Stay positive. Yes, it was an ugly loss, but the Gators did not deserve the win that night. This might be a good way to motivate the team for next year.
The only way we CAN look at it--and as dramatic a display of "every possible explanation" as I have ever seen:
"Lost something over the near-month-and-a-half","didn't take it seriously", "let-down-opponent", "weren't motivated", "off-their-game before GETTING there", "little to play for ", "distractions leading up to game--players suspended from the defense for the first half, etc."...I could go on, what with the first play-from-scrimmage (I mean, volleyball set-up for a give-away TD?) and everything after, but I can tell you that, sitting in a MAYBE 3/4-full Superdome ("Smallest Sugar Bowl Crowd since 1939"...AND even with Bowl-pay-out, UF almost LOST $ on the unsold "mandatory-allotted-tix"), with a Gator-dominant crowd still trickling in and sitting on its hands while the smaller, tighter Louisville fans, all there and going nuts from 60 minutes-before-kick-off ON, had themselves a good-ol' rollicking time, well, what was happening on AND off-the-field was all "of a piece":
Too bad for all those late-arriving Gators, 'cause the best part of that "Night at the Superdome" turned out to be the 3/4 hour or so BEFORE the game, when you could watch famous Gator alum like Tim and Emmit chatting confidently on the sidelines while the Gators went through their warm-ups--the sharpest they looked all night. The the game began--and immediately "went south"...
I turned to my girlfriend after that first-play TD and said, "This could be bad..." When we went 3-and-out, I said, "Either our "D" knocks them on their asses right here, right now, or this WILL be a long, hard night..." By Louisville's 3rd completed 3rd-down pass on the ensuing Louisville drive, even BEFORE the TD that made it 14-0, I said quietly, "We are completely flat, THEY are flying HIGH--and this QB of theirs is having his best night of the season...I can feel it: We are going to lose this one--BAD!" The game, its tix and the trip to NO were a present from her to me, so I didn't want to say much more after that, just sat there in pain, grunting now and then--until, midway through the 2nd qrtr, God bless her she whispers in MY ear, "I'm with you no matter what, but..." well, I told the rest of this, shortly after it happened, from our Hilton hotel room, so y'all get the idea.
I could be angry, but I'm not--disappointed, of course, but in the LONG run strangely optimistic: I KNEW this team still had a ways to go, and now THEY know it TOO--in no uncertain terms. It ISN'T as far as this loss might seem to indicate--there WERE a lot of variables involved here...but both the staff, starting with our Head Coach AND OC (Pease still has some things to prove here now--let's get him some receivers and see what he can do...and Jacoby Brisset shouldn't necessarily bail now either, pf you ask me--and I'm a Driskel FAN), AND the players remaining, obviously had some lessons to learn, and we can only hope that NOW they have been handed the evidence--in the clearest possible terms. A Big Win (a la Cincinnati in '09--and we all know what came after THAT) would have taught us nothing--in fact, could well have lulled us into a sense of confident, unfounded complacency...As I have said to friends, better here and now, as part of THIS season's "lessons learned", that all the issues, concerning our missing pieces AND Big Game prep with a long lay off, than say, NEXT season when maybe we've just won the SEC Championship Game and again face that long lay off. In fact, SOME of the lessons learned here may help us GET to that position--and beyond.
WE spent the rest of that night in our room (WITHOUT the TV on, I ASSURE you), hitting the mini-bar and ordering up a REALLY "late-dinner"...then spent a couple more (unplanned) days'n'nights in N'Orleans, during which time I hardly THOUGHT about my Gators. Now back, like the rest of you I've begun to put some distance between myself and the pain. I have no interest in the remainder of the Bowl games, even the "Plus One" and especially irrelevant silliness like the Cotton Bowl (which, to judge by the drunken hooting and hollering of my neighbors, A&M is winning...? Does ANYONE outside Tx and Ok CARE?!!)--so with my well-known aversion to the current-NFL, like the year-itself, football is over for me as far as the 2012 Season is concerned...I am more concerned now with NSD and the 2013-Season--and more WORRIED, short term, with our losing that 4-start DB Brantley--than with what's already behind us in 2012.
