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Weekly Affirmation: Nothing Wrong in Florida
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CollegeFootballNews.com
Posted Nov 19, 2009
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The Florida Gators have had to defend themselves, explain themselves, apologize for themselves, and answer the question, "What's wrong?" The Weekly Affirmation will tell you what's wrong: Bagging on an undefeated team that's likely to go 12-0 in defense of its national championship. The difference between aesthetic pleasure and bottom-line success is the focus of this week's column.
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By Matthew
Zemek
Follow Mr. Zemek and the Weekly Affirmation on Twitter: twitter.com/MattZemek_CFN
When Good Enough Isn't Good Enough: One of America's Great Shortcomings
Yes, these are indeed the times that try men's (and women's) souls. Regardless of political affiliation or ideological leanings, beyond religious identification or cultural preferences, the end of the first decade of the 21st century represents one of the more difficult points in American history.
The shadows of 1929 have darkened the realm of American finance. Ghosts of Vietnam and the Middle East haunt this nation's international endeavors. Unemployment has reached double digits... and that's not taking into account those who have stopped looking for work. Worst of all, no signs of authentic and robust reform exist on the near horizon. Americans have a right to be upset, frustrated, and empty.
The immediate day-to-day twists of life can be cruel enough, but what's even harder to accept is the notion that we might be living in a larger era when American society will experience a nadir that's simply part of life's supreme cycles, its periods of regeneration and decay. People who lived in Renaissance Europe were able to experience an age of regeneration; those who lived in Rome in 480 A.D. had the grave misfortune of absorbing a society's decay. If the 20th century was the American Century, the 21st feels a lot like the Chinese Century. Not a fun concept to contemplate.
In the midst of these worrying trends and manifestly unpleasant possibilities, college football season is supposed to be an oasis of sweet release, an island of ecstasy in a world of pain and barrenness. And yet, as plenty of columnists have noted - the latest among them being ESPN's Ivan Maisel - the Autumn of 2009 has become an enormous letdown, for a multiplicity of reasons you know full well. If the nation's power brokers and influence peddlers have the nerve to foist bad governance and corrupt money-whoring on all of us, at least college football can deliver the goods, fer gawsh sakes.
The fact that this year's pigskin parade has morphed into a string of largely sad-sack, no-sizzle Saturdays has left the Weekly Affirmation feeling body-snatched and bereft in the days before Thanksgiving. A college football campaign is supposed to be more fun, without question. If fans are cranky and insist on higher-grade entertainments, they're quite justified to feel that way.
With that having been said, however, there's always a tipping point in a layered discussion, and the fine distinction college football fans need to make near the end of this subpar season is that boring football and sexy football are two entirely different animals. It's fair to air a gripe or a grievance, but only under certain conditions.
If you're a casual fan of the sport in general, and you just want your Saturdays to be crammed with cluttered climaxes and clamorous competitive crescendos to captivating contests, you should feel used. You should feel that your time hasn't been spent as well as it could have been.
If you're not paid to chronicle this sport, the Weekly Affirmation certainly hopes that when a fat stack of games became nakedly uninteresting on many a Saturday evening, you clicked off the remote or handed it to a non-football-loving companion. The NFL reliably provides vast oceans of thoroughly unwatchable football; college football is supposed to be better. If this season hasn't satisfied your tastes as an aesthete or connoisseur, you should be muttering in disgust at The Season Elegance Forgot. If you watch this sport only because you hunger for a beautiful brand of ball, you have every right to be disappointed.
But then, we must turn to a different precinct in the province of pigskin: Resultsville.
If you live in this locality, and make the success of your favorite team your foremost desire, you lose your right to value sex appeal and style points over The Bottom Line (within reasonable limits). Sure, if you're a Nebraska fan, and your Huskers had committed only seven turnovers instead of eight, you might have beaten Iowa State by a 10-9 score a month ago. Yet, the attainment of a victory over an average opponent would not have meant that you should have shelved your criticisms. Winning markedly ugly games against grossly inferior opposition should merit a stern talking-to in postgame pressers and day-after talk shows. No argument there.
Let it be said, though, that the above example is the exception that proves the rule.
If you're a fan of the Florida Gators, you have no place - none - in any chorus of appreciably severe criticism. Sure, you can point out some flaws and hope for certain adjustments or improvements, but the act of consciously and intentionally harboring even the slightest trace of real disappointment in the Gators is plainly disgusting... on a small level, perhaps, but disgusting nevertheless.
First of all, exactly where did Florida football stand 20 years ago, in the waning weeks of 1989? Second, the Gators have won two national and SEC titles in the past three seasons, and will be playing for another SEC crown on Dec. 5. Assuming they don't stumble against Florida State on Thanksgiving weekend, the Boys Of Old Florida will find themselves 60 successful minutes away from another BCS title game appearance.
Third, Urban Meyer's team boasts Tim Tebow, the 2007 Heisman winner and one of the 10 greatest players to ever don a college helmet. Fourth, Florida hasn't lost an SEC East race since dropping the 2007 Cocktail Party (no, SEC, we're still not going to bow to an absurd tenet of political correctness on steroids...). Perhaps Meyer has already exceeded Steve Spurrier as a Florida coaching legend; perhaps not. What's not up for debate is the contention that the two Gator coaches have compiled portfolios that are worthy of comparison. That sobering statement makes plain the fact that Florida football is a conquering colossus, rising above the rest of the sport in the second half of this decade.
Being fed up with this 10-0 season, then, is entirely unacceptable. Calling for the heads of coordinators (Steve Addazio) or having the gall to ask the simple but loudly damning question, "What's wrong?", are movements best reserved for grossly underachieving teams... teams like Michigan State, Illinois, North Carolina State, Kansas, Missouri, Florida State, Maryland, and several others. Daring to wonder what's "wrong" with an undefeated defending champion, soon to be 12-0 barring an on-field earthquake, reveals a profound poverty of appreciation for college football's most successful program since 2006.
The Gators - players and coaches alike - have used their words and their unspoken sentiments, their gestures and their nonverbal cues, to convey their nervousness and agitation over the course of this joyless journey. Old Demon Expectation has hounded Florida at every step of the way in 2009. Lane Kiffin - yeah, the same man who is still (!!!) ripping Urban Meyer in November, all while his players run afoul of the law - set a tone for Florida's season by taking such conspicuous pleasure in losing to the Gators by only 10 points, as though that was a feat to be proud of.
Urban Meyer's big mistake, of course, was to openly reveal to the college football world that he was disappointed he couldn't drive Kiffin's nose into the dirt. That equally immature response to the Tennessee coach's purposeful proddings allowed Florida to feel like a bunch of flunkies whenever the Gators won a game by a mere 10 points. To a certain extent, the Gators' emotional emptiness has been self-inflicted, but the fans who have been living an Orange and Blue fantasy over the past few years should not have been sucked into the whirlpool of negativity Lane Kiffin so cleverly generated. A 10-0 team can always do things a little bit better (the 1995 Nebraska juggernaut being a possible exception), but the equating of a 10-point win with a bitter defeat - such is the emotional tenor of postgame exchanges and outpourings on talk radio and online message boards - frames the folly and thanklessness of a fan base in very stark terms.
Yes, it would be nice from the perspective of a Florida fan if the Gators scored more in the red zone. Yes, it would be nice from the vantage point of Gainesville residents if their hometown team became a little more (Emmanuel) "Moody" in short-yardage situations. Yes, it would obviously be pleasurable for Gator Nation to revel in the spectacle of a savage Saturday smackdown of a hated foe. But if the best Florida can do is merely win every game it plays, sans the sexiness, who are Gators to argue with the results? There darn sure isn't anything wrong with such a progression through a season.
Daring to be upset, and having the impudence to question the worthiness of a 10-0 team, is a grave insult to the programs in the United States who are in fact underachieving by any reasonable measure. Call Pat Hill of Fresno State on the carpet for fading into the background in a WAC where the Bulldogs should be better. Single out Houston Nutt for his atrocious non-use of Dexter McCluster this season. Rip Ron Zook for his proclamation-rich, results-poor year at Illinois. Light into Mike Locksley for his abhorrent conduct at New Mexico. Roast Ralph Friedgen for the drift that is in evidence in College Park, Md. Identify underperforming programs--they most certainly exist--but don't you dare act or speak in ways that even hint at placing Florida among the ranks of college football's slackers.
No, Florida hasn't played sexy football in 2009. Yet, as the smart fans (not the deranged yet vocal minorities) at Ohio State, Oklahoma, USC, and other proud programs could tell you, winning is all that is supposed to matter. Torrents of critical comments can and should emerge when bad losses pile up, but 10-0 seasons are supposed to be viewed as positive developments... imagine that.
Blame this season for being boring. Don't label boring teams as being deficient, dishonorable or disappointing if they "merely" win each and every time they step between the painted white lines.
There are many discontents rightfully coursing through America's sociocultural bloodstream; there are reasons to be unsettled and dissatisfied with the progression of human events in the United States. This only means, however, that in aspects of life which are defined by excellence, one shouldn't ask, "What's wrong?"
If citizens of this country are always insisting that they must own everything in perfect proportion, and can never be satisfied with enough of life's bounty, no wonder the United States has been plunged into such despair. The perfect is not supposed to be the enemy of the good--not in one's pursuit of a comfortable existence, and not in the world of college football... even if this season has failed to brighten your weekends, set against the backdrop of widespread economic hardships.
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