The Gators took home the championship, Superman will return to Gainesville and the Alligator Editorial Board rocked "I heart Bernie" T-shirts at work Sunday night.
Well, not exactly.
As we gleefully marched to class Friday morning - some of us a little more greasy than others - we couldn't help but think, if just for a second, that maybe, just maybe, Bernie was right.
Whoa, did we really just write that?
Apparently, we had forgotten the wonderful afterglow that spreads itself around a college campus in the wake of winning a national championship: Hangovers mysteriously disappeared, less-than-riveting courses suddenly held our attention and even the most irascible of professors managed to crack a smile for once.
Maybe having to drag our butts to class the day after the big game wasn't such as a terrible ordeal after all.
If, for a glorious moment, the former misgivings of our typically humdrum existence gave way to a Utopian paradise. Until, that is, we discovered that a certain key demographic of campus happened to disregard its academic obligations to The Gator Nation.
Nothing like throwing caution into the wind, Bernie.
The Editorial Board will save you the trouble of having to scour over an ever-growing laundry list of culprits who bailed on work Friday, but let's just say UF heavyweights such as Machen and Provost Joe Glover came to the conclusion that they were too cool for school.
We can only imagine these two tough guys attempting to don an outfit akin to their schoolboy mischief: skinny leg jeans, a white T-shirt and leather jacket. Wannabe rebels without a cause - hoping to conjure imagery of Arthur Fonzarelli (who?) as they took the mean streets of South Beach by storm.
Thank goodness for photo sharing! The Editorial Board rests assured it won't be long before someone stumbles upon Glover's Flickr account and finds the infamous photo album.
Hey Bernie, Senior Vice President for Administration Kyle Cavanaugh made it to work on time, not to mention, along with a few other stalwarts. No doubt they did a double-take at their alarms come 6 a.m. and probably mainlined a couple of Red Bulls, but hey, there's a university to run.
Cavanaugh and Crandall deserve a hearty pat on the back for their actions - unless they simply missed the memo where UF brass were urged to stress the necessity for students to attend class, while secretly administrators took a "vacation day" on Friday.
Somebody better call Vogue; apparently "flip-flopping" is this season's new black.
The Editorial Board can't blame Machen, Glover and pals for their desire to stick around Miami for an extra day or two. Taking a quick dip in Lake Wauburg tends to lose a little something when you're constantly peering over your shoulder for real life Alberts and Albertas. And something tells us that a slice or two at Satchel's Pizza isn't exactly like feasting on the salt-roasted porterhouse at Table 8.
It's far too early in the semester for the administration and student body to nearly come to fisticuffs, so let the Editorial Board offer a championship manifesto of sorts to remedy the situation.
Simply put, if we have to attend class the day after a championship game, then the administration should be present on campus as well. If "Team Machen" wants to take a breather after UF reaffirms its standing atop the sports world, great. They just better expect to find the student body to follow suit.
And who said Rome wasn't built in a day?
