I hate to say it but.......

[Leakfan12]

I think they're lucky they won more than one game this season. Texas and Mississippi State were driving to either take the lead or tying but Texas ran out of time and Miss State threw a pick. I know I know there's two games left though I doubt they can beat UT but FSU, they got a chance to knock them out of the bowl game.

 

[DRU2012]

I think they're lucky they won more than one game this season. Texas and Mississippi State were driving to either take the lead or tying but Texas ran out of time and Miss State threw a pick. I know I know there's two games left though I doubt they can beat UT but FSU, they got a chance to knock them out of the bowl

Cannot help but agree—and we are far from the only Gator fans who are coming to see it that way.
As I was drifting off last night, TV still on YouTube in the other room, I heard someone on whatever fan site saying something to his partner, someone FINALLY saying stuff I TOO found myself thinking about earlier that day…something about this not only “not being any FUN—but actually feeling like the worst year of Gator football since 1979!” (his partner chiming in, “Yeah—the 0-10-and-1 year!!!”)…EXACTLY what I TOO had ALSO been thinking:
I’ve mentioned this in the past, my sophomore year at UF when they brought over Bear Bryant-desciple Charlie Pell from a successful run at Clemson—to replace Doug Dickey and “awaken the sleeping giant”…which DID eventually HAPPEN:
This was the start of a wild ride that culminated in a string of lowest lows and highest highs that altogether eventually left us more or less washed up on the strange, lonely beach we’ve found ourselves on ever since, poaching Muschamp from Texas after Urban flipped and flaked on us, and all that’s come since. Been marooned on the same desert island—with a succession of weirdo companions/coaches (not sure which) leading us slowly from “promising” through “mediocre” down to “Billy Napier” (pick your adjective in describing HIS performance!).
The WEIRD part is how that bafflingly bad “NO WINS” season back in ‘79 was ITSELF in fact a lotta FUN:
I kid you NOT. I suppose it had something to do with having less and less to LOSE as the season went on, but we PARTIED THROUGH IT ALL: Smoking and drinking, a relatively large contingent of us even traveling to all the away games as well, making our presence felt—our backs to the field of play much of the time!
Charlie and Co. got things squared away pretty quickly after that, though: We went to the Tangerine Bowl (later renamed the Citrus Bowl) the very next season, in the biggest single-season turnaround in NCAA history—and proceeded to alternate leaping upward surges with seasons of NCAA sanctions for more than a decade—until SS himself steadily progressed upward through the coaching ranks far enough for us to finally bring him over from his by then undeniable success at Duke.
The rest is history—and for a time it truly WAS
“Great. To be. A Florida Gator.”
There were still ups and downs, peaks and valleys—but the “lows” amounted to isolated losses we should have won, a season or two when we WEREN’T in the hunt for titles or Championships—followed by another run towards (and eventually TO) greatness.
And then we began to fall short. We would hang in, expecting more--but it didn't quite materialize.
It just hasn’t been a whole lotta FUN.
So. Here is where we are now.
Can we “cut to the chase”?
Can we somehow move straight to the retool/re-emerge/reTAKE our “rightful place in the upper hierarchy of the SEC”?
With the portal, NIL and (theoretically) that “Right Guy”, it appears that this is at least POSSIBLE.
Or is it to be a long, slow fighting slog upward all over again?
I don’t know, and frankly, it is both frustrating and exciting to realize that this is the best answer I can manage.
“Frustrating” because I really HATE both the current state of college football in general, AND our now having to hang off the decision of one man in particular in order to even begin to envision and build our own future.
“Exciting”, because, whether now or later, I AM certain of one thing...
Eventually:
It, “THE RETURN OF THE GATOR", WILL COME.