Gators Ready to Feast

Though I lacked the benefit of watching the game visually, I was able to catch it online with real-time play-by-play.    To say the least, Florida was impressive.   What makes a great team great is not only the hard fought victories over quality teams, but the ability to absolutely dominate the scrub.   During national titles runs this decade, Florida destroyed Hawaii 56-10 in 2008, but only beat Southern Miss  34-7 in 2006 (when the divine hand landed them in the BCS title game).   They flattened Charleston Southern 62-3 on Saturday.  

Now what does this mean?  The score indicates the offensive line is not as shaky as folks believed.   Putting up 62, the team was hitting on all cylinders.   It also shows the defense should be stout.   Limiting a scrub to a field goal, with 2^nd and 3^rd string players on the field is impressive.  During Florida’s championship runs, the defense was stout.   In fact, last year, it was the defense- not Tim Tebow, that secured the national title.  Tebow had a terrible first half while the defense clamped down on the formerly high-scoring Sooners.  In the SEC title game, it was the defense that clamped down on Alabama in the fourth quarter while Tebow found his groove.   This year, expect more of the same, Tebow will get the glory, but make no mistake that the defense will win the championship.    If you need any evidence, look at the only game the Gators lost last year (to Ole Miss); it was the only one they gave up over 30 points on.

But I digress, the Gators have one more tune up before facing a Tennessee team that is for real.  They destroyed their opponent, so big-mouth Lane Kiffin is not a Ron Zook or Steve Spurrier Lite.  Georgia embarrassed the SEC in losing to Oklahoma State, so they may look for redemption when they meet Florida later.  Ole Miss and LSU stumbled, but still won.  And the Alabama defense looked like a force of nature at times against VT, so expect the Tide to hit hard in the SEC title game with much revenge on their minds.  The rest of the SEC represented the conference admirably. 

College football is upon us and the King looks to reign for the season.  The only thing stopping the Gators is history (have never been a wire-to-wire number one, have never had an undefeated national title season).  Luckily, regular perfect-season spoiler Auburn is not on the schedule this year.  Lastly, a shout out to the Midshipmen for nearly pulling off the upset of the year against Ohio State!