Orange and Blue Debut ‘08 is over.

Impressions:

Chris Rainey

Everyone’s saying he’s a future star and he well could be. He racked up 130 yards of offense and made some amazing juke-you-outta-your-jock moves that an SEC back has to make if he’s going to break the big one.

His size (5′ 7″? He looked shorter than Erin Andrews!) is obviously always going to be a liability. But in college, that’s okay as long as you make up for it with other things. See: Brandon James, Percy Harvin, etc. He is not a great pass-blocker and probably never will be. His presence on the field will flash a RB pass or handoff and that that will be tough. But once you get over those negatives… wow! He is the real deal. I can’t wait to see an offensive set which includes Rainey and Harvin. For what it’s worth, Harvin and Rainey apparently alternate winning in sprint races and such in practice. Yeah, kid’s fast.
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You think of the Tennessee-Florida game and you never think “easy victory.”

But did you know that Florida’s 30-year record over Tennessee is not too far behind their ‘total ownership’ of the Georgia Bulldogs in the WLOCP (World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party) series?

The Gators have won 15 games to Tennessee’s 6 in that span. (1990 marks the first year that the series was played annually.) From ‘76 to ‘85 the Gators won all four of the rivalry’s matchups. And from 1993 to 1997, at the height of Steve Spurrier’s demented powers, the Gators rolled Smokey uncharitably, winning games by lopsided amounts (31-0 in 1994 and 62-37 in 1995) before losing an OT game in Knoxville, 20-17, in 1998. The win fueled the Vols’ championship run of that year.

But in ‘99 and ‘00, the Gator victories continued. Coming into the 2001 matchup in Gainesville — postponed to early December due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — Phil Fulmer had only managed two wins over the Gators during his tenure at Rocky Top. But he managed to send Steve Spurrier to the NFL on a sour note, winning 34-32. Fulmer also exorcised some Tennessee demons by providing the Vols with a win in the Swamp for the first time since 1971.

In 2002, Ron Zook shocked the Volunteer and Gator Nation alike by beating the highly ranked Vols in Knoxville. But in ‘03 and ‘04, the Zookified Gators dropped two consecutive games to Fulmer. Two wins in a row over Florida was a first for the Big Guy in Orange, and Tennessee fans ate it up like Phat Phil on a Krispy Kreme bender.
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Thanks to Urban Meyer, the University of Florida coaching staff, and our outstanding football team, the Swamp has undergone some recent renovations in the “scorekeeping” category.

The first image shows the south endzone. Note the new signs that replace the old painted block lettering. I’m not sure I really like this; the painted version looked timeless while this will clearly look dated at some point in the future. Nevertheless, it’s growing on me.

A byproduct of football’s recent success is that the old “1st in the SEC” banners have been deleted. The teams of ‘84, ‘85, and ‘90 no longer receive any glory for their accomplishments. Still, there’s only so much physical room to go around, so this seems like a good problem to have.

The second photo shows Spurrier’s Heisman jersey, also once painted, now 3D-ified. I can only assume Danny Wuerffel’s jersey on the opposite side of the south endzone looks the same.

Th third photo shows where my father and I sit in the Swamp… we’re the north end zone nosebleeding crew. We’re more or less smack dab in the middle, halfway between the balcony and the scoreboard. Actually, the seats are great; sort of like a coach’s cam view of the proceedings. It’s easy to watch plays develop (especially downfield with receivers working against the secondary) when your view is vertically oriented. Anyway, whenever CBS or Sun Sports pans up to show the Ring of Honor, you’ll see our sweaty mugs.

Not too sure about this one either. Although I could never see them personally, I liked the “old” (one year) location for the Ring of Honor. They’re going to be hard to see perched above the upper reaches of the stadium, but it does leave room for future expansion on the south side.

Finally, the Stephen C. O’Connell center has been updated to honor our ‘06 and ‘07 champions.

Hopefully the stadium will need yet another upgrade at the conclusion of this year’s football season.  Let’s keep those painters/signbuilders busy…