Random National Championship Game Thoughts

* Sports Illustrated has announced that they will be offering their special commemorative University of Florida National Championship collectible set complete with an annual yearbook, a blue and orange football, and individually numbered, limited edition Florida Gators National Champions Jorts.

* Seriously, congratulations to Florida - they fucking dominated when it mattered most. Extra special congrats to the 4 cool Gators that I know personally; my 2 cousins CBG & BGE, Orson Swindle, and of course the legendary Ranalli.

* It sure looked like Florida did a great job looking at film, studying, and preparing a game plan, and practicing it during their 5 week layoff. Did Ohio State even practice 1 time, or look at 1 game tape of Florida? Sure didn't look like it. Everyone knows that blitzing Leak and pressuring him is the key to stopping the UF offense (everyone except the Georgia defensive coaching staff in 2005 & 2006 that is). Rushing 3 the whole game was a decisively stupid decision. Well done to UF on both sides of the ball.

* You could tell very early that the OSU offense was confused as hell at what is saw from the UF D, and that what was happening as plays developed was not at all what T Smith & Co. were expecting to happen. He looked as confused and frustrated as an American man given the task of translating the Koran. Not from Arabic into English. From Arabic into Mandarin Chinese.

* Ditto for the D. It wasn't just that both teams came out, did their things, and UF came out the victor. It was more than that. UF looked so prepared and tOSU looked so lost and hopeless - again, it looked like they didn't even practice.

* Troy Smith must be verrrrrrry happy that the Heisman Trophy is awarded BEFORE the bowl season. My God the Gators D made him look awful, as did the utterly inept OSU O-Line. Dude is probably the most mobile QB in America and they sacked him 5 times. Imagine if he was an immobile QB in the mold of Craig Krenzel? Dude would have been sacked 20 times. I'm too lazy to look, but I wouldn't be suprised if Troy Smith hadn't been sacked 5 times all year before last night. It was truly painful to watch him try to do anything against the Gator D. It was like watching Paris Hilton take the SAT; the ineptitude was that painful.

* Maybe Boise State would have given Ohio State a good game after all...

* I am not an SEC RULZ every other conference SUXXXX guy, but I think the SEC this year turned out to be the SEC that SEC fans think that it is every year. I mean, damn. Georgia was the 7th best team in the conference.

* I was reminded of the World Cup this summer and how disappointing the US was, but then when it was all said and done there was the thought "maybe we aren't that bad after all", considering they battled Italy to a draw with only 9 men and then Italy went on to become World Champions. I had a similar thought: "maybe UGA isn't that bad after all: we battled the Gators to a 7-14 loss whereby one of their touchdowns was a direct result of us fumbling inside our own 10 yard line. Now they have gone on and won the National Title, so maybe we weren't that terrible. This thought, in addition to the sentiment that most likely finish 11-2 if our stud FG kicker doesn't get a freak injury is myopic but will rattle around in my brain all spring.

* I can't really come up with a good analogy to describe what it feels like to wake up a Bulldog today in a world where The Gators are national champions in both football and men's basketball (the 1st school to ever hold both titles concurrently). At first I envision a Chappelle skit where a white supremacist golf fanatic has to deal with Tiger Woods holding 4 majors at the same time (this happened in 2001), but the hate we have for the Gators and that kind of hate are two pretty distinct things. Maybe Georgia is like a kid in High School whose arch-nemesis, Florida, not only took his little sister's virginity and continues to hit it on the regular, but he won Homecoming King, Prom King, and now after you are awarded as the Salutatorian of your Senior class he outshines you again and is named valedictorian. And your Mom is even hitting on him too. That's a bit over the top, but it might be a better way of explaining how much we are their bitch over the last 17 years (2-15), and now they have their 2nd title, and despite all of the amazing success and accomplishments that Mark Richt has achieved in his 5 years at Georgia, a stud recruit in South Georgia can look at what Meyer has achieved at Florida in only TWO years before he decided which program to commit his talents to.

* Forget all that shit I just blabbered about. The best analogy is Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez in 2003 saying simply "maybe the Yankees are my Daddy". That pretty much sums it up.

* Given all of that, there is still one bit of juvenile snarkiness that I managed to come up with:

"Nice little national championship Gators, your 2nd in 11 years. Give us a call sometime when you manage to make it through an entire football season undefeated."

(Georgia: undefeated twice. 1980 - national champions. 1946 - finished 3rd in the polls I believe)

It's pretty weak, but at this stage it is about all we've got.

And I must say that living in SF, where college football registers as the faintest blip on the radar, I have it much better than the vast majority of the UGA diaspora who live in places where college football is woven so deep into the social fabric that it is the social fabric, and they will have to shut up and deal with Chad in Accounting crowing about the Gators from now until, well, forever.

- "Morning Chad"

- "If you ain't a Gator you're Gator bait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"