The Gators didn’t lose to Alabama on Saturday, they got beaten.
There’s a difference.
Sure, panicked play-calling that abandoned the run game probably wasn’t the right choice. Lax coverage on the Crimson Tide’s receivers, poor tackling and the inability to get pressure on UA quarterback Greg McElroy didn’t help, and neither did the absence of Carlos Dunlap.
But with the way the Crimson Tide played, this wasn’t Florida’s game to lose.
There’s no sensible “what if” to latch onto, just the simple fact that Alabama showed up and beat the pants off UF.
The Gators would have had to play a perfect game to win. They didn’t, and as Phil Kegler said in Monday’s column, this was total domination.
That’s a tough pill to swallow — more like a bowling ball — for a group of fans that has been camped out on Cloud Nine ever since Florida started winning everything in sight back in 2006.
Very few things have gone wrong for UF fans during that time frame — even a poor 2007 football season produced the meteoric rise of Tim Tebow and a Heisman Trophy.
You’ve all been incredibly blessed during the past few years, and now that this insane run has come to an end, it’s time to rejoin the masses.
This is part of what being a fan is all about. We follow sports in the hopes that our team will win every time, even though we know deep down that’s impossible.
But after four national titles in less than three years, some UF supporters understandably lost that gut feeling, and they needed someone to push the reset button. They figured that would come after Tebow & Co. left with another title, but it should have more of an effect now.
Obviously, a large contingent of Florida fans was around for the Ron Zook or even pre-Steve Spurrier years, so those folks can view all this in the correct light.
But for the more recent crowd, it’s important to soak up the depression and shock that hit like a Mark Ingram stiff-arm to the face last weekend. Remember the feeling, because it will make the next triumph so much sweeter.
As fans and in life, we can’t appreciate the good things we’re given without experiencing the bad first.
Watching East Carolina win three games in two years under former UF defensive coordinator John Thompson (thanks a lot) makes the Pirates’ back-to-back Conference USA titles mean a whole lot more to me, and sometime soon, the Gators are probably going to get a crack at another national championship.
In the meantime, swallow your pride and prove you’re not the bunch of “bandwagon Florida fans” everyone else thinks you are. Go to New Orleans, celebrate New Year’s on Bourbon St. and bring The Swamp to the Louisiana Superdome.
And before you do that, check out the No. 10 Florida basketball team. Much to my surprise, the Gators are good, and they play No. 7 Syracuse on Thursday.
UF has made it too easy to be a fan in recent years, and it’s undeniable that fan interest reached a new high this season.
Don’t slink away until the next title run. It’s time to put in some work.
