Fourth and Dumb

As most of us expected, Alabama proved to be too much for Texas last night, but surely everyone on earth is wondering if it would have been different if Colt McCoy had not gotten hurt on the fifth play of the game. The UT freshman QB Garrett Gilbert finally warmed up a bit in the late second half and got Texas to 24-21, and after the Longhorns’ D shut down a Bama drive, Gilbert and the offense got the ball inside their fifteen yard line with less than three minutes to go: just your standard national-championship-winning drive of 85+-yards staring a true frosh in the face.

Kirby Smart called a good LB blitz, Anders crushed the kid, and Bama won its first NC of the 21^st century.

Good for them. That’s why you hire Nick Satan—to win you a NC. Of course, with that guy one always has to wonder if/when he’s going to leave. Is it possible for him to stay in Tuscaloosa for 15 years or so until retirement? Certainly there’s not a better college job out there (equal jobs exist, but there’s no place where one can recruit and win any better). You have to think that Saban will want another shot at the NFL someday, but Bama fans can likely rest easy for a couple years anyway.

Of course, like all Gators, I’m already scoping the Tide out for next year. UF goes to Tuscaloosa on October 2 of next year, where they’ll presumably be playing the #1-ranked, defending national champions. Both teams will have lost significant performers, though it looks a little worse for the Gators due to the diminished shine in the absence of Timmy Tebow’s halo.

Gators lose: Tebow, WR Riley Cooper, OLs Pouncey twins (or at least Mike), TE Aaron Hernandez, S Joe Haden, MLB Brandon Spikes, OLB Ryan Stamper, DE Jermaine Cunningham, probably DE Carlos Dunlap.

Tide loses: RB Roy Upchurch, CBs Javier Arenas and Tyrone King, OLB Anders, DT Terence Cody, Kicker Tiffin, both punters, two OL starters, and almost certainly MLB and defensive captain Rolando McClain.

Again, the Gators’ losses seem worse because of Tebow’s moving on, but most observers are pretty confident in the ability of redshirt junior John Brantley to step in and throw it better than Tebow ever did. They lose the running at the QB position, but they get back Percy Harvin impersonator Andre Debose, who was hurt before the first game.

Bama gets another year of Greg McElroy and Mark Ingram, and we can expect to see a lot more of the home-run-threat running of Trent Richardson.

Alabama should be preseason #1, and I figure the Gators to be around 4-5. The game in Tuscaloosa actually may not end up mattering too much, as it very likely could be just round one between the Gators and the Tide in 2010. If nothing else, it’s pretty clear that those two teams have set themselves up as the twin peaks of the SEC, and the road to the national title will have to include stops in their home cities.

Well, did anyone see that coming?

Sure, many observers thought Bama would beat Florida, but the total domination displayed by the Tide couldn’t have been reasonably predicted by disinterested folks. But one thing should have been a tip-off that Bama would win: the Great Satan does not like to lose, and he will do whatever it takes to avoid it. Bama players and coaches say that Saban spent the entire offseason, starting the day after the Sugar Bowl loss, breaking down the Gators (some might argue this started before the Sugar Bowl loss, as Bama didn’t seem that interested in playing Utah last January).

I was most impressed by the Bama O-line. They nearly completely kept the Gators out of the backfield, giving Greg McElroy time to find safe, short routes to hit, while also helping Mark Ingram gash the Gators for 113 yards on the ground and 76 on just two receptions. In the meantime, the Bama defense did to Florida what everyone expected Florida to do to them: they crowded the line and dared Tebow to beat them through the air, a task he was clearly not up to. Meantime, Jeff  Demps and Chris Rainey combined for three rushes (!) for 16 yards (!!). How many for Man Moody? Zero. Though he did manage to lose three yards on one reception.

Though Alabama deserves all the credit for this impressive performance, one still has to wonder at the Gators’ scheming. UF threw the ball on more than half of its first downs, hard to figure for a team at the top of the nation in rush yardage. This led to a lot of second and tens, leading to even fewer rushing attempts. This sure seemed to be the game where the loss of former OC Dan Mullen hurt the Gators the most.

At least next year the Gators will have a shot at redemption, playing at Tuscaloosa on October 2^nd in the fourth game of five in a row against 2009-10 bowl teams. But with Bama returning its offensive skill position players and much of its defense, they’ll be awfully tough to beat. And the Gators are going to be breaking in a raw quarterback as well.

Wait a second, why does that sound so familiar?

So Tennessee decided to fire Phil Fulmer toward the end of last season, apparently assuming the coaching shark tank that is the SEC East had passed him by. To replace him UT did what a lot of NFL and college teams seem to be doing: rather than trying to steal a “name” coach from an established school, they went for a young hotshot, namely Lane Kiffin, who had stunk it up with the Raiders, but hey, who hasn’t lately?

Kiffin was a top assistant under Pete Carroll at USC, where he earned a reputation as a good recruiter, able to charm and fire up good players. Tennessee obviously saw him as a guy who could recruit with the Sabans and Meyers of the world and kick start the Vols back into SEC relevance (I know, I know, they were in the SEC title game just two years ago, but that still seems like a weird dream).

What the Vols braintrust probably couldn’t have predicted was Kiffin’s becoming perhaps the conference’s number-one, most-hated target of the Vols’ biggest rivals so soon. Turns out Lane is quite the loudmouth, a guy who so far hasn’t been able to make his foot big enough that he can’t cram it into his mouth. Let’s have a list of Lane’s stupid soundbites!

1. First, Lane decided to make Urban Meyer take an interest in him. The morning after Signing Day, at a Vols booster breakfast, Kiffin told the crowd about WR recruit Nu’Keese Richardson that Meyer had “cheated” by calling the player while he was visiting UT. Problems with that statement: A) Calling a player while on a school visit is NOT an NCAA violation; B) Meyer didn’t know Richardson was on the visit; C) Kiffin just ensured that Tim Tebow will be throwing deep against the Vols in the fourth quarter with the Gators ahead by 56.

2. Why did Meyer not know Richardson was at UT? Because Kiffin told Richardson to LIE to UF coaches about UT’s interest. Note that Richardson was an oral commit to UF since spring 2008 and had never shown any inclination to change his mind. His own teammates and head coach at Pahokee were stunned when he put on a Vols cap at his signing ceremony.

3. About Pahokee, a school that has produced numerous NCAA and even NFL players, Kiffin told those same boosters this: “You take that hour drive up from south Florida, there ain’t a gas station that works. Nobody’s got enough money to even have shoes or a shirt on.” And also: ”[Richardson's aunts] didn’t [fax his letter of intent] at the school because they knew somebody at the school was going to screw it up. The fax machine wouldn’t work, or they would have changed signatures, all the things that go on in Pahokee now.”  The Pahokee coach was outraged, and that town’s city council (!) actually formally scolded Kiffin. Considering how many great players come from the muck down there around the southern shores of Lake Okechobee, Kiffin has just closed a strong possible pipeline.

4. Kiffin “stole” Alabama’s top recruiter, Lance Thompson, by throwing some serious caysh his way (one positive you have to note about Kiffin is that he’s paying his assistants more than anybody in college–but, of course, one of them is his pops, Monte, the DC). Then Thompson and Kiffin crowed about how they had hurt Bama’s recruiting. So besides pissing off Meyer, who has already shown that he carries a grudge and will pay it back (right, Mark Richt?), Kiffin has now pissed off the Devil himself, Nick Satan. Better yet, Thompson bragged that UT would now “own” the fertile recruiting area of Memphis, but within a week Saban had gotten an oral commit for 2010 from consensus top-ten WR from, you guessed it, Memphis.

5. After falsely accusing Meyer of cheating to get Richardson, the Lord of Irony smote Kiffin by having him truly get hit with two secondary violations: first, it was discovered he had had recruits give a dummy press conference, and then he had players run onto the field at Neyland Stadium with fog machines running. Though minor, these are infractions regarding simulating game-day conditions, forbidden by the NCAA.

6. And then Kiffin got a third violation a couple days ago, when he mentioned stud RB Bryce Brown, who is waiting until March to sign (my guess is he’ll go to Oklahoma, not Miami, btw), which, of course, is forbidden.

You can make an argument that none of this matters. He’s certainly fired up the Volunteer nation, sparking comparisons to the way Steve Spurrier shook up other folks with his big mouth when he came in. But remember that Spurrier came in having unbelievably won an ACC title at Duke, giving him a bit of a pedigree as a college head coach. Kiffin has never even (head) coached a college game, and he’s made sure that his two main rivals will want even more badly to punish him. And keep in mind that at his hiring press conference, Kiffin told Vols fans he looks forward to singing “‘Rocky Top’ all night after beating the Gators at the Swamp.” Something tells me that Tebow and Meyer, notorious for using even perceived slights as motivation, will be reminding each other about that all summer. Thanks for making the SEC East even more exciting to look forward to, Lane!