Gators

There is a reason that Tebow’s nickname at Florida is The Chosen One. Here’s a terrific example of the man’s character taken from the recent New York Times article, “X’s and O’s: Tebow Studies How They Work”:

He said he was annoyed by NCAA limits on his charity work. He said that he could not play in a golf tournament to raise money for breast cancer earlier this year and that he saw football as a way to spread his faith.

“It’s just smart,” he said of exploring his NFL options. “If you get an opportunity to take care of your family for the rest of your life.”

“But not just that, to start all the ministries I want to do and everything. I mean, that’s something that you’ve definitely got to look at it.”

I have way, way too many Gator hats. I’ll admit this. It’s a problem. This one, though, is one of my absolute favorites. My friend Ryan gave it to me about a year ago and I have worn it to death. I’ve been trying to find another one and am looking for help. There is a URL plastered all over the inside of it for zhats.com, the home of Zephyr hats, but their site is terrible. (If this site isn’t a perfect example of Flash gone bad, I don’t know what is.)

I’ve determined that the model is the Hype, but cannot find the same one anywhere on the ‘net. There was one for sale at buy.com at some point, but no more. I posted a plea to twitter after the LSU game and fellow Gator Leia found a similar cap, but I’d really prefer one without the orange highlights. If anyone has any leads, please do drop me a line.

Do you remember when Robin Williams attempts to teach Nathan Lane how to be a real man in The Birdcage? It’s one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies. Williams asks,

How do you feel about that call today? I mean the Dolphins! Fourth-and-three play on their 30 yard line with only 34 seconds to go!

Today it was the Gators and fourth and one with a little under a minute to go. Either way it’s the same. I just can’t believe it. Again. How does the Heisman trophy winner fail to get a single yard? You really can’t blame Tebow, though. That game was lost on the sidelines.

It was another brutal early season weekend in college football. (Didn’t this happen last year, too?) Yes, seven of the AP top twenty-five teams lost, but that doesn’t make it any easier if you happened to be on the losing side.

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In less than 24 hours I will be once again sitting in front of a television and watching college football. The Gators kick off at 9:30 AM (Pacific) tomorrow morning and I’ll be watching them play Hawaii on DirecTV channel 788. And so will begin the most wonderful time of the year. Go Gators!

Mac users: You can use this link to subscribe to the Florida Gators 2008 Football iCal Schedule, published by Yahoo!.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - The University of Florida can raise a glass to another national title — best party school in the country.

The Gators, known for wild celebrations following national championships in football and basketball, wrested the party title away from West Virginia University and beat out the University of Mississippi and Penn State University, in the Princeton Review survey of 120,000 students released Monday.

The university has made the top 20 party school list for the past 15 years, but has never been No. 1.

I’d have to say that “the back seat of my car” is somewhere near the top of my list of Places Not to Keep an Alligator.

Superman wears Tim Tebow pajamas.

The schedule for the University of Florida 2007 football season has been published. You can find it at the University Athletic Association website. They even give you the ability to import the schedule directly into Outlook!

It took me a few minutes to find it, of course. There is just a lot of stuff cluttering the site … Y’know … all about how we won the National Championship in basketball last year, and then the BCS Championship in football this year, and then the National Championship in basketball again this year.

Can there possibly ever have been a better time to be a Florida Gator? Basketball … then football … then basketball again?! I almost — almost — feel bad for Ohio State. We don’t even consider them “rivals”, but they must hate us now.

The Gators became the first team to go back-to-back since 1992 and the first ever to repeat with the same starting five.

They finished with a 10-game winning streak and haven’t lost a postseason game in 18 tries, counting sweeps at the Southeastern Conference tournaments the last two years.

The Florida Gators are, in sum, why we love college basketball.

Last year was for a ring. This year was for history and something as simple and pure as a teammate’s respect. That’s a legacy.

“Why go to Kentucky?” junior Corey Brewer said. “When’s the last time they won a national title?”

Also see: Eddie Munster Coaches Florida to Second Consecutive Championship

Unfortunately it arrived a day late to accompany me on my trip to Vegas, but I am now the proud owner of a University of Florida golf bag. I managed to snag it on eBay for only $50 and can’t wait to hit the links with it. The bag is Gator orange & blue and sports incredibly attractive Florida logos. A Gator golfing!

The new bag is licensed by Pac Golf in Oregon; they included a handy reference card with the address of their website printed on it. Talk about a marketing faux pas, though: The card has a typo in the URL! The address is listed as www-pac-golf.com instead of www.pac-golf.com.

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Talk about cool! At photostamps.com you can upload a photo and they’ll create authentic USPS stamps for you to use. They’re a bit expensive — a sheet of twenty $.39 stamps runs $17.99 — but I can definitely see doing this for wedding invitations or some other important event.

Note: Until March 15th, 2007 you can enter promo code “2007″ and get free shipping. They sell NFL and college stamps, too, so now you can celebrate the Florida Gators National Championship by affixing a UF stamp to every letter you send!

How cool is the World Wide Web™? Within 24 hours of the game I was able to use μtorrent to download the entire 2006 BCS Championship Game and watch it using the latest DivX player. The 2.2GB file took about 20 hours to download, but it’s worth it. I’m considering using the office projector to play the game on the wall behind me on a constant loop.

(While you’re waiting for the massive download, take a look at this awesome video of suffering OSU fans at the game, set to the tune of Beck’s “Loser“. It’s very evil and completely bad karma, but still great.)

At some point about fifteen years ago I subscribed to Sports Illustrated. With the exception of a tragic few months during which most of my mail was trapped shuffling between coasts, I haven’t missed an issue. Generally I ignore all the commemorative editions and t-shirt and sweatshirt offers; I have enough t-shirts and sweatshirts to clothe most of the Sudan, and Lord knows I have far, far too many back issues that I refuse to trash. But when I saw this morning the inevitable Gators Championship Package I knew I was going to have to make a phone call.

My annual subscription automatically renewed at the end of December and the Championship DVD, hard-bound edition, and t-shirt is only available to new subscribers, so I was ready for a fight. To my surprise the helpful customer service rep at SI graciously helped me credit my existing subscription towards a “new” one so I could get the deal. I am going to go out on a limb and credit that to the fact that the call center I reached is located in Ocala, Florida.

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