Tennessee is supposed to be "#1 in the SEC"?
Gators #11 out of 14...after losing to them by less than a touchdown just a couple of weeks ago?
I mean, how can anyone take this seriously?
I'd already thrown my hands up by the half against LSU; stuff like the above just rubs our faces in it.
I HAVE to turn to the future, try to find whatever hope, fun and interest in what we might find THERE, if I'm not gonna turn my back entirely.
This long parade of incompetence, submission to a chorus of lazy lies that has been the constant, relentless background to more than a decade's descent has left us stranded in a desert of frustration and disappointment.
This is IT, folks.
I REMEMBER how down we once were...A lifelong Gator fan, I GOT to University of Florida right AT the nadir of our long wallowing role as "The Sleeping Giant". My freshman year WAS that "0-10-and-1" season under a just arrived Charley Pell, the fast-rising young Bear Bryant protégé brought in to finally change all that, turn it around.
And it couldn't have looked any worse at first.
But it WAS the start of everything we hoped and dreamed of...I won't bother recounting the long choppy-but-nonetheless relentlessly upward charge that ensued in our successful rise, where Pell begat Galan Hall (and Emmitt, of course) who in turn presaged a "now-he's-ready" Steve Spurrier and everything after...
But for that and everything since--3 Nattys, 2 Heismans (and, it could be argued, could have quite easily been 1 or 2 more of each along the way)--we are somehow damn near that "hopeless" once more.
But I don't HAVE "a few decades" now to get back to where we were at our best. I would argue that given today's audiences, the short attention-span, instant-gratification-demanding fans of today, no incoming regime will GET the kind of trust or patient benefit-of-the-doubt a favorite son like SS was given to "build it, and build it RIGHT!".
So--I trust Billy Napier: I cannot imagine nor envision anyone who is likely to have a better shot at getting the job done here. But will he get the time he will need to "build it, and build it right"? Ron Zook, at best a mediocre Coach, DID gather a good deal of talent here before giving way to a GOOD Coach (right place, right time, at least for 2 or 3 seasons when he was fresh) in Urban Meyer, who benefitted by inheriting that "talent".
As I say, here's hoping that Billy and his Staff have the time here to accomplish BOTH steps this time: Bring in the players AND install the fully balanced TEAM here.