Last year I thought about getting R&R. For some reason I kept putting it off. Was it worth the price?
I got it (last year’s), liked it—but as with everything ELSE about that 2025 Gator Season, it turned out to be “just one more thing that turned out to be illusory”!!!
Not their fault, though. I did enjoy the way it filled the dog days, followed the team and highlighted all the reasons for optimism—but we now are all too aware of how that all turned out once we hit “Week Zero”.
As for what’s ahead, well, no one can say for sure…but like our new Head Coach himself, the mag reflects plainly and honestly the who’s, the how’s and the hopes of all who’ve stayed, all who are newly arrived, how that has happened and what it should mean—direct and straight from the various players’ and coaches’ mouths and HEARTS…That last part perhaps the most strikingly important part of all here.
It’s a new era in Gainesville:
We all feel it. And this latest edition of “R & R” goes to great lengths to note and reflect that IN DETAIL.
It is well timed, too: For me, here in Austin I lack only a proper beach close at hand at which to lounge and work through it on lazy afternoons in July…but I’ll manage.
Barton Creek, Lake Travis, over breakfast at Magnolia Cafe. All that and more offer opportunity to tune out the constant background of Longhorn overhype.
Will have a chance to see them here; am thinking it’s a coupla seasons EARLY though, from a “confident confrontational” point-of-view: I mean, I’d LOVE to see us rise up and SHOCK THE WORLD, hit DOUBLE DIGITS in the win column that INCLUDES that game in Darrel Royal…just still debating if I need to spend what are fast-escalating prices to witness a possible (some insist likely) “drubbing before a national audience”—I can do it with fellow Gators at the outdoor Beer Gardens out in Del Valley that lately hosts the UF Alumni Watch Parties (for the price and pleasure of cold craft beer!), as opposed to spending up to half-a-G to see it surrounded by rabid Horns fans.
The next time I even consider springing for a “large life experience” I think will be our next actual National Championship experience.
However, I DO have a simple, quiet yearning to find myself in practically ANY somewhat “meangful game” at home in The Swamp, singing “We Are the Boys” AND “Won’t Back Down” while the lights flash, as we help our boys to emotionally overwhelm whomever the opposition.
For the moment, still months away from the real thing, “Read & React” is one of the solid things we DO have. I honestly and unequivocally recommend it to all fellow rabid fans.
