First of all....I'm gonna get real pissed if someone says "quit making excuses" or anything that resembles that kind of repetitive lazy response to this posting. There are no excuses....I hope I have made that abundantly clear. But I came across this blog article off a Florida sports site and I think it brightly illustrates why guys like Meyer get chest pains over coaching a bunch of 18-21 year olds. These are still kids and for anyone on the team to not take a 12-0 opponent with an agenda of atonement seriously is definitely enough to cause a coach heart problems.... http://andreu.blogs.gatorsports.com/10287/were-the-mighty-gators-too-full-of-themselves/ "Alabama humbled and embarrassed the No. 1 team in the nation. That’s why the Gators are here now instead of getting ready to go to Pasadena for the BCS Championship Game against Texas. Clearly, for some strange reason, the Gators did not appear ready to play in the SEC title game. Mentally and physically, they didn’t seem themselves. There was no juice, no passion, no sense of urgency. As a result, they were splattered 32-13 by a hungry Alabama team looking for atonement for the 2008 SEC Championship Game loss to Florida. If you listen to senior outside linebacker tell it, the Gators went up to Atlanta a little to full of themselves. “I feel like we played poorly because we were up on that high throne and felt like we couldn’t get beat,” Ryan Stamper said. “Things went our way every time on the football field all season. We always came out winning the football game. We thought teams would lie down for us. “Alabama came out and took it to us and we couldn’t get in the flow of the game. Everyone had it in their head, ‘We’ll score and be all right. We’ll come back.’ Even when we were down late in the game. But it didn’t happen. We didn’t make it happen.” This year....Alabama DID make it happen and I applaud them for it.
You could make those assertions anytime top teams play one another and one of them dominates. In team sports, sometimes the best team doesn't win for any number of reasons and one of them can be the team chemistry for that game is just not there. It's esp true in football, where as in baseball or basketball you have a 7 game series to determine the winner and that mitigates some of the issues.
Understand many Gator fans are like Titanic survivors trying to figure out just how in the hell did the unsinkable ship......sink. "It seemed to me we played not to lose, rather than to win all year. The team seemed tight on both sides of the ball. Look at 2008- the defense was all over the field. This year, where were the blocked punts, the sacks? What happened to the full-out offense. I think that caught up to us in Atlanta. You could see the pressure on everybody throughout the season. Now, we know about the full toll." These comments were made in response to the above blog article and before the Sugar Bowl. It seems now to me that the Alabama loss took some of that pressure off and the players had fun in the blowout of Cinci......maybe for the first time all season. As I expect Bama will be #1 from here until next season in all the preseason rankings and magazines etc. We will see how the Tide manages all of the accompanying pressure and expectations. They deserve the attention.
Terry....you hit the nail on the head. They are not pros....they are amateurs subject to many more influences and distractions......like everybody telling them how great they are. This happens so often in college football because they have a 3 hour window to perform or it's all over and sometimes one team is just that much more prepared for those three hours. It's one of the most compelling reasons to watch the sport.
Even in the pros that is true Corey....just not as often I don't think. The pros seem to take their high-paying jobs a little more seriously most of the time. The thing about college football is no matter how big we as fans think a game is the kid on the team still has study issues.....girlfriend issues....buddy's wanting to go to the kegger.....all the distractions that college kids have. We think as fans that they think like us.......it's do or die....must win...etc.... ....but they are kids just the same and that's how it plays out sometimes. One thing a little bit insidious at the end of the season that I just do not trust would never be a consideration.....no matter how small.....is the thought in the back of a star player's mind that he can ill afford to get hurt before NFL combines. Maybe a plus one format in mid-Jan. wouldn't work for that reason although I think once a team gets to that BCS Title level of national attention they probably just go full bore without thinking too much about it The best players are looking at millions of dollars being at risk of injury so you never know if that thought doesn't get in their head in the regular bowls......just a little.
And Titanic Gators ran into the iceberg from Alabama. Pretty good kp. Like Corey said there is no unsinkable ship. Let alone an unbeatable college football team or basketball team.