BATON ROUGE, La. - Cancel the street-flooding celebrations for the night of Jan. 7, the climbing of light posts and the massive consumption of alcohol.
Nix the championship celebration at The Swamp.
The new regime, No. 1 LSU, dethroned the kings of college football in an epic power struggle at Death Valley on Saturday night.
"We feel shocked," UF running back Kestahn Moore said.
On the same day that former UF coach Ron Zook led Illinois to its biggest win in two decades, the ex-champion Gators pulled a Zook, blowing a 10-point fourth-quarter lead to lose 28-24 to the Tigers.
UF fell from No. 9 to No. 13, from 4-1 to 4-2 and from inside the overcrowded national title pool to the outside looking in.
No two-loss team has played for the national championship in the nine-year history of the Bowl Championship Series.
The UF football team, unable to match the men's basketball team's back-to-back titles, can hand over the crown and scepter now.
"Take the sting and work extremely hard so you don't have to experience it again," said UF coach Urban Meyer, who struggled to put his emotions into words in his postgame press conference.
To steal a Zookism, a play here or a play there would have changed the outcome.
Like if Moore's slippery hands had stayed glued to the ball with 10 seconds left in the third quarter.
"You've got to hold onto the ball," said quarterback Tim Tebow, who hid under his helmet with his back to photographers after the game. "You've just got to hold onto the ball."
Or if Cornelius Ingram had run the right route with the Gators up 24-14 in the fourth.
Instead, a ball intended for Andre Caldwell bounced off Ingram's helmet and into the hands of LSU defensive end Kirston Pittman.
How about LSU converting five-of-five fourth-down attempts - four in the second half - including a fake field goal and a touchdown pass?
Swing any of those plays in the Gators' favor, and a smiling Meyer could have joined Zook and Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh on Sunday sports pages across the country.
Instead, Meyer lost consecutive games for the first time since 2002 when he coached at Bowling Green.
The BCS knockout punch hit some worse than others.
"It's not the first time I've been through it," Meyer said. "Maybe it's the first time some of these young players have."
LSU faithful were waiting for this, the program's first win as a No. 1 team since Oct. 31, 1959.
The 17-7 halftime deficit would not deter a record crowd of 92,910 fans, the largest gathering of people in the history of the campus.
LSU alumnus James Carville, a renowned political consultant, already had his plans, win or lose.
"I'm going to walk back to the hotel on campus," a smiling Carville said at the half. "I'm going to go to bed and take a half of Ambien."
While LSU dreams of national title rings, the Gators need to wake up from a nightmarish three weeks.
They get a bye before heading to Kentucky, giving them two weeks to contemplate the rest of the season with hopes of getting to Atlanta for a rematch with LSU.
"I don't make guarantees - I don't know if I've ever done this - but I guarantee we'll be back," Meyer said. "The Florida Gators will be back - smokin'."
