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The Back Nine comes at you after a beautiful weekend unless you are a huge Gator fan. For you, not so good.
10. Remember when we were all excited about Florida’s defense early in the season and were quoting their national ranking with pride? Not so fast, my friend. The schedule got tougher and this team looked like a bunch of high school kids playing against college athletes. Florida has dropped all the way to 73rd in the country in total defense and 75th in scoring defense.
11. That will happen when you give up 533.3 yards and 43.3 points a game over a four-game stretch.
12. I don’t know if I am getting a cake for my birthday Tuesday, but if I blow out a candle I will wish for Florida to be better at football. The Gators can’t make me stop watching college football, because I love it so much, but it’s so much more fun when Florida is – at the minimum – relevant.
13. Instead, I feel like I am sure a lot of Gator fans do. It’s like we are all in this really bad version of “Groundhog Day.” That is one of my favorite movies, but in this version the soundtrack only has two songs – “Where is My Mind?” by The Pixies and a mash-up of Yoko Ono songs. It’s almost like this team keeps running into a wall, backing up and running into it again. It’s not moving, peeps. Try something else.
14. It it possible to not be surprised and still be shocked about something? That’s what I felt with the firing of Jimbo Fisher. It felt inevitable. But I was still surprised at the timing. I agreed with Aggie athletic director Ross Bjork that it felt like a program stuck in neutral in part because he could never find a quarterback. Don’t start with me Gator fans. Fisher was fired 10 games into his sixth year. Billy Napier has coached in 23 games at Florida. But any time a big-name coach gets fired from a Power 5 school, the clock starts ticking louder all around the country.
15. As bad as the weekend was for the Gators, it was a good one for Dr. Football. A 4-1 record on The Picks (danged FSU didn’t cover) put the record at 28-24-1 against the spread this season. On to this week:
- The Georgia-Tennessee spread has been all over the place in the first 24 hours. It’s now up to 10.5 and I think the Kardashians will cover.
- I said after the Florida loss to Arkansas that the Gators would be double-digit underdogs in their last three games and I am two-thirds of the way there. Missouri is favored by 10.5 and I will give those points.
- If you need to get something done, this is a good Saturday to do it. The games are not great. I’ll take Miami getting getting two points at home against Louisville.
- And Kentucky giving two at South Carolina.
- And then the game that the boys from Bristol will be at, Washington at Oregon State. It’s a pick ‘em game after opening with the Huskies as 2.5-point favorites. I’ll take U-Dub.
16. Certainly, the loss by the Florida basketball team in Charlotte to Virginia was a bummer, because it felt like a game that certainly could have been a big win for the program. Walter Clayton Jr. had a forgettable final couple of minutes, but this was a team loss. This team does a lot of things better than last year’s, but the key will be how they play in crunch time and so far Todd Golden’s team is 0-1.
17. Anybody who has spent any time with Camilo Villegas probably got a little emotional watching him win Sunday to stop an eight-season drought on the PGA Tour. Villegas burst on the scene with his Spiderman method of lining up putts. But the golf gods are fickle and he flamed out. Of course, he also dealt with the treatment and eventual loss of his 22-month old daughter Mia in 2020. So, there were a lot of emotions in Bermuda. Well done, Camilo.
18. Another weekend of college football (and now basketball), another playlist:
- “Young In America” by Barns Courtney.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RUCmFN-8es
- “Kiss Them For Me” by Siouxsie and the Banshees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm_7oUvpMV8
- And for an old one that is not that old, “Better Man” by Pearl Jam.
