Jeremy Foley even went out of his way to congratulate kicker Jonathan Phillips.
If Foley wanted to praise every UF player who played well Saturday night, he better clear his calendar.
LSU, on the other hand, has an agenda that is now packed full with rebuilding plans because the Gators certainly made them reconsider everything about their season in a 51-21 dismantling Saturday night.
Gainesville finally got to witness their Heisman Trophy winner play like a Heisman Trophy winner. They saw Percy Harvin play like the next Heisman Trophy winner, and got to observe Brandon Spikes and Jeff Demps reign like they were in high school again.
When Tim Tebow said two weeks ago he was going to push his teammates and himself harder than anybody else in the nation, the Tigers were the ones standing on the edge of the cliff.
"We wanted to dominate," said Tebow, who finished with 232 total yards and three scores. "We wanted to go out there and play physical. We heard the talk all week and everything like that. We wanted to come out there and play physical, and we did that."
No kidding.
Let's put it this way: Spikes had more rushing yards than the Tigers' Charles Scott, the seventh leading runner in the nation.
On Spikes' 52 yard touchdown interception return, he outgained Scott by 15 yards. Scott finished with just 35 yards on 12 carries, and 18 of those yards came on one carry. Other than that it was 11 carries for 19 yards.
Demps had more than that on one of his runs when he scampered 42 yards for his fourth touchdown of the year. He's averaging 13.3 yards per run.
"We spread them out and used the pass to set up the run," Tebow said. "They were kind of on their heels a little bit. …We were really able to gash them. Those guys are so fast, if you can spread a defense out, four or five receivers and bring somebody in, when they hit, they can make some big yardage."
The Tigers still put up a respectable 21 points, but the UF defense was never on its heels. When the Tigers scored to open the second half, the Gators came right back down for another touchdown - including a gutsy third and 3 run by Tebow for the first down.
Spikes got his first two interceptions of his UF career.
"Their defense took us out of the game," Tigers receiver Chris Mitchell said. "We couldn't execute the things we wanted to. They made us pay for all of our mistakes."
Now the Gators can officially erase the memories of Jacob Hester bulldozing his way for first down after first down.
This is a new UF team. And a team that most shouldn't look forward to playing against.
"Those kids played their rear ends off," UF coach Urban Meyer said. "They got a little chip on their shoulder, and they went as hard as they could."
