I am not a sports writer.
But I do scream at my TV.
During Gator games.
Sometimes at the top of my lungs.
Which makes me more qualified to be a sports writer than does, say, staying at a Holiday Inn Express.
So having established my bone fides, let me weigh in on the care, feeding, and, apparently, inevitable disposal of Billy Napier.
I think we ought to keep him. Flaws and all.
Why?
Well to begin with, the Gators looked like they were having fun at Tennessee even though they lost. And football oughta be fun.
Plus, we hired Billy at a ridiculously high salary. And getting rid of him will require a king’s ransom said to be in the $20-plus million range.
That’s not even counting the ridiculously high salary – and equally ridiculously high buyout – the next guy is gonna demand.
I hear Lane Kiffin’s name a lot.
BTW Lane. How’s your season at Ole’ Miss going so far?
Since Urban Meyer we’ve hired four coaches at ridiculously high salaries and with ridiculously high buyouts.
Anybody remember what Einstein said about the definition of insanity?
But getting back to me screaming at my TV during Gator games. (Ask the neighbors across the street. I’m stunned they haven’t called the cops yet.)
I scream at the TV in exasperation and in exhilaration alike.
I scream when they win. I scream when they lose.
I am an equal opportunity TV screamer.
But I understand the Gator faithful who think we need to keep hiring coach after coach after coach ad nauseam until we finally get it right.
Until we find That Guy who will get us back to the promised land and nail down that 4th National Championship.
And then the fifth. And the sixth? And the 12th.
Forever and ever National Champions. Amen.
I get that. I do.
Listen, Donald Trump needed his Roy Cohn to make the Big Time.
So where’s our Nick Saben?
No, I do not equate Roy Cohn with Nick Saben.
I merely wanted to slip in a plug for the movie. Because while I’m not, strictly speaking, a sports writer, I bow to no one when it comes to movie reviews.
And listen, if you haven’t seen that movie yet, you really should. It explains a lot.
Moving along: As my buddy, the anti-Ron, likes to say, “There’s a precedent for all this in history.”
Check it out:
Florida began to play football in 1906.
1906!
And it didn’t win its first national championship until 1996.
1996!
Who in the hell wants to go back to 90 years of empty stadiums?
Wait! What!
You say Florida has never played to empty stadiums?
Even during the lean years…
…that turned into lean decades…
…that damned near became a lean century?
You mean to tell me that during all those years, we Gators Stuck Together Through All Kinds Of Weather?
Cock-eyed optimists who cheerfully proclaimed “Wait ‘till Next Year!”
What the hell was wrong with us?
Donald would call us “Losers!”
But I’m here to tell you that Gator football is fun.
And watchable.
It always has been.
Always will be.
And the notion of continuing to throw fistfuls of millions at one coach after another after another until we finally get our Roy…um…I mean our Nick, strikes me as absolutely fitting Einstein’s definition of insanity.
Oh, and one more thing.
Vanderbilt was playing football even before Florida – since 1893.
1893!
It has never won a national championship and likely never will.
Vandy is traditionally the SEC’s football basement dweller.
It is also the SEC’s “undisputed academic king.”
Which means it brings a prestige all its own to a league that has precious little of Vandy’s kind of glory.
I understand that cuts very little ice with boosters.
Vandy doesn’t recruit knuckle draggers and mouth breathers to play its football.
Vandy has its standards.
But last week, lowly Vandy knocked off No. 1 Alabama.
Holder of more national championship titles than Florida can ever aspire to.
Because every now and then even a Vandy can catch lightening in a bottle.
It’ll probably never happen again.
But the Commodores are always going to have that in their books.
Please, Florida…
…and I say this as a true Orange And Blue TV screamer…
…please be a Vandy…
…not an Alabama.
I promise you that I and tens of thousands of like minded TV screamers will continue to gator growl.
In exasperation, and in exhilaration.
In All Kinds Of Weather.
Always ready to Wait ‘till Next Year.
Because you never know when we might catch lightening in a bottle again.
Let’s stop spending tens of millions, hundreds of millions ad infinitum forever and ever amen trying to buy our way back into The Big Time.
Let’s maybe go out and hire ourselves a few Nobel laureates instead.
Vandy can boast of six of them.
Plus they knocked off Bama.
And you can never take that away from them.
My apologies to my old pal Pat Dooley for my presumption in venturing into sports writing.
But as for that Whitley guy? He can ki….
But I digress.
FreeGNV 