Playing Dirty: Florida

It’s November and for some reason the LSU Tigers are only now facing the Florida Gators. Back again to remind you of what’s REALLY important with that team is Gator Country’s David Wunderlich, better known as Year2 on Twitter. I’m not fucking calling it X.

1. Wait, how the hell is it November and we’re just now playing each other? This is what we get for hiring guys who have never been SEC head coaches before.

The 2023 SEC schedule… brought to you by the same geniuses who put Auburn-Georgia in September for who knows what reason. There was a stretch there where the schedulers were doing the Lord’s work by forcing Alabama and Tennessee fans to talk about the Third Saturday In October game happening on the fourth weekend of the month, but those days are done.

2. Year 2 (hey that’s your name!) of the Billy Napier regime hasn’t really been what most Gator fans wanted. Aside from a surprising dismantling of the Vols, the losses have been ugly and the wins have been uninspiring. Should this be considered a positive sign after Muschamp, McElwain and Mullen had really good second seasons before sinking into failure? Maybe doing the opposite means Billy is turning things around!

Napier had a traditional transitional year in 2022, as there was minimal roster turnover and he signed a small recruiting class. And now, he’s having new Portal Era-style transitional year because there was a mass exodus of former Mullen recruits who either went to the NFL (a few) or transferred because they didn’t gel with the new coaches (a lot). He signed another small recruiting class because he needed to load up on transfers. Fun!

Could Napier have flipped the roster faster? Sure, but then I see how guys like Kelly and Lincoln Riley hit the portal way harder and each has half a team right now. It may result in missing a bowl this year, but the famously patient and chill Florida fan base is keeping its eyes on the prize of maybe losing to Georgia by single digits in 2026. It may sound far-fetched, but trust the process. They’ll get there.

3. Needing one more win for bowl eligibility, the Gators have three straight ranked opponents left on the schedule. They would’ve already been eligible had they not lost at home to a 2-6 Arkansas team last week. Be honest, is Florida just tanking their last four games to avoid getting embarrassed in the Vegas Bowl again?

Every other game has had its own unexpected events. This team makes things happen. Could they complete a late fourth-quarter comeback from ten down to beat South Carolina on the road? Absolutely. Could they also run ten guys out on field goal block and 13 guys on defense in the same game? Yes, that too! Things will definitely happen. Things. Many, many things.

4. Florida wore black jerseys last week. I don’t even have a sarcastic question, those are just so stupid and ugly.

The Gator men’s basketball and baseball teams have black uniforms that look good. The football team is just doomed to have all of its alternate uniforms other than their 1960s throwbacks look like garbage. I assume that’s Spurrier’s doing somehow.

5. Have the Gators hung the banner for Most Runs Scored In A Men’s College World Series Game yet? Y’all should. It’s a very cool achievement and you should be proud of it!

No, but no joke, Jim McElwain convinced the school to paint the years of the team’s SEC East titles inside the stadium after he won the division in 2015, because I guess he wanted a cookie or something. It was gone before Dan Mullen ran his first spring practice.

It was an odd departure for a school that, after winning its second national title in 2006, finally got rid of its “1ST IN THE SEC” signage that honored teams that would’ve won the league if not for NCAA penalties in 1984, 1985, and 1990. UF is now a place that truly only celebrates conference and national titles, the next of which is coming any day now. We promise.