I thought I would share my Monday morning blog with the Gator Envy crew:
It’s Monday morning. I am dreading going to work here in Longhorn Country. The stench of the Saturday loss to the Ol’ Ball Coach still wreaks stronger than the smell of whatever that is growing in the office refrigerator. This must be the worst Florida Gator team in history, right? Right? Wrong. Let us put things in perspective here. The Gators faced a South Carolina Gamecock team that beat the #1 team in America, the Alabama Crimson Tide. Besides, it was the Ol’ Ball Coach. So what if he stole some of the Gator mojo from the Swamp–he named Ben Hill Griffin at Florida Field “the Swamp”! It was his mojo years before this team arrived at the Swamp! His team was better than ours. He deserved the win. He said it himself, “If you don’t like getting beat that bad, field a better football team.”
It just feels like the worst team of the modern era. Lucky for us, that distinction actually belongs to the 0-10-1 squad from 1979. That team was outscored 265-106 on the year. The 2010 team has outscored its opponents 306-212 as of week 11 and has a winning record. The 2010 team will need to get outscored by 94 points in two games in order to be outscored by its opponents, and would need another 159 points on top of that to suck as bad as the 1979 team.
One thing the 1979 team had was consistency–they consistently lost. Tom Cornelison of the Jacksonville Journal wrote this of the 0-10-1 squad, “Consistency, the characteristic University of Florida football teams have lacked for lo these many years, was finally achieved by the Gators in 1979.” The 2010 team just lacks consistency. It does not consistently suck–it just sucks compared to ranked opponents. That sounds like the Ron Zook years! The year Zook was fired, we went 7-5 but still outscored our opponents 418-217. Okay, so our offense is worse than that one, but our defense is about the same. Not too shabby. We still beat Florida State that year, but we did lose to #13 Tennessee (the eventual SEC East Champs), #24 LSU, Mississippi State, and #7 Georgia, as well as #14 Miami in the Peach Bowl (we were #19). Maybe we are a shade under that 2004 team and will end up 6-6 or 7-5 with a bowl loss, but we are not the worst in history as many in the Gator Nation are lamenting. At least we are not the Texas Longhorns, the 4-6 team that has little control over its potential bowl bid. At least we are not a team that does not have the potential to turn things around next year with the best athletes in the country. The 2010 Gators can still get to the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville or the Chick-Fil-A bowl in Atlanta if they pull it together and cleanse some of that stench off. Or maybe I just need to clean out the office refrigerator and enjoy the great moments I did share with my family as we cheered and jeered our team on TV, and most of all, as we basked in the orange and blue moment out there in Gainesville despite the loss to Mississippi State.
It’s great to be a Florida Gator! In all kinds of weather...
It’s Monday morning. I am dreading going to work here in Longhorn Country. The stench of the Saturday loss to the Ol’ Ball Coach still wreaks stronger than the smell of whatever that is growing in the office refrigerator. This must be the worst Florida Gator team in history, right? Right? Wrong. Let us put things in perspective here. The Gators faced a South Carolina Gamecock team that beat the #1 team in America, the Alabama Crimson Tide. Besides, it was the Ol’ Ball Coach. So what if he stole some of the Gator mojo from the Swamp–he named Ben Hill Griffin at Florida Field “the Swamp”! It was his mojo years before this team arrived at the Swamp! His team was better than ours. He deserved the win. He said it himself, “If you don’t like getting beat that bad, field a better football team.”
It just feels like the worst team of the modern era. Lucky for us, that distinction actually belongs to the 0-10-1 squad from 1979. That team was outscored 265-106 on the year. The 2010 team has outscored its opponents 306-212 as of week 11 and has a winning record. The 2010 team will need to get outscored by 94 points in two games in order to be outscored by its opponents, and would need another 159 points on top of that to suck as bad as the 1979 team.
One thing the 1979 team had was consistency–they consistently lost. Tom Cornelison of the Jacksonville Journal wrote this of the 0-10-1 squad, “Consistency, the characteristic University of Florida football teams have lacked for lo these many years, was finally achieved by the Gators in 1979.” The 2010 team just lacks consistency. It does not consistently suck–it just sucks compared to ranked opponents. That sounds like the Ron Zook years! The year Zook was fired, we went 7-5 but still outscored our opponents 418-217. Okay, so our offense is worse than that one, but our defense is about the same. Not too shabby. We still beat Florida State that year, but we did lose to #13 Tennessee (the eventual SEC East Champs), #24 LSU, Mississippi State, and #7 Georgia, as well as #14 Miami in the Peach Bowl (we were #19). Maybe we are a shade under that 2004 team and will end up 6-6 or 7-5 with a bowl loss, but we are not the worst in history as many in the Gator Nation are lamenting. At least we are not the Texas Longhorns, the 4-6 team that has little control over its potential bowl bid. At least we are not a team that does not have the potential to turn things around next year with the best athletes in the country. The 2010 Gators can still get to the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville or the Chick-Fil-A bowl in Atlanta if they pull it together and cleanse some of that stench off. Or maybe I just need to clean out the office refrigerator and enjoy the great moments I did share with my family as we cheered and jeered our team on TV, and most of all, as we basked in the orange and blue moment out there in Gainesville despite the loss to Mississippi State.
It’s great to be a Florida Gator! In all kinds of weather...
