@Leakfan12,
@Escambia94,
...By the way:
This is as good a place as ANY to answer some of the pro-UK chest/pounding coming out of Lexington and the WILDCAT sites and blogs as the week goes on and excitement builds among their fans and followers.
Maybe y’all have seen that “Five Reasons UK Ruins Florida’s Playoff Hopes” column that surfaced today (Thurs.)...
I can understand their (rather “rose-tinted”) reasoning, as long as one ignores some basic truths:
Mainly, running though all of it is (1) the simple fact that we have more players who are more talented at more positions, AND
(2) In the final analysis, our fate is therefore almost entirely IN OUR OWN HANDS:
If we go out and PLAY OUR GAME, execute this Coach and staff’s game plan calmly and cleanly even NEAR our collective ability to do so, all the rest of that (what amounts to) “optimistic wishful thinking” WON’T be reflected in the final score.
Now, we all KNOW how Gator teams (and in the NOT so distant past!) have blown easier situations than THIS one before (hell, we need look no further than last year’s LSU game! Or the last time we lost to this UK squad, at OUR place, for that matter...), but there is no reason to ASSUME that will happen here.
I said that “questions were about to be answered in coming weeks” regarding this team, it’s quality and it’s future—and here’s a big one being set up for us right away.
If we are the team we are beginning to look like, starting to think we are and to BECOME, then we will go on the road in a hostile environment, handle our business and find a way to win—win HANDILY, in fact—but WIN, regardless.
It is time to STOP “beating ourselves“! It is time we started winning reliably when we ARE “the better team”, finding a way even on the other guys’ field, with them playing well.
After the Alabama game, the whole ebb and flow of that one and how we really DID start slow/stake them to the big early lead, then outplayed them the final THREE QUARTERS, came roaring back to do everything EXCEPT nip them at the end (and THAT only because of an early missed point, then a misplayed 2-pointer—and even THEN still basically just running out of time-on-the-clock)...We have been telling ourselves since that THAT is now what separates us from “The Undeniably Best Team and Program in College Football”;
If that is true, then it is time we simply BEAT the “pretty good teams” in our own albeit talented conference, even at THEIR place, with them playing relatively well. Of COURSE these teams “will be GUNNING for us”: Yes, we are again one of those “with a TARGET ON OUR BACKS”!
That’s how we WANT IT TO BE. Remember?
It comes with the territory.
