It should not bother us. We suspected it back in 2005 that Urban Meyer was a mercenary hired to resurrect the Florida Gators after a period of darkness under Ron Zook. He did that. What half of us were wrong about was how long he was going to stay in Gainesville. Urban Meyer showed us that the plan he used to make Bowling Green and Utah successful was a good plan. I bear no ill will towards Meyer. At each school he picked up something new to add to his bag of tools. Before he came to Florida he used the "school out north/east/west/south" reference. Before Florida he learned his new school's traditions and looked for ways to enhance them, add to them, and resurrect lost ones. Think about it. Before 2005, we did not do the "We Are the Boys From Old Florida" at the end of the 3rd quarter...or if we used to do it before we stopped doing it (I honestly cannot remember). The Ring of Honor? The Gator head? Champion's Dinner? And of course, FNL.
REALLY?!! They had actually stopped singing "We are the Boys" at the end of the 3rd quarter in the Swamp? I hadn't been to a Gator Home game in some years before Meyer arrived--so this comes as a real shock to me, if true. Honestly, E-, I know you have no reason to exaggerate, but this just completely boggles me: they were doing it when I was a little kid, and that and Two Bits (he was getting older, but still around and energetic as ever, popping up all over Florida Field--it wasn't "The Swamp", a la SS, yet--thoughout the game) was like part of "coming home", completely expected and assumed, when I attended all games in the mid-70s-into-the-80s--and they were still doing it right through the 90s (I wasn't AT as many home games, but it was done when I was, and they'd even do it in the Gator-sections at away-games I attended as late as the turn-of-the-millennium). I know Meyer "polished up" some of the other traditions you mention, not inventing them but bringing them back to a prominence and importance they may have NEVER quite had before (at least since their very beginnings), as a part of reconstituting a certain "Gator-Mystique" that HAD gotten somewhat lost, somewhere between the last years SS was here, and during Zook's reign--and that was both smart and appreciated...but it DOESN'T mean you take those exact same "touchstones" and try to transplant them elsewhere, then expect them to have a similar effect. In fact, it trivializes them, AND the original effort, in my view.
As for "We Are The Boys", I have nothing but friendly respect and admiration for your views and contributions, E-, and mean this not as any disrespect, but I'm dearly hoping that this is some sort of oversight on your part, that maybe the performance became scattered and haphazard enough to escape much in the way of note or comment for a few years there, but I STILL can't imagine the alumni stopping this tradition, even if it WAS always the Student-side who were expected to begin at 3rd-quarter's end, arms over each-others' shoulders and rocking back-and-forth in alternating directions, row-by-row: I HAVE to throw this open to our membership and readers at large for confirmation:
"Did our fans actually and in fact STOP SINGING "WE ARE THE BOYS" BETWEEN THE 3rd and 4th QUARTERS AT HOME GAMES in the last few years before Urban Meyer arrived at UF?"
