Ed, I think that according to the rules of ettiquite, if a team storms the field and celebrates in masse the
first touchdown of a
regular season game, they must remove the "Show some class and act like you've been there before" card from their deck - it is unplayable.
I watched a lot of the UM-UF game, and thought it was a decent game (close, at least), but a few things stood out. UF may have eaten a little of the hype before the game, but not much....they found out quick UM was not to be the pushover others indicated. Throughout the game, I got a sense of a slight coaching edge for UM, a slight leadership edge for UM, and a big execution edge for UM. The defense couldn't stop Hart, or the receivers that well (though UF has a very young backfield). The offense couldn't do nearly as much as they did last year (but I think their offensive plan was actually less than what was prepared against OSU last year - hell, it was basically Tebow and Harvin, and teams are figuring out how to handle such limited options, obviously). My hat is off to UM on winning a game they earned a win in, and hope UF (Meyer....the players as well) learn from this. Then I say "Wait until next year" (yeah, I said that 8), though growing up I thought it was the UF fight song
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
). We're not losing much, and we'll have more support for the offense than just T+H, and the defense will have hopefully learned how to cover someone for more than 3 steps. *IF* the coaches can learn from this, and the players take the lesson, we'll be much better next year, but this was not considered to be a big year for us. Hell, I don't think we even were ranked to start the season, nor picked in the top 3 for the SEC East.
To BA's point of the crown jewel of a conference, I don't think anyone would claim a 3 loss team is the crown of any conference. Yeah, we had the Heisman, but he had record setting stats (in a 12 game season, mind you
). And yeah, we won the NC last year, then lost the core of our defense...and apparently a good portion of our offensive gameplanning 8(. We were a blip on the national scene last year and 'backed into' the NC. Yes, we kicked OSU's ass, but we're still just a blip. OSU has 2 back-to-back NC games, and 3 in 6 years with how many conference championships lately? They are the jewel of their conference. USC has how many BCS bowls in a row, and Heisman's of late? They are the jewel of their conference. The SEC has about 3 teams every year capable of being the conference champ, and 2-3 others who are at least half a step behind but good enough to upset things. Looking at how many conference championship games we've been in lately (forget about winning, just getting there) and how many big bowls we've gotten to lately, I don't think anyone would look at UF as a conference jewel. Media darling for a year, but not a conference crown jewel. Hell, even before UGA beat HI (an obvious mismatch in hindsight, but beforehand had some hopes of a contest)...even before that game, most agreed UGA and LSU were the top teams, though TENN backed into that conference championship game
UF was not even a consideration (skip the mathmatical elimination, just the ability to play at that level kept them from being mentioned much). UF was perhaps the 3-5 best team in the league, at least from my perspective.
I'd still like to open my mouth and do some more Big10+1 bashing right now, pointing out a Purdue team that
barely won over a MAC team (they blew out earlier in the year), ILL going from unranked to the Rose Bowl to blown out, and the other teams that lost. But, IMO, the UM team was better than UF and proved it. WISC was (at least) as good as TENN, IMO, and played a close game that could have gone either way. I do think OSU can make a good showing with LSU - hell, the UF-UM game tells me OSU
can win, despite what I would hope for. I'm going to hang up my hatin' words for now...at least until after that big game.
[Edited to add: The fact that UM turned the ball over that many times, and still won by 6....the score did not reflect how well they outplayed UF. Again, my hat is off to Carr and the team.]
