Don't know about anyone else, and I suppose maybe it's a coupla weeks earlier than "normal", but I'm starting to get that giddy, excited feeling in my gut. Y'all know the one, that against-all-odds, never-mind-all-the-reasons-NOT-to feeling that "Gator football is coming, and MAYBE WE'LL BE REALLY GOOD AFTER ALL"...I know, I know--and this has nothing, or ALMOST nothing (See? There I go...) to do with any one reason or well-formed argument. All the things I've been absorbing about new coaches, new offense, healthy veterans and incoming studs gets mixed together with hope, excitement, back-channel gossip and stories online about games and schedules and what-ifs and I look at that slate of September games and begin to think, "Well, if we gather speed and can hit our stride goin' into Tuscaloosa Week 4 and SHOCK THE WORLD, I mean, it's not like we don't have the TALENT, and if we were to get some breaks and stay healthy in counterpoint to last season's extreme run in the opposite direction, wow, that'd be a whole LOT of fun..."
Yeah, I'm a sucker for it this year. No calm confidence, game-by-game analysis pointing to a couple of "big showdowns" makin' the difference between the SEC Championship and a National Title shot, vs. "just another BCS-birth or (heaven forbid) another Capital One Bowl". This time we either catch fire early or it's a long, writhing struggle for some moments of pride--probably followed by a complete reboot, coaching-wise, and all that in turn implies about where we'll be starting from NEXT year at this time. So what have we got to lose, besides almost everything?!! The coaches might as well go at this with something akin to "reckless abandon"--and that's a feeling a bunch of emotion-fueled young athletes, playing as a TEAM, can catch, take them and all of us places you don't get to any other way.
OK, it's not the same as being "the accepted team-to-beat", everyone's favorite pick-to-be-there. We actually had that for a little while there--and I liked it. Wanna get there again. But now we're the proverbial "unknown quantity"--and while maybe this is fantasy, certainly nothing you'd bet-the-farm on, but if it happened, could y'all imagine a funner, more rollicking time? That small spark of hope, the idea of all the possible good stuff shaken up and comin' out our way, it's what I'm living on now.
Yeah, I'm a sucker for it this year. No calm confidence, game-by-game analysis pointing to a couple of "big showdowns" makin' the difference between the SEC Championship and a National Title shot, vs. "just another BCS-birth or (heaven forbid) another Capital One Bowl". This time we either catch fire early or it's a long, writhing struggle for some moments of pride--probably followed by a complete reboot, coaching-wise, and all that in turn implies about where we'll be starting from NEXT year at this time. So what have we got to lose, besides almost everything?!! The coaches might as well go at this with something akin to "reckless abandon"--and that's a feeling a bunch of emotion-fueled young athletes, playing as a TEAM, can catch, take them and all of us places you don't get to any other way.
OK, it's not the same as being "the accepted team-to-beat", everyone's favorite pick-to-be-there. We actually had that for a little while there--and I liked it. Wanna get there again. But now we're the proverbial "unknown quantity"--and while maybe this is fantasy, certainly nothing you'd bet-the-farm on, but if it happened, could y'all imagine a funner, more rollicking time? That small spark of hope, the idea of all the possible good stuff shaken up and comin' out our way, it's what I'm living on now.
