in the W-L column.

The Gators are 60 minutes away from concluding the SEC season with an Eastern division championship, a 7-1 conference record, and another week in the BCS title conversation. Play like champions today, boys.

Feel free to share your comments in the O&B Hue Gameday Open Thread, below.

Gamecock Man is a passionate, knowledgeable, and level-headed South Carolina fan who is warmly received as a commenter here at O&B Hue. He’s also a contributor to the most excellent Garnet and Black Attack, which as usual, is so much better than our humble blog that it’s depressing to think about. His opinion of Yours Truly can be found in the right sidebar under “What Dey Say”. Despite his misgivings about Gator Nation’s mental state — okay, my mental state — he has agreed to share some thoughts on the upcoming game between Florida and USCe. (In prototypical blog spit-swap style, we agreed to do the same. Our thoughts appear here.) Here we go…

Greetings, and welcome. Let’s get started. Explain how South Carolina can lose early to Vandy and Georgia (both losses by a single TD) and then go on to win six of seven games, including a road victory over the same Ole Miss team that beat Florida in the Swamp.

Why do you have to bring that up? Man, would I love to have that one back. 8-2 would be really sweet right now!

First of all, we committed a number of uncharacteristic errors in that game. We’ve been pretty solid on special teams this year, but we allowed the Dores to recover a punt that bounced off one of our return blockers leg as well as block a field goal. Those mistakes led to points for Vandy and missed opportunities for us and pretty much cost us the game. It wasn’t like Vandy blew us off the field; we outgained them by around 100 yards and generally looked like the better team for most of the game. In the end, though, Vandy came up with some huge plays when they needed them and we didn’t. Not having Kenny McKinley to help us move the ball late in the game may have hurt.
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Spurrier and his newest offensive wrinkle: Ric Flair

If you’re Steve Spurrier, you’ve got to love how this sets up. Florida’s Saturday date with the ‘Cocks is unheralded and will probably be extremely low on the hype-meter. It’s not a 12:30 game, thank heavens, but starting at 3:30 we won’t have the benefit of an evening Swamp crowd either.

Other reasons nobody’s getting worked up over this game: Tim Tebow made a Heisman statement last year when the Gators beat South Carolina in Columbia, 51-31. The ‘Cocks lost to Vandy this year, not to mention LSU and Georgia — Florida spanked all three by a combined score of 142-45. No one expects the Palmetto State Poultry to win.

Honestly, if you’ve got the unlucky draw of playing Florida, you couldn’t ask for a better way to slip into Gainesville completely under the radar.

Reasons to be nervous about this game:

1) After losing two games early, the Gamecocks have now won six out of seven.
2) Stephen Garcia is the best quarterback Spurrier’s had yet at South Carolina. After sitting out the early part of the season, he is now under center and getting better on a regular basis, although Spurrier intends to alternate between Garcia and Smelley.
3) South Carolina has the best overall defense — statistically, anyway — in the SEC.
4) It’s Steve Spurrier, and he’s always in the game.
5) It’s Steve Spurrier, and he would like to beat Florida over any other team on his schedule.
6) It’s Steve Spurrier, and he would dearly love to spoil Florida’s national title hopes despite gaining little if nothing in return for the victory, considering the ‘Cocks have already lost the East.
7) I hate Steve Spurrier. (Okay, that’s not a reason to be nervous, but I thought I’d throw that in there.)

Reasons to be confident about this game:

1) This team lost to Vandy, the team we destroyed 42-14, and Georgia, the team we beat 49-10. Oh, and they also lost to LSU, the team we beat 51-21.
2) Florida is playing at a level I’ve never seen before, on all three units. The Gators have been insanely good since the Ole Miss loss, pulverizing teams by an average score of 50 to 10.
3) It’s in the Swamp, with title implications on the line, so this and every remaining game is an absolute must-win. The boys will be ready to play.
4) South Carolina may have a good defense, but they will have no answer for Florida’s offense. I’m not sure there’s a team in college football that does.
5) Florida’s defense leads in scoring defense and in my opinion is better than their South Carolina counterparts.
6) Stephen Garcia has never played in an environment like this before.
7) I hate Steve Spurrier. (Okay, that’s not a reason to be confident, but I thought I’d throw that in there.)

Score prediction: UF 38, South Carolina 17. Go Gators.

O&B Hue is a joint effort between me and my esteemed colleagues. Gatorpilot != O&B Hue. But I’m still allowed to use my voice to crow about a Spurrier loss.

Ever since Spurrier came back to the SEC East, I’ve absolutely despised him. The only way he achieves success is by forcing my beloved Gators into failure.

I love the Gators. I don’t love Spurrier. I will love him again someday. But during the regular season, I want him to suffer.

Spurrier says he’s a Gator. But his goal every year is to wreck our season — assuming his goal is to win the SEC East. And of course that is his goal.

He chose this path.

On a warm Thursday night, he went down to Vandy — for the second year in a row. It doesn’t hurt that I love Vandy and root them to victory in any game that doesn’t involve Florida. They deserve this. And so does Spurrier.

South Carolina is truly the graveyard of once-great coaches. If Spurrier can’t succeed there, no one can.

I remind you: this is Spurrier’s 4th year as the Cocks’ head coach. His 4th year.

It is a hell of a verdict for Gamecock fans. The significance of Spurrier’s inability to compete in the Palmetto State after four years of recruiting, and “coachin’ up” is not lost on anyone in college football. Not the fans, not the pundits, not the coaches.

Nor the recruits.

Spurrier’s failure has signed South Carolina’s death sentence. Who will come after him, expecting success?

Orr made a critical error when he chose to “come home” to South Carolina. His goal undoubtedly included embarrassing our beloved Gators, embarrassing the administration which has been integral to our success, and embarrassing our fanbase.

But who’s embarrassed now?