Gator-Haters, unite!
posted by David Cloninger, 9/16/2009 11:40:00 PM
------------ PUBLIC ENEMY
Now is the time for all good Gator-haters to come to the aid of our country …
Not really. Whether you love or despise Florida’s football team, it’s going to massacre Tennessee on Saturday.
I said it as soon as Lane Kiffin was hired. He let loose that tidbit of how forward he was looking to singing “Rocky Top” all night when they beat Florida in 2009; I replied, “Tool.”
It is finally almost here. The day where lil’ Lane gets his come-uppance. On Saturday, Kiffin takes his Volunteers south to The Swamp to face a very annoyed, very talented, No. 1-ranked, defending national champion Gators team.
I truly believe every fan in the SEC except those who pull for Tennessee will, for three hours or so, root for Florida in the same way they root for their favorite teams. It won’t matter about the beatdowns the Gators have hung on their favorites (and there have been many); it won’t matter if they stick blue-and-orange dolls with pins every other week.
Everyone wants to see Urban Meyer, Tim Tebow and the rest of what amounts to college football’s version of The Untouchables blister Kiffin’s fanny so hard he can feel every splinter of shrapnel in it on that long trip back to Knoxville.
When the first exchange happened, I heard from a person who works at Florida of the following hour. Meyer’s cell phone beeped; it was a text message from Tebow.
The message asked Meyer if the Gators were going to save a few timeouts.
Of course, we’ve seen Kiffin backtrack from his barbs, along with the ones he flung at Alabama and South Carolina, saying he had to get Tennessee’s name out there as a recruiting pitch. That seems to be working – the Vols landed Bryce Brown this year and have quite a few blue-chippers on the slate for next year, including Byrnes High School standouts Corey Miller and Brandon Willis.
But he had to know there were going to be moments like this. He had to know he didn’t have a very good team coming back, led by walking turnover Jonathan Crompton and featuring only one superstar in Eric Berry.
Yet, he fired the salvo anyway, ignoring two time-honored codes.
One, don’t ever challenge the king of the hill unless you’re fully equipped to do so. Florida won the national title for the second time in three years and had a quarterback who has re-defined the game plus all 22 defensive players on the two-deep returning. Tennessee had Berry.
Two, especially in the SEC, keep your mouth shut until you’ve done something. And by something, I don’t mean “taking credit for a national title at Southern Cal” or “winning five games with the worst franchise in the NFL.”
I can only imagine how the Volunteers must feel. I’m sure it’s something along the lines of Butch and Sundance crouched in a bunker with the entire Bolivian army outside.
But nobody’s going to make a movie about this execution.
Kiffin’s comments this week are toeing the line, echoing Meyer in saying the game’s not about the coaches and there’s a lot more to the game than what we all know it is – a gum-flapping brat about to get a woodshed whipping from somebody who’s more than capable of doing it (ask Mark Richt if he’s regretting the end-zone celebration from 2007 after playing Florida in 2008). Florida hasn’t had to blink in its first two games this year, but what spoke to me over the routs was how Meyer didn’t use any of his multi-offensive formations in favor of vanilla football.
He’s saving them. And Saturday is Christmas morning in Gainesville.
I’m thinking it will be around 60-7 and Meyer will still have his first-string in throwing the ball. I’m guaranteeing if any of you hear a sadistic chuckle from above just before USC’s game with Florida Atlantic on Saturday, that’ll be me in the pressbox.
What I hope is this is the first of several painful lessons for lil’ Lane. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll go to the postgame, admit he screwed up and beg for mercy. It won’t work for the rest of this year, but perhaps in the next two or three, opposing coaches will stop the beatings before they get too out-of-hand.
Perhaps. By then, Tennessee might have figured out what Lane’s about to and do what it should have done originally – hire somebody who knew the rules.
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“You gonna get yours!”
------------ PUBLIC ENEMY
Now is the time for all good Gator-haters to come to the aid of our country …
Not really. Whether you love or despise Florida’s football team, it’s going to massacre Tennessee on Saturday.
I said it as soon as Lane Kiffin was hired. He let loose that tidbit of how forward he was looking to singing “Rocky Top” all night when they beat Florida in 2009; I replied, “Tool.”
It is finally almost here. The day where lil’ Lane gets his come-uppance. On Saturday, Kiffin takes his Volunteers south to The Swamp to face a very annoyed, very talented, No. 1-ranked, defending national champion Gators team.
I truly believe every fan in the SEC except those who pull for Tennessee will, for three hours or so, root for Florida in the same way they root for their favorite teams. It won’t matter about the beatdowns the Gators have hung on their favorites (and there have been many); it won’t matter if they stick blue-and-orange dolls with pins every other week.
Everyone wants to see Urban Meyer, Tim Tebow and the rest of what amounts to college football’s version of The Untouchables blister Kiffin’s fanny so hard he can feel every splinter of shrapnel in it on that long trip back to Knoxville.
When the first exchange happened, I heard from a person who works at Florida of the following hour. Meyer’s cell phone beeped; it was a text message from Tebow.
The message asked Meyer if the Gators were going to save a few timeouts.
Of course, we’ve seen Kiffin backtrack from his barbs, along with the ones he flung at Alabama and South Carolina, saying he had to get Tennessee’s name out there as a recruiting pitch. That seems to be working – the Vols landed Bryce Brown this year and have quite a few blue-chippers on the slate for next year, including Byrnes High School standouts Corey Miller and Brandon Willis.
But he had to know there were going to be moments like this. He had to know he didn’t have a very good team coming back, led by walking turnover Jonathan Crompton and featuring only one superstar in Eric Berry.
Yet, he fired the salvo anyway, ignoring two time-honored codes.
One, don’t ever challenge the king of the hill unless you’re fully equipped to do so. Florida won the national title for the second time in three years and had a quarterback who has re-defined the game plus all 22 defensive players on the two-deep returning. Tennessee had Berry.
Two, especially in the SEC, keep your mouth shut until you’ve done something. And by something, I don’t mean “taking credit for a national title at Southern Cal” or “winning five games with the worst franchise in the NFL.”
I can only imagine how the Volunteers must feel. I’m sure it’s something along the lines of Butch and Sundance crouched in a bunker with the entire Bolivian army outside.
But nobody’s going to make a movie about this execution.
Kiffin’s comments this week are toeing the line, echoing Meyer in saying the game’s not about the coaches and there’s a lot more to the game than what we all know it is – a gum-flapping brat about to get a woodshed whipping from somebody who’s more than capable of doing it (ask Mark Richt if he’s regretting the end-zone celebration from 2007 after playing Florida in 2008). Florida hasn’t had to blink in its first two games this year, but what spoke to me over the routs was how Meyer didn’t use any of his multi-offensive formations in favor of vanilla football.
He’s saving them. And Saturday is Christmas morning in Gainesville.
I’m thinking it will be around 60-7 and Meyer will still have his first-string in throwing the ball. I’m guaranteeing if any of you hear a sadistic chuckle from above just before USC’s game with Florida Atlantic on Saturday, that’ll be me in the pressbox.
What I hope is this is the first of several painful lessons for lil’ Lane. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll go to the postgame, admit he screwed up and beg for mercy. It won’t work for the rest of this year, but perhaps in the next two or three, opposing coaches will stop the beatings before they get too out-of-hand.
Perhaps. By then, Tennessee might have figured out what Lane’s about to and do what it should have done originally – hire somebody who knew the rules.
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David Cloninger. David is a full-time staff writer for GamecockCentral, and covers Gamecock football, men's basketball, baseball and recruiting. He may be reached by email at david(at)gamecockcentral.com. Replace (at) with @.