Bad day for the SEC East against the ACC. Florida's loss won't help.
Yeah--already had noticed that, but let's face it: This was already an "off year" for the whole conference; everyone knocking each OTHER off, tho today put the exclamation point on it all with the rivalry games.
This one was the only one that meant anything to me, tho--to any of us, really.
Way it epitomized, kinda "recapitulated" everything wrong with this team, this season, the coaching staff--its limitations and errors before, during games and complete VACUUM of flexibility, imagination and/or response...Man, if I had admitted to myself how completely I had come to believe these things were the TRUTH, the reality of who we were/are under Muschamp, I swear I wouldn't have been "sucked in" here today. But I was.
I THOUGHT I was just being "hopeful", looking for a "pull it together for the sake of everything and everyone against your bitter rival at the end here" kinda win, but "realistic" about how it could go. Thought I was ready for something like this--but maybe not. Maybe "like this" isn't something any of us COULD "prepare" for. I mean, "how it went" was just about the only way that could have put me in JUST the right frustrated-but-hopeful-in-spite-of-myself frame-of-mind JUST before the one thing that could happen, JUST the way it happened, came to somehow rip me open that way ONE MORE TIME. I thought, SWORE, I was done letting this "Mus-Roper Gator incarnation" set me up to hurt that way again--thought that it was over; just this "one last game I'm ready for", hope to win but "THAT would be a bonus, not to be expected but welcome if they could find a way..."
But somehow, one more time I was left staring at the screen with my mouth hanging open, fists clenched at my sides, arms that had been ABOUT to swing UP TD-style instead just tense, unmoving. And that emptiness in my gut, about to be filled with pain and cold anger. Oh, I have had MORE than enough of THAT feeling, of this whole deal.
Muschamp says, "We just didn't win enough games--and he's right, but it isn't JUST that. No, Will, it was the way this team failed, in ways large and small, repeatedly, sometimes wearing US (team AND fans) down, sometimes blind-siding US, for whole stretches, even in games we won, and the way you never DID learn from ANY of it, so the "BIG Let-Downs" and "BIG losses" were inevitable, THAT was what made, continues to MAKE you "a poor Coach". A "good man", yes; a good, even great defensive coach, little doubt; potentially "a good HEAD Coach", MAYBE one day. But here, now, "Sorry, no. You have been a disaster, every BIT responsible for JUST the kind of thing we saw out there today." And the worst of it, as today well-showed, your complete stubborness and refusal to face and learn from your shortcomings hasn't improved one bit since the day you got here.