With my already weird schedule these days, AND this game with a REALLY early start time (12:01pm Eastern=11:01 for me--hanging out at girlfriend's, still with some time on my hands before she gets home and not expecting to crash 'till dawn if I get much sleep at ALL), I figured it was a good idea and time to start this week's Gameday Thread NOW...
A couple of side-points leading into this one: First, completely off-topic is the latest news coming out of Columbus, one more piece of evidence that Urban Meyer is the ultimate "liar of convenience" in the form of this quote, saying that tOSU's QB "Braxton Miller is more talented than Tebow"....Don't even know where to begin in reacting to that one..."Meyer the Liar" indeed...
More apropos of this game, yet almost as hard to get my head around, is the apparent statistical anomaly that, according to the stat-keepers and analyzers, UK is currently ranked as the top passing offense in the SEC (!)...Who thinks this strange fluctuation in the college football continuum should not only be headed for oblivion this weekend, but in fact is one more dazzling demo of the truth behind that old Harry Truman line about there being 3 kinds of un-truths: "Lies, DAMN lies, and STATISTICS"?
OK, let's turn our attention to the game itself...There've already been some concise analysis and comments on the subject of the ultimate outcome elsewhere here at GE in the last few days, the gist of which being that the only real discussion is how early and how badly will the starters be required to stay in there and run up a comfortable score, and just how badly that eventual blow-up will be. Aside from a few well-qualified "they don't play the games on paper"-type cautionings (mostly on other Gator sites), realistically the largest concern is how much this team has learned from and advanced beyond the kind of faltering over-confidence it displayed in last season's Furman game, where we fell behind 22-7 early, finally took the lead in the 2nd half, and only made it LOOK "respectably dominant" on the scoreboard with a couple of late-game pick-sixes. That was for our sixth win, you'll recall, and securing a late-season shot at a bowl-berth...this team, it's attitude and general progress and state-of-mind at this point in THIS season I think makes this much less likely, even WITH a bye AND a big game at home against LSU coming up the week after that.
What we all want and NEED of course is a spirited early start from the whole team, in all its phases, one that gives us a chance to sharpen up on offense, shut down THEIRS while forcing turnovers , eliminate penalties and above all else come out of it as healthy as we go in, while giving the necessary rest to our walking wounded--some of whom will have a full three weeks of recovery-time before the Tigers-game, IF we are able to keep them all out of harm's way while galloping to comfortable dominance. These ARE the kind of games in which a good team has it's way without having to over-extend itself, after all--and it's about time we started getting that done in these kinds of situations once more.
A couple of side-points leading into this one: First, completely off-topic is the latest news coming out of Columbus, one more piece of evidence that Urban Meyer is the ultimate "liar of convenience" in the form of this quote, saying that tOSU's QB "Braxton Miller is more talented than Tebow"....Don't even know where to begin in reacting to that one..."Meyer the Liar" indeed...
More apropos of this game, yet almost as hard to get my head around, is the apparent statistical anomaly that, according to the stat-keepers and analyzers, UK is currently ranked as the top passing offense in the SEC (!)...Who thinks this strange fluctuation in the college football continuum should not only be headed for oblivion this weekend, but in fact is one more dazzling demo of the truth behind that old Harry Truman line about there being 3 kinds of un-truths: "Lies, DAMN lies, and STATISTICS"?
OK, let's turn our attention to the game itself...There've already been some concise analysis and comments on the subject of the ultimate outcome elsewhere here at GE in the last few days, the gist of which being that the only real discussion is how early and how badly will the starters be required to stay in there and run up a comfortable score, and just how badly that eventual blow-up will be. Aside from a few well-qualified "they don't play the games on paper"-type cautionings (mostly on other Gator sites), realistically the largest concern is how much this team has learned from and advanced beyond the kind of faltering over-confidence it displayed in last season's Furman game, where we fell behind 22-7 early, finally took the lead in the 2nd half, and only made it LOOK "respectably dominant" on the scoreboard with a couple of late-game pick-sixes. That was for our sixth win, you'll recall, and securing a late-season shot at a bowl-berth...this team, it's attitude and general progress and state-of-mind at this point in THIS season I think makes this much less likely, even WITH a bye AND a big game at home against LSU coming up the week after that.
What we all want and NEED of course is a spirited early start from the whole team, in all its phases, one that gives us a chance to sharpen up on offense, shut down THEIRS while forcing turnovers , eliminate penalties and above all else come out of it as healthy as we go in, while giving the necessary rest to our walking wounded--some of whom will have a full three weeks of recovery-time before the Tigers-game, IF we are able to keep them all out of harm's way while galloping to comfortable dominance. These ARE the kind of games in which a good team has it's way without having to over-extend itself, after all--and it's about time we started getting that done in these kinds of situations once more.
