The More You Think You Know The Less You Really Do Know …..

The More You Think You Know The Less You Really Do Know

So there it was, the stage was set for SEC Championship Game between the number one and two ranked teams in the country. And with the winner gaining a berth in the national championship .The BCS Bowl national championship game set for early 2010 and the world awaits the crowning of a new champion of collegiate football.

Alabama coach Nick Saban congratulates running back Mark Ingram (22) after a first half score in the NCAA college football SEC championship game against Florida at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009. Alabama won 32-13. picture appears courtesy of AP/photo/ Dave Martin .......

Number one ranked Florida Gators matched wits against Nick Saban’s number two ranked Alabama ‘Crimson Tide’. Two great representatives of the South Eastern Conference and quite rightly by far the two best teams in the nation. Unfortunately, today one of the two teams in question failed to live up to that reputation.

A disheartened Florida fan can't hide her disappointment at the end of a 32-13 loss to Alabama in the NCAA college football SEC championship game at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009. picture appears courtesy of AP/photo/ John Amis ......

And while many of us were lauding the accomplishments of Urban Meyer’s Gators and the very fact that they had in Tim Tebow, a player who everyone admired not just for his playing abilities but also because of his demeanor on and off the field . What we in essence witnessed today, was the unveiling of a team whose flaws were glaringly exposed . Florida for all of its past glories failed to show up today and had no answer Alabama , at all .

Alabama's Mark Ingram (22) celebrates after a fourth quarter touchdown against Florida in the NCAA college football SEC championship game at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009. Alabama won 32-13. picture appears courtesy of AP/photo/ John Amis ......

The game and its events as it unfolded was everything that one would’ve expected but unfortunately whatever script that Gators’ fans had come to expect. Well, today it wasn’t about to happen. Simply put, the Gators and their fans had ‘their asses’ handed to them with their ‘heads and ass being served up on a silver platter’. Embarrassing would be an understatement to say the very least . Florida had no answer at all in any facet of the game, as it got under way.

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow (15), defensive end Carl Johnson (57), offensive lineman Maurkice Pouncey (56) look on late in the fourth quarter of their 32-13 loss to Alabama in the NCAA college football SEC championship game at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009. picture appears courtesy of AP/photo/ John Amis .......

Courtesy of Associated Press & Yahoo Sports

Tide rolls on with 32-13 win over Tebow’s Gators

By Paul Newberry, AP Sports Writer

ATLANTA (AP)—The move was so unlike Nick Saban. The Alabama coach put away all that boardroom talk for a leaping shoulder bump with star running back Mark Ingram.

The Crimson Tide was back on top.

Across the way, Tim Tebow couldn’t do a thing, tears streaming down his cheeks as he watched the clock wind down on an ending that wasn’t in his farewell plan.

With Ingram and Greg McElroy leading an emphatic 32-13 chomping of top-ranked Florida on Saturday, No. 2 Alabama again stands supreme in the Southeastern Conference. More important, the Tide is just one win away from an even bigger title—its first national crown since 1992.

Alabama will face Texas in the BCS championship game after the No. 3 Longhorns beat Nebraska for the Big 12 championship Saturday night when Hunter Lawrence nailed a 46-yard field goal as time expired.

“Everyone had to buy into not to be denied in this game,” Saban said, getting back to business after a raucous celebration at the Georgia Dome. “To be a champion, that’s what you had to do. I’ve never been prouder of a group of players.”

The no-nonsense coach, who talks of “The Process” instead of the houndstooth, needed only three years to bring Alabama back from a grim era to a place it was accustomed to under Paul “Bear” Bryant.

Champions, indeed.

“They seemed like they wanted it a whole lot,” Florida cornerback Joe Haden said.

Ingram, making a strong bid to claim the school’s first Heisman Trophy, rushed for 113 yards and three touchdowns. McElroy threw for 239 yards and a touchdown to claim the MVP award, showing he’s no weak link. The Alabama defense held Tebow in check and left him crying at the end.

“It’s tough. You know it’s not how you want to go out,” Tebow said. “They were just better than us today.”

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Alabama running back Mark Ingram (22) tries to run past Florida's Ryan Stamper (41) during the fourth quarter of the NCAA college football SEC championship game Alabama won 32-13. picture appears courtesy of AP/photo/John Bazemore ......

There’s not much that one can really say about the game that the result and the margin of victory cannot tell you. On reflection Alabama’s 32-13 victory over Florida, was enough to suggest that all of the talk about that the Gators were preordained as the national champions. Clearly, Nick Saban and his Crimson Tide saw that would not be the case today. It was an emphatic statement made by Alabama and denotes that what many had though about the team was in fact true. ‘They are and were better than Florida, in every sense of the word’.

Sheer frustration can't be hidden by Florida coach Urban Meyer , as he looks on from the sidelines during the first half the NCAA college football SEC Championship game against Alabama at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009. picture appears courtesy of AP/photo/ Dave Martin .....

For Florida and all thoughts, that they had in making a successful defense of its national championship has bitten the dust and to a great deal of embarrassment. The more we thought we knew about the Florida Gators, in reality the less we actually knew. And when that happens,then questions must be asked and answered. The thing is, questions were asked of Florida on Saturday and they failed to answer in such an embarrassing way. That all one can now say ……’well we thought we knew you but really we just didn’t know you at all’.

When You Arrive You’ve Got To Arrive In Style …… !

When You Arrive You’ve Got To Arrive In Style ….

Well, the college football regular season has come to a close and needless to say there are those who’ve made their voices heard. While others,will bow out rather unceremoniously in silence. And now for the Florida Gators either history now awaits them or infamy. Urban Meyer, as coach of the Gators, knows that should he prevail in the SEC Championship Game, he then has the luxury of knowing that a berth awaits him the national championship game. As to who that opponent will be , it remains to be seen .

Florida quarterback , Tim Tebow (15) completes a pass as he gets hit by Florida State's Markus White (98) during the second half of the game played at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, in Gainesville ,Florida. The Gators would go on to defeat their rival , Florida State 37-10 in a thoroughly lopsided game. picture appears courtesy of AP/Photo / Phil Sandlin .................

Yesterday, the Florida Gators faced their old and some might say their staunchest rival in the Florida State Seminoles. And for the ‘noles this has been a season of discontent and self evaluation. The turmoil within the Seminoles’ organization is one, which on the face of it has become absolutely idiotic and that has reached such heights comedic extravagance that it is hard to understand what direction the program should now take.Seminoles’ coach,Bobby Bowden, whilst having led the program, of late he’s become something of a weighty anchor that is now bringing down the vessel that is the Florida State football program. The game has passed Bowden by and in such a way that the play of the Seminoles has become barely recognizable . They’re no longer competitive and in terms of recruiting ’blue chip’ athletes. Well, that hasn’t been the case for the program in a number of years. Mind you, they’re the apologists out there,who’ll say this is but a cyclical situation for the program. But consider this, for the last decade the program has continually regressed under Bowden’s tenure. But ‘the grand old czar’ of Florida college football now sits and surveys a program that is now in complete disarray . Much of that has been of Bowden’s own making and that of the lax attitude of his coaching staff and idiocy of the Athletics Department of the once esteemed university.

In contrast , the program of University of Florida now stands on the threshold of placing itself amongst the elite programs in college football history. The program’s coach, Urban Meyer seeks to win the school’s fourth national title and his third with the program in his four years with the university. Alongside, Meyer, he’s had the distinct pleasure of having coached the program’s most storied and perhaps its best player in the team’s quarterback, Tim Tebow. And for the senior , he’s now seeking history himself, by looking to win his third national championship and with the added possibility of winning a second Heisman trophy. A feat that has not been done since Archie Griffin won two consecutive Heisman trophies. And for the young Tebow, not only does college glory await him but the chance to take his game to the next level and that is take center stage on the football fields of the NFL. But before that scenario materializes , Tebow and his teammates have some unfinished business that requires their urgent attention.

Florida cornerback Wondy Pierre-Louis, right, breaks up a pass intended for Florida State receiver Rodney Smith in the end zone during the second half of an NCAA college football game in Gainesville, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009. picture appears courtesy by AP/Photo/ Phelan M Ebenhack ...........

Yesterday , the Gators and the Seminoles faced off against one another at ‘The Swamp’, in Gainesville, Florida. Games of this magnitude meant so much to both programs but today it’s merely another just another ‘stop off point’ for the Gators. For Seminoles’ fans, this game was ‘the make or break’ for their season. A loss and they’re no longer Bowl eligible, a win and one could surmise that there’ll be some respite as to the speculation concerning the future of Bobby Bowden. But that’d be very much predicated upon which team turns up to face the Gators ? Inconsistency in terms of their play has very much epitomized the fall from grace of Bowden’s team and the program in general . And that hasn’t been merely because of what we’ve witnessed this season but essentially what has taken place within the program over the past few years. A program that has been sinking in its own ineptitude and asinine belief in it own self grandeur . Well, there’s nothing grand about a program that is now becoming the butt of jokes right across the college football panacea.

What we saw yesterday from both teams embodies what we’re now seeing as to the direction that programs are now taking. While one is moving forwards the other seems to be moving backwards and into an abyss mediocrity.

Bowden’s team has been anything but a complete anathema from one week to the next. They’ve at times, either been playing with a great deal of resolve but seemingly performing like a blind man in the midst of a minefield , the next. If it’s not been blowing itself up with its mediocre play, it has seen fit to let their opponents walk over them like a doormat. And for that to be happening at this juncture to a Bobby Bowden coached is very much akin to seeing Superman without his cape , enveloped in a vat of kryptonite. Now comes the hard part, what is Bowden now to do in terms of an encore ? Or will be in fact be around for an encore ? Such has been the speculation concerning Bowden’s immediate future and that of the program.

Well, the game itself proved to be an eventful one for Urban Meyer’s team as they completely outplayed Florida State in every facet of the game . The end result was a thoroughly deserving 37-10 defeat of the Seminoles at the hands of Florida, at ‘The Swamp’ , in what would be the senior , Tim Tebow’s last game as a Gator, in Gainesville. And Tebow’s play was exemplary and what we’ve now come to expect of the player. He’s not only a leader but he , himself , leads by example ,even when things are said to be going well , or not going well for the team.

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow is swarmed by fans after an NCAA college football game against Florida State in Gainesville, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009. Florida won 37-10. picture appears courtesy of AP/Photo/ Phelan M Ebenhack ..........

And there are those out there who’d question whether or not he’s an NFL ready quarterback ? My question to them, are the likes of JaMarcus Russell,Brady Quinn, Matthew Stafford or Josh Freeman NFL ready quarterbacks ? Because the last time I checked none of these players have won anything of note, or actually led their teams with anything near distinction. But yet there are idiots out there who’d question the ability of this player. And with the asinine statements of former Miami Hurricanes and Dallas Cowboys’ coach, Jimmy Johnson make the asinine statement of stating that Tebow doesn’t have what it takes to make it in the NFL. When last I checked , Johnson had Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins on the wrong end of a 65-7 ass whupping at the hands of the Jacksonville Jaguars that’d bring about the end to his coaching career in the NFL. Never mind the fact that as a coach, Johnson was nothing more than a facilitator, as a coach in the NFL. He merely delegated and deferred to others , who would do his bidding. And even if he’s the coach of two Supebowl winning teams. Johnson upon his retirement, has done little to suggest that anything that he states really has any credence when it comes to the NFL. He’s merely a glorified and sartorially dressed glove puppet alongside the other idiots who provide analysis on Fox’s eponymous pre and post-game NFL show. In watching Johnson and his colleagues on the show, is akin to watching several drunks talk about their days of binge drinking and the fact that they actually could remember events from when they were at times in a drunken stupor.

Florida head coach Urban Meyer, left, and Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden meet after an NCAA college football game in Gainesville, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 28, 2009. Florida won 37-10. picture appears courtesy of AP/Photo/ Phelan M Ebenhack ...................

As to what now awaits Florida , well that is now predicated upon how they will deal with the fate that they aspire to carve out for themselves . And as we all know, you create your own luck and not have it placed within your lap by others. It’s not only about how you arrive but the fact that you’ve arrived in style .