This article is certainly a little late, but it's something I've been meaning to share, and with the impending Gator Bowl matchup on the way I'm sure this will once again be an ongoing news story as January 2nd approaches.

A lot of Gators feel betrayed by Urban, and feel that they were lied to.  This quote gets brought up often...

"But what I didn't want to have happen, and I made this clear to Jeremy [Foley], if I am able to go coach, I want to coach at one place, the University of Florida. It would be a travesty, it would be ridiculous to all of a sudden come back and get the feeling back, get the health back, feel good again and then all of a sudden go throw some other colors on my shirt and go coach. I don't want to do that. I have too much love for this University and these players and for what we've built."

-Urban Meyer, upon retiring from Florida.

How often?  In order to find the exact quote, I simply googled "Urban Meyer quote gators" and it was the first two results to come up.

It is a pretty damning quote, I will readily admit that.  From an outside perspective (which is all any of us have), we basically have a guy who says "uh, yeah I'm sick and want to spend some time with my family, but I'm a Gator and I always want to be a Gator and never want to wear any other colors" who then comes back a year later donning those ugly ass silver and red colors.

Both Urban and his wife Shelley claim that when he left he really had the intention to stay away for good, but the itch was just too much.  She recollects the walk they had together where he told her that he was thinking about coming back, and how much being away from the game was tearing him up.  Most Gator fans don't believe them.  I do, and here's why...

To explain this, I'm going to use an anecdotal experience from my own life.  Most of you are going to scoff at the idea of me comparing something so little to something as grand as the billion dollar college football industry, but I'm going to do it anyway so get your jokes in now.

Throughout my time at UF I was able to partake in eight glorious years of intramural football (4 years as an undergrad and 4 years as a spouse during my wife's grad-school run).  We had a pretty good run, with five final four appearances and two championships.  Yes, I'm about to compare something that happened in intramural football to something that happened in real football, but bare with me.  Besides, those of you that went to UF recently know how seriously and competitively that inner circle takes it.

After we won our first championship and continued doing well in the years that followed I began to feel that pressure to do well, both within that inner crowd that followed intramural football and with new teammates that I'd convinced to join the team.  I wanted to show them that we weren't a fluke, weren't lucky, and really knew what we were doing.  Like both Spurrier and Meyer alluded to in their roles, a win became nothing more than a relief and a loss was a disaster.  Again, keep in mind that this was intramural football.  There weren't millions of dollars on the line.  My livelihood and ability to provide for my family wasn't on the line.  There wasn't gobs of media attention watching everything we did (ok, so *shameless plug*, maybe there was some media attention).  If I felt that weight in a simple intramural game which had no consequences outside of pride, then I can't even imagine the amount of pressure that college coaches feel when all of that real stuff is on the line.

Nonetheless, I did feel a weight, and it led me to walk away with one semester of eligibility left.  After we won the championship in the fall of my last year, I was looking at an almost completely new group of guys in the spring.  I didn't want to go through the headaches of proving to everyone that I knew what I was doing.  I didn't want that weight of feeling like a loss would leave them of the opinion that "maybe this guy just lucked into it before".  So I passed up my last spring of eligibility and walked away with my last game being a championship blowout in the Swamp.

When next spring rolled around I could not possibly have regretted it more.  All I wanted to do was be back out there, "weight" and work be damned.  I thought watching some games would quench my thirst, but it only made it 10 times worse.  The corner is squatting on everything, a corner route out of the slot will each them up you idiots, just run that play!  I could do this so much better, just let me back out there!

When Urban left the Gators he did the worst thing he could possibly have done.  He joined ESPN.  I have no doubt that he got the thirst as soon as the 2011 season rolled around, but then to make matters worse the job he took had him analyzing those same games that he could no longer be a part of.  I can't imagine that Urban ever watched a game without thinking about how he would have done things differently, or what he could have done with those players.  Every time a coach punted on 4th and short from midfield it must have eaten him up.  Every time a coach kept his cool and didn't go on tilt and fake a punt from inside his own 20 when the offense was struggling he must have reminisced.  Every time a coach hoisted a trophy and hugged his players he must have teared up.

In Urban's final two seasons at UF he felt nothing but stress and the weight of expectations that he couldn't wait to get rid of.  Once he left, he realized how small of a price those things were to get back what he had.  Urban's ties to UF were always weak, but if the opportunity to come back a Gator were there, I think he'd take it, and I think he regrets leaving in the first place.  But right now, when the itch is too much to bear, the UF job isn't available.

Imagine for a moment that there were a team in the NFL that was 3-10 entering week 14 of the season.  Now imagine that they had recently fired their head coach, and the QB play out of their starter in the last two weeks looked like this:

Now, continuing with this completely hypothetical situation, let's pretend that an unnamed rookie QB drafted within the first 2 rounds were asked to step into this situation for the next three games.  Rookie QBs already almost universally struggle in their first season, and this is far from an ideal situation to be walking into.  Now, let's pretend that the numbers he put up in these three games looked as follows:

Given this scenario, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind that the rookie should be starting the next game, and the media would be jumping all over him as if he's a lock to be the next big thing in the NFL.

Unless his name was Tim Tebow...

As I'm sure most people reading this site already know, that is in fact the exact situation that Tim Tebow walked into last year, and those are in fact the exact numbers he put up in his first 3 starts as a pro.  Sure, they're not world beating, set the league on fire stats, but for a rookie making his first three starts as a pro they are quite good.  Yet, while any other quarterback would be the unquestioned starter going forward and have an aura of support in the media (imagine the hubbub there would have been around a guy like Matt Stafford if he'd started his career that way), Tebow gets blurbs about how he is competing for the #4 job on the depth chart and gets hit with verbal lashings like "what has he done to deserve the starting spot" and "sorry, you can't live on your entitlement anymore, you have to earn it".

Some theorize that it's one giant media conspiracy to tear down Tebow.  I find that to be over the top.  It's not as if ESPN called together some giant corporate meeting where they all discussed how they can ridicule Tebow.

What we actually have here is a little effect that I like to call "media bandwagoning", which has also extended to "fan perspective bandwagoning".  Saying that Tim Tebow is not a good quarterback or that he's not ready to play in the NFL has become the "cool" thing to say.  It's almost as if, in order to prove that you're an "expert" and not just some casual fan, you have to lambast Tebow and cite all these traditional things that he doesn't do well.  It's the same reason that many media folks who were praising Tebow at the end of last season now speak as if he couldn't quarterback a PeeWee football team right now even though they've barely seen him play at all in the interim.  When they haven't really even seen him play since they were saying "wow, maybe this guy really can be a good NFL QB" a few months ago, how could their opinions have changed so much?

In this way, Tebow's own popularity has hurt him.  It has become accepted as fact that the only reason that Tebow has supporters is because of how loved he is off the field, and not because of his accomplishments on the field.  Tebow bashers look down on Tebow supporters as guppies that can't get past how good of a guy he is and see his oh so obvious flaws, when in reality it is them that can't see past their own old and irrelevant perceptions as to what a quarterback has to be.

Those people look at Tebow's draft position and say he would have been a 4th round pick were it not for one misguided coach, who is now out of a job, that took him way too early.  Their short term (or perhaps self-correcting) memory is incapable of remembering that Tebow was projected as a late 1st/early 2nd round draft pick even when no one thought he would end up in Denver.  In fact, I looked through every "expert mock" I could find from Scott Wright to Mike Mayock to Mel Kiper to a dozen others.  The latest anyone had him going was 44th overall and no one had him going to Denver, which means that even without McDaniels, they all believed he was set to be picked in that range anyhow.

Those people look at Tebow's throwing motion and see a guy that can't get the ball out quick enough to hit NFL passing windows, and are incapable of separating their purely speculative theories from actual reality.  No matter the fact that it had no effect on him hitting those windows when he actually stepped onto the field (or the fact that Brett Favre never had an issue hitting them even though he drops the ball even lower than Tebow does), it sounds logical in their head so it must be true.  Evidence be damned.

Among these folks are Tebow's own coach, John Fox, who seems so content to disregard actual on the field play in favor of how good or ugly something looks in practice that it took him three years to finally decide that DeAngelo Williams was a better running back than DeShaun Foster.

Look, Tebow has not looked good in practice.  I get that.  But it seems that Denver as well as the media seem to be operating under the very poor assumption that Tebow has to look like a perfectly oiled machine in practice to perform well in games.  That just isn't the type of quarterback that Tebow is, nor is it the type that he ever was.  He never has nor is he ever going to look like a prototype quarterback with great footwork, great mechanics, and bullet-proof accuracy in practice and if that is what Denver is waiting for then they'll be waiting forever.  He didn't have those things at Florida either, while John Brantley did, and we saw how that translated to the actual field of play.

If Denver wants to give Tebow one more year to learn, I'm ok with that, so long as they spend the year working on his true weakness (reading defenses), and not his perceived one.  I don't believe he needs another year, but it's worked well in the past for guys like Rodgers and Rivers.  What I have a problem with is this notion that it is now common knowledge that Tebow is a horrible quarterback.

In a way, you really have to feel bad for Tebow.  Sure, it's tough to feel bad for a guy who has millions of fans, millions of dollars, gets to do what he loves for a living, and could probably have any girl he wanted.  But with Tebow you have a guy who has succeeded at every level when stepping out onto the football field, time after time, and yet the universal opinion of him is still that he stinks as a quarterback.  It just has to eat the kid up inside that so many negative things are said about him and he just can't get out there to once again prove people wrong because of the stigma that polish is more important than production.

I think one of my favorite moments from this preseason was listening to the broadcast early on in Denver's week 1 game, as the broadcaster recounted just how awful Tim Tebow looked when he's seen him throwing around, and how he "couldn't even complete passes against air".  He stopped juuuuust short of saying that Dez Bryant would make a better quarterback than Tim Tebow.  As Tebow came into the game and went 6/7 throwing the ball he could do nothing but pick apart his mechanics, which just like Merril Hoge's now infamous report, was nothing more than regurgitated internet lingo that he was passing off as his own ideas.  Sure, those passes came against a second string defense, but surely Dallas' 2nd string defensive backs are better defenders than air, right?

That brings me to my final point.  Remember those stats that I showed you of Tebow earlier?  There are analysts out there that actually have the gall to claim they were indicative of a poor performance because of the 50% completion percentage, and use it as an example of Tebow's allegedly very poor accuracy.  Let's ignore that most rookie QBs have a poor completion percentage in their first few starts (Tebow's was not abnormally low) and really examine this deeper.

The number I want you to keep in mind here is 8.0.  That was Tebow's YPA in those three starts.  For the sake of reference, both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady have each only eclipsed that number in one season out of their entire careers.  Mind you, I'm not using this to say that Tebow performed better than either of them, but rather to demonstrate to you the kind of passes that Tebow was throwing in those games.  Denver's defense was terrible, and as a result Denver spent much of those games throwing downfield.  As should make sense to anyone (especially a football analyst, which these guys claim to be), passes downfield are completed at a lower rate.  Tebow's yards per completion during those starts was an astounding 16.0.  For comparison, Peyton Manning's last year was 10.2.  It makes sense that Tebow's completion percentage was low (again even if we discount that he was a rookie making his first three starts), because Denver was throwing the ball deep an inordinate amount.  Tebow's completion percentage has always been high when he's played outside of "oh crap our defense sucks we'd better chuck it downfield every play" situations.

Tebow is seen as a guy with very poor accuracy because, in practice, he can't laser in 15 yard in-routes with 95% success.  Fortunately, there's a lot more to throwing accuracy than that, which is a fact that seems to be lost on many coaches, scouts, and analysts.  Many of these folks differentiate between "accuracy" and "touch", and my question is simply, "why?".  They're the same thing.  "Touch" is just another form of accuracy.  For instance, Cam Newton is seen as having adequate accuracy for the NFL, but he has poor "touch".  If he can't complete a pass over the top of the linebackers because it requires putting touch on the pass then that is poor accuracy.  They're the same thing, and "touch", or as I call it "vertical accuracy" is something that Tebow excels at, and is the reason that Urban Meyer was willing to let him throw a 30 yard go route down the sideline to Louis Murphy on a key 3rd and short late in the 2009 SEC Title game.

Tim Tebow is what he is.  He's a gamer who plays exponentially better in game situations than he does in simulated practices.  He's a guy that makes things happen on the field with a wide collection of talents rather than with precision accuracy or sound mechanics.  And last I checked, when Tebow threw that 50 yard bomb in week one of the preseason that hit his receiver in stride, they didn't take back half the yardage because his mechanics were ugly on the throw.

The number of Gator publications that dub tonight's Gator loss to South Carolina in game one of the CWS finals as a "heartbreaker" will be many.  My first thought was to title this article the same, but I don't think "heartbreaker" quite covers it.  The Gators didn't just lose a heartbreaker, they redefined the term.  They came so close to winning so many times and South Carolina just kept coming up with great plays.

Before I get too deep into the game itself I'm going to digress into a bit of a personal anecdote here and talk about the state of college baseball in general.  I'm not going to poke around the fact that baseball has been the furthest thing from my mind in the last few years.  I grew up a huge baseball fan.  I remember hanging out down the newly renovated 1st base side of McKethan Stadium for 20+ games a year and watching Brad Wilkerson, Chuck Hazzard, David Eckstein and company win the hearts of Gator fans.  I was equally as in to major league baseball, waking up every morning and running to grab the paper and look over literally every single box score.

Then came the offensive explosion of both sports, and while the long ball was fun for a while it soon got old.  Then the steroid mess came out of it and I gave up on baseball after tiring of not being able to watch Baseball Tonight without the first 20 minutes being wasted on steroid talk that I didn't care about.

Now we fast forward back to this year's College World Series and it's like a slice of heaven, with this game being the very epitome of it.  Great pitching, small ball, and great defense (for the most part) ultimately leading to the one thing that makes a boring looking sport so great...suspense.  I can't speak for everyone else, but pretty much from the end of the 6th inning of this game through its horrifying 11th inning end, I was nervous and on the edge of my seat the entire time.  I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach that wouldn't go away as things remained tense throughout.  Every at bat, every pitch, and every runner was important.

And ultimately, that's where the Gators fell short.  The Gators finished 1 for 8 with runners in scoring position with even the one hit that they did get failing to bring in a run.  Combine that with some phenomenal defense and some really bad luck and you end up in a 0-1 hole that should have been a 1-0 advantage.

So many things had to go right for South Carolina to win that game, and so many go wrong for the Gators to lose it.  Hudson Randall stops that ground ball up the middle that South Carolina tied the game on 7 out of 10 times, but not that time.  Lost in the play where Scott Wingo made the great diving stop with no outs in the bottom of the 9th is how quickly he popped up to make the throw home, and how good of a catch it was at home to get the out.  Lost in the double play that followed it up is that Daniel Pigott was very clearly safe at first, and the Gators should have had another chance.

Even the double throwing error the brought in the game winning run needed some extra bad luck beyond just the throws.  The South Carolina runner didn't notice that the ball had been overthrown at 3rd and had it merely been an overthrow that went to the fence rather than actually bouncing into the stands, he would not have scored.

But all of those things did happen, and the Gamecocks found a way to win.  If there's one regret I have for the way the Gators played it's that the bottom of the lineup played much too defensively.  Both the bottom of the 9th and the bottom of the 11th came down to Tyler Thompason and Daniel Pigott with a chance to make a play, and both played scared.  Rather than attack the ball, they hid and slapped away at it with no goal other than to fight off the pitch or put the ball in play.

But that's the way it works in a pitcher's duel sometimes, it gets into the player's heads.  I'd just like to thank both Florida and South Carolina for giving us such an amazing game to watch, and I just hope that next time we end up on the other end of it.

Looking forward, things are a bit bleak.  Florida badly needed to win this game with Hudson Randall out on the hill for them and Michael Roth on the bench for SC.  Beyond the pitching matchups, there's the Gator psyche to deal with.  How often do you see teams lose a game like this and bounce right back?  Not often.  It's very tough to do, and even in longer series a loss like this can be tough to overcome, much less the short 3-gamer that makes up the CWS finals.

At least they won't have too much time to stew on it, as we jump right back in Tuesday night.  Let's hope the Gators can knock in some of those runners in scoring position this time.

I've got some exciting news for you all today.  As the site continues to grow and expand heading into football season I know you've all got a hunger for more content, and we've got some for you.

We're adding two new writers to the staff here at inallkindsofweather.com that I'm very excited to have aboard.

The first of these is Joe Vizzi.  It's a name that most of you don't know yet, but you will.  I've talked to him a few times personally and read quite a bit of his stuff, and he's a die hard Gator who really knows his stuff.  He recently graduated from UF and can't stay away from the Gators.  You guys are going to like him.

The second new addition isn't so much a "new" addition, as I'm sure you all already know him.  He is none other than our very own "thebone".  Half of his comments were practically articles in themselves anyway, so this is the next logical step.

Lately I've been doing some work to Iakow behind the scenes, while Neil has held down the fort on the article front.  I've got some great new features/upgrades to the site in the coming months that I've been working on, as my goal is to get all of that squared away before football season so the four of us can focus on writing and being a part of the community.

So join me in welcoming our two new writers and keep your eyes peeled for some cool site upgrades in the coming months!

As I sat down to write an article about the Orange and Blue game I had trouble figuring out what the general gist of it was going to be.  The problem was, we really learned very little.

The first problem was that it just seemed to fly by.  The whole thing lasted less than two hours including halftime.  But the real issue was the offensive line injuries.  As a result, we saw a lot of backup linemen, many of them tired from having to play both ways, get pushed around all afternoon long.  It's hard to evaluate an offense when the line is getting pushed around like that.

We've now seen the "new look" Gators offense.  It wasn't really anything new or revolutionary on a football-wide scale, and was a pretty prototypical pro style offense, which I'm sure is enough for most Gator fans tired of the spread after last year.

John Brantley looks like his same old self, or at least the same one we saw last year.  Maybe slightly more comfortable out there, but an alarming number of his passes still sailed or were knocked down at the line.  Again, it's difficult to evaluate it too much with the pass rush in his face all game long, so maybe he gets a bit of a pass on that front, but there certainly wasn't much to prove to us that he has turned things around yet.  Some of the passes he missed, and missed badly, were just inexcusable.

Tyler Murphy really stole the show from Brantley, and "stealing the show" in this case merely took a mediocre performance.  My major complaint with Murphy was his inability (or unwillingness) to put some touch on his passes and take some heat off of it.

Aside from the new offense, the other thing that most Gators fans were excited to see was freshman sensation Jeff Driskel.  Driskel certainly looked like a true freshman out there, but in all I liked what I saw of him.  Unlike Murphy, he demonstrated not only some good zip on his passes, but also the ability to float it over the top when necessary.

The real winner of the orange and blue game was neither orange nor blue, but rather the defense as a whole.  Yet again though, it's difficult to be sure how much of that was the easy win they got in the trenches against the tired, battered offensive line.  There were definitely several plays where the secondary let receivers get way too open, way too far downfield.

I don't think anyone believes that the Orange and Blue game lived up to the expectations this year, but it's a long offseason, and there's a lot of work that will still be done before the 2011 season kicks off.

I would love to just shrug off the Gators' loss to Butler on Saturday and say "it's just a game".  I wish I could do that.  But the truth is that this game stung as much to me as any other Gator basketball loss I can remember.  It was right up there with the Final Four game against Duke and the championship game against Michigan State.

I loved this team, I really did.  I didn't want to jinx it, but they reminded me so much of the '06 Gators basketball team.  A bunch of scrappy guys that play as a team, with no one superstar that stands out above the rest.  I really felt like they had a good chance to end the season the same way that the 2006 team did.

So what went wrong in the Butler game?

It started with some good old fashioned bad luck.  When the Gators took an 11 point lead a little more than half way through the second half and looked to be in total control of the game, the calls suddenly all started going Butler's way.  In a game where the refs had really been letting both teams play, they started blowing the whistle on the Gators every time there was a hint of contact (or apparent contact, which sometimes didn't even exist).  Worse, it didn't seem to be called the same way on the other end.  There were five or six questionable foul calls in that stretch that all went against the Gators.

The bad luck seemed to go beyond just the calls though.  It seemed like every time we blocked a shot, or poked a ball away, it bounced right to another Butler player that either got an easy layup or an open three off of it.  One of the biggest plays of the game was a blocked three-pointer that went right to Khyle Marshall, who was standing under the basket and was able to stick it in for an easy layup with an "and 1".

Even the rims seemed to be against us.  I can't ever recall seeing so many balls take awkward bounces off the rim and go in as I saw go Butler's way in this game.  Then on our side, anything the touched the rim at all seemed to find a way out.  Even the standard short free throw that typically bounces off the front of the rim, then off the backboard and then into the basket seemed to find a way to roll off the side for us every time.  Meanwhile, Butler was throwing balls off the heel of the rim that bounced six feet into the air and came down with nothing but net.  Even at the very end of the game when one of Shelvin Mack's free throws looked like it was about to fall off the rim, it was like some magical power or big gust of wind blew it back towards the center of the cylinder.

But those are all excuses.  If bad luck got Butler back into the game, questionable decisions lost it for us.

I love Billy Donovan, and there's not a coach in college basketball that I would trade him for, but I thought that this game was badly mismanaged at the end.

It started at the end of regulation, and it's something that's always bothered me.  Billy wants the last shot, and when he says last shot, he means the last shot.  Erving Walker didn't even start making his move until there were under 4 seconds on the clock, and the shot didn't go up until just before the buzzer sounded.  It's how he always plays it in a tie game, and we never get a good look out of it (similar to the BYU game just before it).

Instead of making your move at the 4 second mark, make it at the 8 or 9 second mark.  That way, if the first look isn't there, you can make a pass or two and get a good look.  If the shot is off the mark, it's coming down to the players with a second and a half left rather than zero seconds left.  The risk is still minimal, because even if they grab a defensive rebound all they can do with it is heave it the length of the court, but your chances of winning are much higher as it gives you a chance of an offensive put-back.  Erving Walker's missed shot at the end of regulation bounced right to Alex Tyus underneath.  It would have been an easy game winning put-back for him (similar to Matt Howard's game winner against ODU in the first round) if there was even 1 second on the clock.

Which would you rather have, a 15% chance of winning with a 0% chance of losing, or a 40% chance of winning with a 1% chance of losing on a full-court heave?  Obviously, I'm just pulling those numbers out of the air, but I've got to imagine that if you start making your move at 9 seconds rather than 4 seconds your chances of scoring improve drastically.

After that miss, overtime brought with it the other questionable decision, the one that everyone is talking about, the decision to sit Vernon Macklin and let the guards try to win it.

Billy said that after the first two possessions of overtime it became apparent that Butler was just going to foul Macklin, and he didn't want to put the game in the hands of a 44% free throw shooter.  To that, I say let them foul.  Andrew Smith was already out of the game and Matt Howard had 3 fouls.  It wouldn't take but a couple of possessions to run Butler out of big men entirely, and then who's going to grab the rebounds for Butler?  Who's going to guard Tyus and Young?

Besides, just because you're scared of Macklin being sent to the line doesn't mean you have to abandon the inside game altogether.  Tyus and Young can both shoot free throws and both could have asserted themselves inside as well.  My favorite thing about this team was that they could win games that we shot poorly from the outside in, and we could have won this game in spite of only shooting 10% from three point range for the first 37 minutes of the game had we not forced it.

In the end, Billy Donovan had to choose between riding the hot hand (Tyus, Macklin, and the inside game), and riding what had gotten us there all year (the guards coming up with big shots late).  The problem is, the outside shooting was off all night, and when a shooter is off, they're usually off all night long.  Also, just because you want to put the game in the hands of the guards doesn't mean they have to do it by shooting from the outside.  Kenny Boynton had had a lot of success getting into the lane earlier in the game.

In the end the Gators had two possessions in the final 19 seconds of overtime and rushed off two low percentage shots when they had plenty of time to set something better up.  The shot that Boynton took with 19 seconds left looked like something that was drawn up to get him that (long) shot, not something where Boynton decided to pull the trigger on his own.

Also un-noted about this loss was that it was yet another game where we missed three or four wide open layups and put-backs throughout the course of the game, and then had a close game late where we really could have used those points.  But perhaps the most frustrating thing is that when you take a look at the rest of the final four - VCU, Kentucky, and UConn  - that's a group that Florida could certainly have played with.  This wasn't a team that was playing for a trip to the Final Four just to say that they got there, they were playing for a trip to the Final Four with a legitimate, if not good, shot at winning it.

But alas, the Gators lost and this magical season is over.  These guys gave us a great run and one of the most enjoyable seasons of Gator basketball I can remember, and I'll always be thankful for that.  I'm just sad it had to end, especially in a game it felt like we should have won.

If I had told you prior to the game that the title of this article was going to be what you see above, how many of you would have been sure it was going to be about Chandler Parsons?

<raises hand>

Count me among you.  As I'm sure you are aware however, the senior I am referring to is not Parsons, but rather Alex Tyus.

On a night where our other big men like Macklin and Parsons looked lethargic, it was the most unlikely of Florida's starters that took over the game.  While Parsons was jogging to balls out by half court and giving up a transition bucket on the other end, and while Macklin was standing around watching his BYU counterpart repeatedly come down with easy defensive rebounds, Tyus played angry.  Tyus went after the ball.  Tyus attacked the rim.

Alex Tyus finished with 19 points and 17 rebounds, and you probably could have tacked on another 4 points and 2 rebounds to that were it not for a couple of bad foul calls that went against him late in the game.

This is the great thing about this Florida team.  On any given night, any or all of their five starters can take over a game.  Tonight was Tyus' night, and he rose to the call.

Of course, he had some help.  Wilbekin and Young played with great intensity on defense.  Erving Walker was at his best, hitting his shots from the outside and doing a great job of getting into the lane and getting other people open looks.  Macklin finally got things going on the offensive end late in the game, and while Parsons seemed gassed all night and had a long stretch in the 2nd half where he took (and missed) way too many jump shots rather than getting into the lane and using his height, he hit some big shots in the overtime and had some good dishes.  Finally, Kenny Boynton continued to be one of the most quiet scorers in the country.  As the game goes on it never jumps into your head that he's having a great game, but then that stat line comes up and there are 17 or 20 points there.  All of that added up to the Jimmer, who got the same disease that Parsons did late in the game and started launching distant threes even though he was having success in the lane, going home.

The Gators now head to the elite 8, where they'll take on the winners of the Wisconsin/Butler game, and will need to correct a few things to keep the streak going.

For starters, they've got to stop settling for open jump shots for long stretches when they're not falling.  Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with our guys taking a lot of shots from the outside, but it seems like every game we fall into at least one 7-10 minute span where we just give up on going inside and start launching shots, which typically leads to a long scoring drought that gets the other team back in the game or gets us behind.

Secondly Macklin, for as good as he typically is, has got to play much stronger than he did tonight.  BYU was not only a short team, they were a small team.  There wasn't much girth down there like there was against UCLA, yet still Macklin had trouble getting deep under the basket and only hauled in 5 rebounds on the night.  More than that though, he's got to play with strong hands.  He gets way too many balls poked away from him by random slaps and jabs at the ball when he's in the post or catching a pass.

The Gators have now won 10 of their last 11 games despite playing some pretty stiff competition in that stretch.  Here's to hoping they can make that 13 of 14 before all is said and done.

For some, it may feel like we've been here before.  A Gator basketball team loaded with talent, but prone to some disappointments.  Several times in the Billy Donovan era the Gators have had a top 3 seed and failed to make it out of the opening weekend.  Several more times they've lost to teams ranked 7 or more seeds below them.

People may be having flashbacks of those years after the beatdown the Gators received from Kentucky in the SEC Championship game.  So what makes this team different from those teams with high hopes and early exits from the NCAA tournament?

I really feel like this year's team is a different type of squad than those others, like the Roberson/Walsh class that just never could quite get it done in March.  Here's what makes this year's team different, and what gives them a chance to make a run rather than go one (or two) and done.

1. Less Reliance on Shooting

One of my favorite things about this year's Gators team is their ability to win games that they shoot poorly in.  I'm speaking specifically on outside shooting here, not just field goal percentage.  In the past, the Gators have had to rely on good outside shooting to compete with other good teams, and have had to shoot well to win games against mediocre teams.

This year is different.  For starters, the Gators have the best inside game they've had this decade outside of the National Championship years.  Macklin of course developed into a reliable post presence, and Tyus and Young have played well in their time as well.  Macklin's ability to set up the inside-out game has been a huge help, and the interior passing of the bigs has been exceptional.

The other big difference on this front is the ability of our guards, and even Parsons, to create dribble penetration.  The ability to drive to the basket is what makes and offense tick, and even though teams have been figuring out Erving Walker about (IE not fouling him as much and making him finish), both he, Boynton, and Parsons are a real threat to score when heading into the lane (so long as they're not playing against particularly big/lanky guards), and that opens everything else up.

This year, the Gators won games against Kentucky and Vanderbilt where they shot around 30% or less from 3-point range.  That wouldn't have happened with many of those other Gator teams that were bounced from the tourney early.

2. Resilience

For as much as the Gators won this year, they sure spent a lot of time trailing by large deficits.  An 8, 10, or 12 point deficit is not insurmountable for this team, and in some cases is not even worrisome.  When the Gators trailed by 12 against Kentucky in the SEC championship game, I felt like it was only a matter of time before the Gators made their run and got back in it, because they had done it so many times already this season.  That ability to believe that they are never out of it, and always have a chance, is invaluable come tourney time when every team faces some adversity.

3. Spreading the Wealth

The Gators have a rather unique advantage that most other teams cannot claim.  All 5 starters are legitimate scoring threats.  It seems that in almost every game lately, all 5 starters have scored in double figures.  We have our role players among them, like Tyus, but even those guys are legitimate threats to score on every possession.

Most teams have guys that are in there just for their rebounding ability, or just for their ball handling ability, or something like that.  With the Gators, you have to legitimately guard all 5 guys as if they're in there to score.  The other advantage to this is that a star player having an off night doesn't kill the team, as it would for UConn if Kemba Walker was having an off night or BYU if Jimmer was having an off night.  If Boynton or Parsons or Macklin are having a bad night there are plenty of other guys there to get the job done.

4. Depth

While the Gators' depth may not be the scoring threats that the starters are, they are some really quality players.  Wilbekin, Young, and Murphy all give us valuable minutes and always manage to come up with some big plays, and even Prather and Yeguete have looked good as of late.  Against Vandy in the SEC tourney, the starters were so gassed that our depth ended up playing large portions of that game, with a couple of stretches where four or even all five starters were out, and our backups were able to hang tough.

5. Offensive Rebounding

Along with the free throw shooting (to an extent), one thing that the Gators really got under control to turn this season around was rebounding.  When the Gators rebound well, they typically have a lot of success, and with the exception of the title game they've rebounded very well since SEC play started.  I don't have any figures on me, but it seems like the Gators have gotten a lot more second chance points this year than they typically do.  Having Parsons, a three that sucks up ten rebounds in many games, with several of those coming on the offensive end, is a huge part of that.

All of this is not to say that this team isn't without its faults.  The defense has been far less than extraordinary this year, especially down the stretch, and we struggle against teams with lots of long players.  We also don't have nearly the emotion and heart that the 06-07 teams were famous for, though few do.

However, with the traits I've listed above, combined with the remarkably favorable draw the Gators drew, this is one of those years where the Gators are destined to make a legitimate run, and not one of those years where the Gators are destined to disappoint early.

The Gator basketball team had been on a tear in the second half of the season.  Entering Sunday's SEC Championship matchup with Kentucky, the Gators were 13-2 in their last 15 games.  But on Sunday they looked more like the team that lost to UCF and Jacksonville than the team that had steamrolled its way through the SEC.  What went wrong on Sunday?  And more importantly, is it a cause for concern entering the NCAA tourney?  Is this just another Gator basketball team that is going to tease us with spouts of greatness only to make another early exit from the tourney?

The simple answer to all of that is not to fret.  Kentucky is a very poor matchup for Florida, plain and simple.  One of my favorite things about this Gators team compared to other Gator teams (barring the National Championship teams, of course) is the way they don't rely on good shooting, and can win big games on bad shooting nights.  One of the primary ways we do that is with dribble penetration from our guards off of on-ball screens, and deep entry passes to our big men.

Kentucky's length took that away.  And worse, much like in the Auburn game (where Florida struggled for the same reasons), it got into the Gators' heads early.

After Boynton and Walker had a few shots blocked early on, they basically gave up on trying to take the ball to the basket.  For the majority of the game, even if they got a step into the lane, they would pop back out and settle for a jump shot or give the ball up to someone else on the perimeter.  They were content to pass and dribble around the 3-point line.

Vernon Macklin suffered the same fate.  He's had some minor struggles with turnovers when he puts the ball on the floor in the past, but those were amplified by the long arms of the Kentucky guards early in the game, who stripped him several times when he was making his moves down around the basket.  Like the blocks did to the guards, these got into Macklin's head, and they basically abandoned the inside game altogether.

Between the Walker/Boynton's reluctance to drive to the basket, and their reluctance to let Macklin work inside, the Gators made almost no trips to the foul line, and were forced to rely on pure shooting in a game where they weren't shooting particularly well.

It seemed that late in the game Billy finally got it into their head that their only chance was to keep playing their game and go inside with the ball, but even then they were defeated mentally.  I think we've all been there, even if it was just in a pickup game.  You get a few shots blocked and then all of the sudden when you go to the basket you're more concerned about just getting the ball up without it being blocked than you are getting the ball into the basket.  That was clearly something the Gators suffered from on Sunday, as I don't think I've seen this team miss as many easy layups and easy put-backs (not to mention easy shots) all year long as they did late in this game alone.

So what does this mean for the tourney?  Nothing, really.  The Gators had an off night against a team that they match up poorly against and got walloped.  This is college basketball, it happens.  The fortunate thing is that the majority of teams that are similar to Kentucky with lots of long, athletic players (like Syracuse and Washington, not to mention Kentucky themselves) are on the opposite side of the bracket and likely will not have a path that intersects with Florida.

Entering this weekend, I figured that the best case scenario for the Gators was a 3 seed in the NCAA tourney.  However, a couple of blow-out losses may have opened some doors for the Gators to sneak into a 2 seed.

Let's start with the bad news.  Had UNC not had that miracle comeback win against the Canes, things would be much easier.  I suppose it's fitting that a Canes chokejob could end up costing the Gators a 2 seed.  Connecticut's big run also may vault them over the Gators, even if the Gators win today.  Pitt or Notre Dame winning the Big East tourney would have been ideal.

Here are the teams that will almost certainly be seeded ahead of the Gators, regardless of what happens today.

• Ohio State
• Kansas
• Pittsburgh
• Notre Dame
• Duke
• UNC
• San Diego State

That leaves only one 2 spot left for the Gators to have a shot at.  That spot will come down to Florida, Texas, BYU, and Connecticut.

Most people seem to think that Connecticut is a lock for the last #2 seed after their impressive 5 day romp through the Big East.  I disagree.  We see this every year.  The committee seems much more willing to seed based on the entire body of work and not let one weekend completely change their opinion of a team.  Casual fans see a team on a role in the conference tourney, and let it shape their opinion of a team.  Simply put, the committee tends not to let momentum greatly affect their seeding process.  Connecticut was likely a 5 seed prior to entering the conference tourneys, and I don't think the committee has it in them to bump a team from a 5 seed all the way to a 2 based on one weekend.

Another thing that the Gators have going for them is their RPI vs top 50 teams.  If the Gators beat Kentucky this afternoon, that would improve their record vs RPI top 50 teams to a whopping 12-2 on the year.  The committee seems to love good wins, and the Gators have a plethora of them.  Had the Gators taken care of business early on in the year and not racked up those horrible losses early on, we'd be having this discussion about a potential #1 seed rather than a #2.

Regardless of their great weekend, I don't think Connecticut takes that last 2 seed.  If it's not them, the Gators are just as good a candidate as Texas or BYU.

Of course, all of this is irrelevant without a win this afternoon.  Step one is beating Kentucky, which is something that has never come easy for the Gators, especially in tournament play.

Word has come out today that new Denver Broncos coach John Fox is going to go with Kyle Orton, and not Tim Tebow, as his starter next season (assuming there is a season).

It's only February, so we all know how this goes.  It's entirely plausible, or even likely, that he'll change his mind ten times between now and the start of the season.  But I'll say this, if Fox does indeed stick with that decision, it will be a horrible mistake.

As Gator fans, it's difficult for us to look at this objectively.  However, even when taking a step back, I'm struggling to really see the logic in this.  So let's look deeper.

Kyle Orton spent the first five years of his career mired in mediocrity.  He really came as close as he's ever going to get to "breaking out" in the first half of 2010, where he put up some great numbers under Josh McDaniels.  This makes it less impressive to me, given that McDaniels may be the only true "offensive genius" in the NFL.  For all the talk about guys like Brian Billick and Mike Shanahan, McDaniels is the only one that's ever parlayed that label into actual, consistent production.

When McDaniels was kicked out of town, Orton started looking more like John Brantley than he did the guy who played for Josh McDaniels.  Look at these lines he put up with Eric Studesville at the helm.

Week 13: 9-28 (32%) 117 yards (4.2ypa) 0TD 0INT -- 6 offensive points
Week 14: 19-41 (46%) 166 yards (4.0ypa) 0TD 3INT -- 13 offensive points

Tebow then came in, and while he didn't exactly light up the world, given what he was stepping into, and given that it was his first three games as a starter in the NFL, what he did is in fact quite remarkable.

Week 15: 8-16 (50%) 138 yards (8.6ypa) 1TD 0INT, 78 yards rushing, 1 rush TD -- 23 offensive points
Week 16: 16-29 (55%) 308 yards (10.6ypa) 1TD 1INT, 27 yards rushing, 1 rush TD -- 24 offensive points
Week 17: 16-36 (44%) 205 yards (5.7ypa) 2TD 2INT, 94 yards rushing, 1 rush TD -- 28 offensive points

And of course those games included the miracle comeback against the Texans, and the near miracle comeback against the Chargers.  I'm going to break down all three of these games in a much more detailed fashion in a future article, but this isn't the place for it.

Like I said, not exactly Peyton Manning type numbers, but very impressive given the awful situation he was put into, and given that it was his first real action in the NFL.  Can anyone imagine the insane amounts of buzz that there would have been if a guy like Matt Stafford had started his NFL career in such a manner, rather than starting it with 1 touchdown and 5 interceptions in his first two games?

I'm open to the idea that Tim Tebow is not going to end up being a good NFL player, I really am.  But thusfar, all he's done is answer some of the biggest doubts that many skeptics had (will he be able to run at the NFL level, does he have the arm strength, and will the throwing motion be an issue), while leading his failing, sputtering team to some good offensive performances in games that he was supposed to be doing nothing other than learning in.

Besides, do you really want to be the one to have to tell this guy that he's back on the bench for no good reason?

So what's the logic for going with Orton?  I'm not convinced that Kyle Orton is significantly better than Tim Tebow right now, and his window to improve and his ceiling are of course both much lower.  Orton also certainly does not bring the intangibles and leadership qualities that Tebow does.

So why go with Orton?  Simply put, John Fox is a very conservative coach.

Fox is notoriously loyal to veteran players.  Those of you out there that are bigtime fantasy football players are surely familiar with this.  I'm sure you remember the way that he stuck with an aging Stephen Davis who could barely stand upright while a younger, clearly superior (at that stage in their careers) Deshaun Foster waited patiently for his turn.  Then, Foster got older and DeAngelo Williams was repeatedly stuck on the bench in spite of his terrific ypc and flashes of brilliance in his limited time.

Fox is a conservative coach, and veterans provide a nice security blanket.  Simply put, Orton is the safer option in his mind, even if he's not in reality.

The shame in all of this is that no matter who starts at QB for Denver next year, they likely won't look good.  Fox is no good without a running game, and Denver's running game is atrocious.  I really wish McDaniels had been able to stick around as I really believe Tebow would have thrived under him.  Under Fox though, I think any QB will have a difficult time there in 2011.

One thing is for sure.  This bad Denver team needs a superstar that the fans can get behind, and Orton is not that guy.

I know that everyone is pretty focused on the Gators finishing up their recruiting class right now, but there will be plenty of time to talk about that and I want to make sure we don't forget about the Gator basketball in the meantime.  Besides, Neil's got you covered on that front, and there's a pretty good forum discussion going on about it as well.

The Gator basketball team pulled out another nailbiter on Tuesday night, and many will see it as an example of perserverance in a close game.  While that much is true, another disturbing trend was on display:  the Gators' inability to close out games.

For the third time in just over a week, the Gators went dead cold in the last three minutes of regulation.  Even worse is that in two of those games the Gators had 8-point leads with around four minutes to play, and in both cases could not close the game out in regulation.  So what is going wrong at the end of these games?

The obvious answer is free throw shooting.  In both games, the Gators had a chance to ice it with a few free throws, but could not.  But the effects of poor free throw shooting don't end there.  Even when they're not at the stripe the Gators are struggling to score, and a big part of that is that Donovan has no choice but to take Vernon Macklin out of the game down the stretch due to his poor numbers from the stripe.  Without Macklin in, the Gators offense often devolves into Walker and Boynton pulling up for long, contested three pointers.

Bad free throw shooting I can live with.  Usually, when a guy who's 18+ years old is a bad free throw shooter, he's going to be a bad free throw shooter for life.  There's often nothing that can be done about it, no matter how much work is put into it.  But the other half of the Gators' late game failures is fixable, and that fix is to stop playing prevent offense late in the game.

At the end of regulation in the Vanderbilt game I had to look over at the Gators' bench and make sure that Steve Addazio wasn't calling in the plays.  Wait, did I say plays?  Sorry, I meant play...singular.  You know the one.  Take the ball up court, stand around up top until the shot click hits four, and then throw up a hail marry three pointer just to pretend like we're trying to score.

In the Vanderbilt game Florida had the ball with a 2-point lead and around 50 seconds to play.  In the Georgia game, it was a multi-score lead with around 2 minutes to go.  In either case, a basket is just about a dagger in the victory, but in both cases we instead elected to just run off 35 seconds and give the ball back freely.

Florida pulled out the win in both games, so their late collapses haven't gotten much attention yet.  But if we're going to be stuck relying on a miracle three-pointer by Erving Walker like we had against Georgia, or a blown no-call that went in our favor like we had against Vandy, then that luck is going to run out fast.

The bright side of all this is that those late regulation collapses allowed us to see some really good things in the overtimes of those games.  In both cases, Chandler Parsons ultimately came up big at the end.  Maybe we should give him a shot down the stretch in regulation.  One thing is for certain, they need to get those late game collapses under control.  If they can figure it out, we've got a pretty good squad this year.

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It's hard to believe that the team I was watching on Tuesday night was the same team that I was watching a week ago.  After lulling us to sleep with the most boring game ever, the Gators this week gave us the complete opposite and showed what this team is really made of with yet another conference road win.

Florida defeated Georgia 104-91 on Tuesday night in a double overtime thriller that included miraculous comebacks, (multiple) buzzer beaters, and tons of scoring.

The game seemed all but won after Georgia turned the ball over with less than a minute left and Florida carrying a four point lead.  But once again free throws were our achilles heel.  The ironic thing this time around was that it was one of our best free throw shooters, on a night where Florida shot pretty good from the line as a team, that couldn't hit them down the stretch.

Florida inbounded with its four point lead and Erving Walker was fouled and sent to the stripe with 36 seconds left and a 4-point lead.  Walker, a 76% free throw shooter on the year, missed the front end of his 1-and-1 to give Georgia a chance.  After Gerald Robinson hit a tough 3-pointer, Walker was once again sent to the line, this time with a 1-point lead and 21 seconds left.  Walker made one of two, and Georgia got an offense rebound and layup to tie the game up that was literally as close to a buzzer beater as you can possibly get, with the ball leaving Trey Thompkins hand with 0.1 seconds left on the clock.

That sent the game to overtime with Georgia having all the momentum.  Florida felt like they were clinging for dear life, and they did that just well enough to get the ball back with 6.7 seconds left and a 3-point deficit.  Erving Walker, who missed his chance to ice it in regulation, then hit the miraculous three pointer you see in the video up above to send us to a second overtime.  I guess all that practice that Walker has had shooting three pointers from way deeper than he should be finally paid off.

The Gators took control in the second overtime as Chandler Parsons took over the game, and the Gators quickly pulled away.

This game really showed us a lot about this Gators team.  Walker's perserverance was perhaps the story of the night.  He could have easily folded after botching the last minute of regulation and giving Georgia a chance to win a game that they had no business being in.  Instead, he did the complete opposite and was at his best after that.

The Gators had four players score 19 points or more.  Vernon Macklin dominated the early game, Chandler Parsons dominated the late game, and Boynton and Walker were steady throughout.

The really odd part of the game was the story behind the offensive rebounding.  Georgia dominated on the offensive glass in the first half.  Billy Donovan must have lit a fire under the Gators at half time because when they came out in the second half that was completely flipped, as the Gators dominated the offensive glass.  From then on it seemed to switch off every 5 minutes or so.  Georgia would get what seemed like a half dozen consecutive offensive rebounds over a 3-5 minute span and then Florida would do the same.  Back and forth they went.  At the end of regulation and during the 1st overtime, Georgia continually racked up second chance points and the Gators barely held on.  In the 2nd overtime, the Gators regained control of the glass and ran away with the game.  It was really unusual to see the rebounding game be so streaky.

The most confidence inspiring part of the game was the Gators reaction to Georgia's switch to a zone late in the 2nd half.  If you'll recall, Auburn's zone defense really shut Florida down a week ago, and while they bounced back nicely against Arkansas, Arkansas played strictly a man to man defense.  I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Florida just couldn't handle a zone D.  Fortunately, when Georgia gave this theory a shot late in the second half, the Gators ripped it a part so fast that Georgia had to abandon it within a few possessions.  Rather than lazily pass the ball around the perimeter like they did against Auburn, the Gator guards created and drove to the basket, and got the ball inside to Macklin, who had a monster game.  It was great to see Boynton, Walker, and Parsons creating with the ball in this game because that is what this Gators team desperately needs.  If we become purely an outside shooting team we have no chance.

This Gators team will live and die by the matchups of our guards.  Against athletic guards that can prevent them from getting inside, our offense were struggle.  Against guards that Boynton and Walker can penetrate against, the team will have success.  Thusfar, we've found more opponents in the latter category as the Gators now sit alone atop the SEC East with an NCAA tournament birth seeming all but assured at this point, barring a monumental collapse.

I'm not going to sugar coat this.  Florida looked like a high school basketball team on Thursday night.  Fortunately for them, they were playing against Auburn, who looked like a rec league team.  The combination of the two made for one of the sloppiest and most boring basketball games I can remember seeing.

Auburn wasn't supposed to win a game in the SEC this year, but they almost got one last night thanks to some absolutely putrid play by the Gators.  In the end, the Gators somehow found a way to score more than three points in the last four minutes (don't laugh...in this game, that was a feat) and pull out a 45-40 victory.

Yes, you read that right.  45-40.  It was the lowest scoring game Florida has had since Billy Donovan took over coaching here.  With about four minutes to go, Auburn capped off a fast break with a dunk to take a commanding 40-37 lead.  With the way Florida was playing, a three point deficit seemed almost impossible to overcome.

So what dug Florida into that hole?  The simple answer is that Florida had a bad shooting night.  We know how the Gators rely on the 3-pointer and even though the shots weren't falling, the Gators kept shooting them.  At that point in the game, Florida had made 3 of 24 three point attempts.

But it wasn't just bad shooting, and there was a reason those numbers were so low.  When Auburn switched to a zone, Florida had no answer.  It wasn't just that they had no answer, it was as if they weren't even looking for one.  After a few interior passes got picked off, Florida pretty much gave up on getting the ball inside entirely.  About 90% of our second half possessions boiled down to walking the ball down the court while the three perimeter players make slow, boring passes back and forth to each other until one of them eventually launched a hail marry 3-pointer from three feet outside the three point line.  They were long shots, they were contested shots, and they were really, really bad shots.  Our offense was so timid that Auburn's defense had actually extended itself well out beyond the 3 point line.  Their zone was set up that far out.  The Gators desperately need someone to step up in these situations and create some penetration to the basket to free some guys up on the inside.

Simply put, this was the worst basketball game I've ever watched.  The teams consistently pulled up from fast break opportunities to set up their horrible half court offenses that weren't working.  Auburn's free throw shooting was so bad (1 for 8) that it actually made Florida's look good.  Florida shot 28% from the field and won.

The really difficult thing to watch was to see Florida literally score only 14 points in the first 16 minutes of the second half (to the point where Florida trailed 40-37), and then to watch the Wisconsin/Indiana game that came on ESPN right after, where Indiana bested that number within the first four minutes of the game.

In the end, it all worked out.  Not through some miraculous change in the offense or anything, but basically in luck as two of our hail marry three points eventually found their way into the basket.  First it was Kenny Boynton with a long range 3-pointer and a hand in his face to tie the game at 40-40.  Then on the next possession Erving Walker drilled another one to give the Gators a 43-40 lead which, in this game, was plenty.

It certainly wasn't pretty, though it does show some resilience to win a conference road game when things aren't going well.  What this game really showed us though is just how bad a night this team can have when the shots aren't falling, and that doesn't bode well for tournament play in March as those types of games inevitably pop up and you must rely on inside play to get you through to the next game.  This team can beat anyone in the nation, but they're far too inconsistent to win with the regularity that will be required to make a big run in March.

With Auburn's defeat of Oregon in Monday's BCS Championship Game, the SEC has now won 5 consecutive BCS titles, two of which came from our very own Florida Gators.  In fact, with the national championship on the line, the SEC has now won 8 consecutive times, with Florida taking home three of those eight.  Of course, our 1995 Fiesta Bowl debacle was also the reason that streak isn't longer, but we'll overlook that.

The streak of 5 consecutive national championships extends what was already the longest in NCAA history (excluding the early years when their were only a few teams and an Ivy League school won every year).  The next longest streak is three consecutive championships, which has been done a few times but not since 1971, when there was much less parity in college football.  For the SEC to do what it has done now, with scholarships limited and with parity at an all-time high in college football, is truly remarkable.

Oregon came into Monday's BCS championship game with Auburn ranked 1st in the Pac-10 in total offense and in scoring, and not by a narrow margin.  Auburn came in to the game ranked 9th out of 12 teams in the SEC in total defense.

Yet, in spite of that supposed mismatch, the game played out much like it had each of the past 4 years.  A supposed top offense was faced with a defense they didn't know how to combat.  Oregon couldn't handle the strength of Auburn's front, which was led by Nick Fairley's dominant play.  The way Auburn consistently got into the backfield so quickly that they were hitting Darron Thomas and LaMichael James as they were in the middle of their option read was something I've never seen before.  Oregon was consistently stuffed in short yardage situations, where they've been unstoppable all year.

In the defense of fairness, Oregon's strength is their running game, and run defense happens to be the only thing Auburn is good at.  It was a lucky matchup for Auburn, who would have been in big trouble against a high powered passing (rather than rushing) offense.  Nonetheless, the extent to which Oregon's run game was shut down is beyond what any Pac 10 fan could have imagined.  Oregon averaged 303 rush yards per game this year at an average of 6 yards per carry.  They ran for more than 230 yards ten times in twelve tries this year.  But on Monday night against Auburn, the Ducks managed just 75 yards rushing on 32 attempts, a measly 2.3 yard per carry average.

The result was a game that Auburn controlled the majority of the way.  Realistically, Oregon was lucky the game was as close as it was.  Darvin Adams couldn't come up with a long pass on 3rd down of Auburn's 1st possession that he probably should have caught, Cam Newton and Eric Smith botched an easy touchdown on 4th and goal from the 1 yard line, and Newton later missed Darvin Adams on a long touchdown on a great "in and go" route that left Oregon's cheating safety 12 yards behind.  Oregon's only offense came on one long pass play and a late turnover by Cam Newton.  They were never really able to consistently move the ball long enough to sustain a long scoring drive.

So what is it about these SEC teams that has led to such success in these games?  Early on, people thought the answer was speed.  But speed wasn't really a factor either of the last two years, and particularly not this year where Oregon had a clear advantage in that department.

The real answer is defense.

"Defense wins championships".  The motto is as old as football itself, and never truer than right now, which is ironic given that the game has turned towards the offense more than it ever has before.  After a run at pure offense in the 90's, the SEC has been a defensive conference in the last decade.  And while things play out differently during the season when you're matched up with a bunch of teams that know you well and have been playing you for years, when everything is on the line at the end of the year, it's usually defense that leads the way.

There is no better example of that than Florida themselves.  Amid all the talk of Urban Meyer bringing the spread offense to the SEC and people arguing over whether or not it would work in a power conference, it ended up not even mattering because defense ruled the day.  In 2007, we had possibly the greatest offense that we've ever had at Florida, with only '96 and '97 rivaling it.  Tim Tebow won the heisman, and we lit up the scoreboard.....and lost four games.

In 2006 and 2008, our offense was actually pretty mediocre (especially in '06), but outstanding defensive play vaulted us to the top.  The 2006 Ohio State team was considered by some to be one of the best teams of all-time headed into the BCS Championship Game, and that was mostly on the reputation of their offense.  As you'll all remember, the result of that game was Ohio State's offense being unable to match the yardage output of their opening kickoff return.  2008 was similar, with the vaunted Oklahoma offense being held to a paultry 14 points.

The heroes of the SEC's five straight BCS championship wins are not Heisman winners like Cam Newton, Tim Tebow, and Mark Ingram.  Rather, they are defensive studs like Nick Fairley, Joe Haden, Jarvis Moss, Terrance Cody, and many others who rose to the occasion when it mattered most, alongside defensive coordinators that have out-schemed their unprepared opponents..

I also want to touch on one other point that I believe factors in to this SEC streak, and that is passion.  I was at the 2006 National Championship game, and Florida fans were outnumbered by Ohio State fans 70/30.  But in spite of the huge numbers disadvantage, Florida fans were still so much louder than the Ohio State fans (even before the game got out of hand), and so much more passionate.  You could hear this on Monday night as well as my TV was practically shaking when Oregon had the ball and Auburn fans were making noise, while the reverse could not be said.

Say what you will about momentum and the crowd in football, but there's no doubt that that passion transfers on to the players.

So where am I going with all of this?  Well, in my oh so humble opinion, two of the largest factors in the SEC's unprecedented streak of national championships are passion and defense.  Now, assuming that "bad hair" isn't an option, if I asked you to describe Will Muschamp in two words, what would they be?

Passion and defense.

Bam.

I typically try to keep this section more about opinions than news, but this one was just too surprising not to put something up.  I'll throw in my two cents as well to justify it.

Less than a week ago there were several reports that Janoris Jenkins was foregoing his senior season in favor of the NFL draft.  Despite Jenkins being a huge loss for the Gators, there was barely any discussion about this because pretty much everyone knew it was coming.

Now, a few days later, the shocking announcement that Jenkins will NOT be entering the draft and will instead be returning for his senior season has come out.

My first reaction to this was that it is going to really spoil my "Biggest offseason losses" article that I've been working on, since Jenkins was near the top of that list.  At least it will make the painful decision of who to put #1 on that list between Jenkins and *spoiler alert* Ahmad Black much easier.

As a Gator fan, I'm ecstatic that Jenkins is coming back.  Jenkins was our best offense early on in 2010, as we repeatedly found ourselves in close games against weak teams that were finally broken open when our opponent made the mistake of trying to throw at Jenkins.  Beyond the countless crucial turnovers he forced this year, having Jenkins on one side of the field allows us great freedom with our defensive playcalling.  Like Austin in 2010, Muschamp/Quinn can now be much more aggressive with blitzes and also can protect the weaker DB play on the other side (though Jeremy Brown is coming along nicely) with safety help.  And let's not forget his ability to take big name receivers out of the game.  AJ Green will likely be a top 10 pick in the NFL draft this April, and Julio Jones will likely be a first rounder as well.  Jenkins shut them both down.  If the Jets had Revis island, then we have Jenkins island, and he is only going to get better as a Senior.

On the flipside, as a fan of Gator players, I can't help but think that Jenkins is making a poor decision.  If he were to leave for the NFL right now he would almost certainly be a top 15 overall pick, which is getting near the peak of where a DB can go in the draft.  He could maybe vault his stock 5-7 spots higher this offseason, but is that really worth the risk of an injury or off year?  It just seems like there is a lot more room to fall down than to rise up.  Maybe he's worried about a lockout, or maybe he was just salivating at what he could do in a Will Muschamp defense.

Either way, having Janoris Jenkins be a part of the 2011 Florida Gators is going to make this team a lot better.  People wondered about Muschamp's ability to recruit.  While the recruiting of high school players still has a month left, Muschamp may have already won the biggest recruit already in school in the SEC.

Nothing has come out yet on whether or not this will affect Will Hill's decision to go pro.  It would be ironic if Jenkins stays on for his senior year while Hill sticks to his decision to go pro.  Hill is all talent and no production, a disappointment so far.  If anyone could use a year playing in a Will Muschamp defense (and getting better as a player under him) it is a guy like Will Hill.

John Brantley was supposed to be UF's next great quarterback.  After sitting behind Tebow for three years, 2010 was going to bring us a new offense suited to Brantley's dropback passing style, and he was going to light up the scoreboards.

Of course, what actually happened was the polar opposite of that.  The offense was not adjusted, and Brantley was horrendous.  Against SEC opponents plus FSU and Penn State he completed 52% of his passes at 6 yards per attempt with 5 TDs and 9 interceptions.  Was his awful season the result of the horrific, poorly suited offensive system and play calling of Steve Addazio, or was it the result of John Brantley just not being very good?

The short answer is "both".  Obviously, Brantley was not put into a position to succeed.  He was asked to run an offense that was suited to quarterbacks that are nothing like him, and a poor version of that offense at that.  To make matters worse, we eventually went to a three QB system that often saw Brantley on the bench for two plays only to be called in to try and convert a 3rd and long.  Any quarterback that makes the majority of their throws on 3rd and long is going to have poor efficiency numbers.  And let's not forget the horrific O-line play this season.

But that doesn't tell the whole story about John Brantley.  Brantley is an inaccurate passer that has difficulty reading the field, is afraid to take chances, and has almost no leadership capabilities.

People love to talk about the rotating quarterbacks not allowing Brantley to get into a rhythm, and there's certainly some truth to that.  But you don't need rhythm to accurately throw a 3 yard crossing route or 5 yard out, and Brantley struggled even with those passes.  Brantley's decision making reminded me of Matt Leinart in the pros.  A 'captain checkdown' who's so quick to look for the underneath outlets that he never really even gives the downfield options a chance.

If Brantley chooses not to transfer, he'll likely be Florida's starting QB next year (at least out of the gates) in spite of a horrific 2010.  Driskel won't start as a true fresman, and Brantley is more suited to Weis' pro-style offense than Reed is.  His leash won't be long, and regaining the confidence of his teammates (who were visibly upset with him in the FSU game) won't be easy.  Brantley was already a somber, poor leader even before his teammates gave up on him, and now that will only get harder.

The plus side is that I believe Brantley can be adequate in a pro style offense.  Sure, his upside may be Doug Johnson (and not just because he wears #12 and his passes always sail high), but you can win 10 games with Doug Johnson and good coaching, as Florida did in '97 and '98.  What Brantley needs is a simple offense with easy reads.  But the most important fix for Brantley will be mental.  If his confidence remains what it is right now then he will be useless, and we'll see nothing but checkdowns out of him until he checks down to a comfy spot on the bench.  Rebuilding a quarterback's confidence is extremely difficult.  Doing it with a quarterback as mentally weak as Brantley appears to be may be impossible, but it's his only chance.

So what do you guys think, is Brantley just a victim of a bad offensive scheme that was not suited to him, or would he have failed even in a system built for him?

With the Steve Addazio nightmare finally over, the task of rebuilding the side of the ball that's not called defense (can we really even call what we had in 2010 an "offense"?) now falls into the hands of one of Will Muschamp's first hires, Charlie Weis.

I'll get right to the point here, the hiring of Charlie Weis is a huge coup.  A successful NFL offensive coordinator coming off a great season and taking a college job that's not a head coaching position?  I don't think many people dreamed that would happen.

Sure, the Notre Dame fiasco is the freshest thing in most people's minds when the name 'Charlie Weis' comes up, but some people just make great coordinators and not great coaches.  Josh McDaniels is one of those guys, Mike Martz is one of those guys, Romeo Crennel is one of those guys, and yes, Charlie Weis is one of those guys.

When Florida lost (got rid of) Steve Addazio, we lost one thing.  Recruiting.  For as much as Addazio sucked at everything a person can possibly suck at, he was still a good recruiter.  How he convinced those kids to come play in his wretched offense is beyond me, but somehow he did.  Charlie Weis brings that same recruiting panache with him, without the part about sucking at everything else.  For all the struggles he had at Notre Dame, his teams there were good at two things, scoring points and bringing in top recruits.  Those two things will be his only jobs at Florida.

So let's look back at the career of Charlie Weis.

He entered the NFL in 1990 and spent his first seven years as various types of assistant coaches (running backs coach, tight ends coach, wide receivers coach, etc).  After spending 1996 as the wide receivers coach for the New England Patriots' explosive offense, he was given his first gig as an offensive coordinator in 1997 with the New York Jets.  That Jets offense actually took a step back in '97 from where they were in '96 (mediocre), but in '98, in Weis' second year, they finished 4th in the league in offense.  You may remember 1998 as the last good season of Vinny Testeverde's career, one year after he was cut by Baltimore.

In 1999, Testeverde got injured early on and the Jets offense took a big step backwards with Rick Mirer and Ray Lucas leading the charge.  New England had seen enough though, and hired Weis to be their new offensive coordinator in 2000.

New England's offensive stats are not as good in the early 2000's as people remember.  They put up a lot of points, but not a ton of yards.  A big part of that was the strength of their defense, which led to the Pats nursing a lot of leads.  Of course, the big thing everyone will remember from that era is the decision to go with Tom Brady as their starting quarterback, and many super bowl victories to follow.

By 2005, the Patriots were rolling along with Brady and Weis and a top 5 offense, when the Notre Dame job became available.  Weis took over a team that had finished 82nd in the country in total offense in 2004, and led them to a 10th place finish in his first year in 2005.  2006 was similar, as many of you will recall the media believing ND to be a national championship contender during those years, but their defense was just too bad.  In 2007, Brady Quinn had graduated and the nation's top recruit Jimmy Clausen got the start for Notre Dame in what proved to be a horrible year, offensively as well as defensively.  Notre Dame's offense didn't come back until 2009, Clausen's junior year, when they again finished in the nation's top 10.

Finally, Weis was fired from Notre Dame after the 2009 season where a top 10 offense paired with a horrible defense led to a 6-6 finish.  He took over the Chiefs job in 2010.  The Chiefs had finished 2009 with the league's 25th ranked offense, made no major personnel changes in 2010, and ended up finishing 12th in Weis' first year there, vastly improving as the season went on.

So what conclusions can we draw about Charlie Weis?  For starters, he is not the type of guy who has finished with a top 5 offense at every stop along the way.  In fact, his offenses, statistically, have rarely finished in that threshold.  On the flipside, in every case, his teams have all shown a drastic offensive improvement within two years of his arrival, in more cases than is just pure coincidence.  With Florida, and following up Steve Addazio, that will be no tall order as a band of merry monkeys could probably coach this offense to a significant improvement within the next two years.

What we have in Charlie Weis is a guy who has been successful at running pro style offenses, and is a good recruiter.  What more could we have asked for with this hire?  That's a serious question, for the people that are disappointed with Weis, who would you have rather had?  Sure, a guy like Steve Spurrier or Gus Mahlzan would have been great, but I'm looking for reasonable answers here as obviously Spurrier is not going to take an OC position and Mahlzan probably won't move until he gets a head coaching gig.  I know a lot of Gators wanted Kerwin Bell, and while I would have liked to see what he could do as well that was before I ever dreamed that a guy like Wess would take a college OC job.  And were his son not soon to be enrolled at Florida, he likely wouldn't have.

Will Muschamp will have our defense ready to go within two years, as he has everywhere he's been.  Charlie Weis should do the same for the offense.  The coaching staff is really shaping up, and the major question left for Florida next year is whether John Brantley sucked because he played for Addazio, or whether he sucked and also played for Addazio.  That's something we'll be exploring here soon.

As for Dan Quinn, the new defensive coordinator hire, all you really need to know there is that he has a history with Muschamp and will likely be there to run the day to day things with the defense.  Let's make no mistake about it here, Muschamp loves defense and he is our real defensive coordinator.

Steve Addazio is finally gone.  Before he left, however, he called plays for Florida's offense one final time in the Outback Bowl.

The game was pretty much what we've come to expect out of Addazio.  Actually, the game was exactly what we've come to expect of him.  Short passes, predictable runs up the middle, and a lot of offensive ineptitude.  Fortunately, this was one of those games where the defense bailed us out, scoring twice and setting up the offense with a short field countless other times.  Sure, Florida scored 37 points on the day, but Florida's touchdown drives on the day went for 0, 0, 15, and 25 yards.

Revel in this game Gator fans.  Revel in the fact that this was the last time you'll have to watch a team consistently try to pick up 2 yards and 3rd and 8 (I counted at least 4 times we ran two yard crossing routes into traffic on 3rd and 5 or longer, and at least one other QB draw on third and long).  Revel in the fact that this was the last time you'll have to see us go an entire half where the furthest the ball ever traveled downfield in the air was 12 yards (with the second furthest being a 4 yard slant pass to Karl Moore on 3rd and long early in the game), which Florida did once again on Saturday.

That is, unless you decide to start watching Temple football.  I'm sure you'll see plenty of that there if you ever miss it.

There were lots of interesting stats that came out of this game.  John Brantley went 6/13 for 41 yards with an INT.  More impressive about that performance though is the whopping 3.2 yards per attempt.  Jordan Reed's horrible 4.6 ypa actually seems good by those standards.  As bad as those ypa numbers are, the yards per completion numbers are even scarier at 7.2.  Not only was that by FAR (needed some emphasis there) the worst yards per completion number of any team that played on Saturday, but it was also worse than more than half of the teams that played on Saturday's yards per attempt numbers.

Our leading rusher (Reed), rolled downfield at 2.8 yards per rush on 24 carries.  Some of that was set back by sack yardage, but still, we see what happens when the defense knows that every play is going to be a run up the middle or a pass within 3 yards of the line of scrimmage.

Truly, our best offense on the day was our defense, and that's where our stat of the game comes in.  Ahmad Black was, in a sense, our leading receiver.  His 129 return yards on his 2 interceptions were more than every Gator receiver had on offense combined, and by a comfortable margin.

And that is how Steve Addazio leaves us, as fantastically as he began.  Farewell, Steve Addazio, and good luck Temple Owl fans.