It is morning here in Baton Rouge where the Gators went down to defeat Saturday. LSU has the best press box in the SEC and the worst after-game set up in the league, but nobody wants to hear me whine about my job.
You’d rather I whine about Florida’s offense. So it’s time for Four From The Field.
1. If you had told me Florida would be 4-2 at this point of the season back in August, I wouldn’t have been surprised. If you had told me they would have given up four legitimate touchdown drives in those two losses (Miami had a four-yard drive), I would have been surprised. I know what Will Muschamp is trying to do offensively and it does work against lesser teams. But in the last five big games Florida has played, the Gators are 1-4 and have averaged 13.5 points in those losses. The offense can’t be completely changed but there needs to be some major tweaking. Losing is bad, but losing and being boring is worse.
2. Well, we finally had our rash of upsets in college football. The one that was the most stunning was Stanford’s loss to Utah. But if you have watched Utah this year, they are not a bad football team and when you are playing at home it’s a different animal. Can you imagine being a Georgia fan this year? What a rollercoaster.
3. I think I have the perfect choice for Southern Cal’s next coach — Bill O’Brien. Watching Penn State’s four-overtime win over Michigan made me come to that conclusion. I don’t know if he’d leave Penn State but he’s a no-nonsense coach and he’d be taking over a nonsense program, to quote Don Devoe. And he knows what it’s like to deal with sanctions. There you go, Pat Haden. I solved your problem.
4. Back to Florida, I think one thing that makes their offensive woes stand out is that so many SEC games have been shootouts. Texas A&M v. Mississippi was great late night TV. In some ways, the SEC is turning into the Pac-10 and vice versa. Expect a week of ESPN’s 76 college football shows to ask whether the Pac-10 is better. It’s coming.
