RUGator

Four of my favorite all-time Florida Gators are represented in the lithograph above. They are (from left to right): Steve Spurrier (#11-QB), Chris Collingsworth (WR), Wilber Marshall (#88-LB), Kerwin Bell (#12-QB), Emmitt Smith (#22-RB), and Stever Spurrier (wearing visor as former head coach).

This (along with other cool Gator art work) can be ordered by going to the following link:

http://www.skylinepictures.com/Florida.htm

When they hired him, I had my suspicions.

Sure, Ron Zook hadn’t been Steve Spurrier. But the hiring of Urban Meyer to replace Zook by the University of Florida in 2005 struck me as another episode of college football’s version of “Catch a Rising Star.”

Now, as an alumnus, I’m hearing (and seeing) some disturbing sounds (and sights) that might put me in line for a reprisal of the Yoda role.

To wit:

http://www.cbssports.com/columns/story/12585042/meyer-going-to-nfl-believe-it-numbskulls

Rutgers Celebrates 140th Year of College Football.

My friend told me that Davey Lopes reminded him of me. Even as a die-hard Yankee fan, I thought that was cool.

I wrote to my coach and told him that this picture of Rutgers head football coach, Greg Schiano reminded me of him.

I saw this picture and it reminded me of how hard my heart was beating last night.

And then I saw this picture and was reminded that he’s only a freshman:

There are three deep cuts in my heart. My sports heart.

1976. Final Four. A Jersey-boy roots for Rutgers. I’d graduate from RU fourteen-years later.

1977. The Sun Bowl. From snowy New Jersey, that same Jersey-boy would watch the orange-helmeted University of Florida Gators play Texas A&M. I’d leave my heart in Gainesville as an undergraduate.

My whole life. New York is the baseball capital of the country. Born and raised in New Jersey, I had no choice. The Yankees were offered to me. They stuck.

And to this day, I die hard for all three teams. I’d been scarred.

Since 1990, here are the teams Nick Saben has coached:

Toledo-1990

Michigan State: 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999

LSU: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

Miami Dolphins: 2005, 2006

Alabama: 2007, 2008, 2009

…just sayin.’

Look. I’m a Gator fan.

As such, it’s bred into you never to pull for Georgia. Yet, watching the Bulldogs lose to L.S.U. yesterday, had me thinking that they got screwed.

Big time.

After scoring the go ahead touchdown with just under two-minutes remaining in the game, they were assessed an “excessive celebration” penalty. Now, instead of having to kick off to L.S.U. from the 30 (as is customary after scoring), they had to kick from their own 15 yard line.

A decent return by the Tigers put them in field goal range. Down by two at this point, a FG would have won the game. As it so happened, they ended up running the ball in for a touchdown to win the game, crushing the spirits of those hardy fans packed into Georgia’s stately Sanford Stadium.

So now L.S.U., which went into the Georgia game ranked number 4, will host the number 1 Florida Gators this Saturday on CBS.

That excessive celebration penalty had to make the CBS sponsors (and God knows who else) very happy.

For the second year in a row, the Rutgers football team ranked in the “Top Five.”

http://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/index.ssf/2009/05/rutgers_football_program_ranks.html

Sitting here thinking about some of the nutty things I’ve done over the years in the name of God, country, and Gator football.

Things that all die-hards can probably relate to. Here’s one:

“Came to” in a stranger’s car on an interstate highway traveling AWAY from Auburn, Alabama after Florida had lost to the Tigers/Plainsmen/War Eagle people sometime earlier in the day. Apparently I had spent a bit too much time with my friend, James Beam during the game (nothing like the orange and blue pom-poms waving in tandem in and around Jordan-Hare while your head spins). So, I asked my “escort” to let me out and I began to walk back “towards” campus (like I knew where I was headed!), dressed only in cut-off orange sweats (no shirt) and a plastic orange gator head. No money, pre-cell phone, and no identification.

The sun is setting on the plains of eastern Alabama and I’m on some back country road when I happen upon “The Peanut Butter Disco Club,” a run-down shack-like edifice with old school R&B blasting through the air. Walking in, I’m the only white guy forever. Of course, I ask to use the phone (ala Otis Day and the Nights from Animal House). The whole place stops, I mean, dead stops, and everyone looks at me like I just stole something. “No” is the polite yet very firm response. I scurry back out to the road and begin to cry, literally. No cars in sight, no sounds in sight.

Finally, a car approaches, a station wagon (remember those?) I stand in the middle of the road waving this “mo fo” of a plastic gator head (good move in Auburn territory) back in forth through the air. The theme song from Deliverance kicks in as the car stops. A kindly man and his family pick me up and drive me back to the Auburn campus where my fraternity brothers await with the police whom they had called, having just recently filed a missing person’s report on my behalf.

No problem.

The party hadn’t even started yet.

Can ya hit a lick, Yankee?

The second time I heard those words, we were on the practice field. Football practice in my 9th grade year.

He had asked me the same question earlier in the day. In school. Wearing jeans and sneakers, I certainly didn’t think I was prepared to act the part. But I’d practice anyway.

And I’d be covered with sand spurs afterward. We all were. Rolling around in Florida’s sandy soil, we couldn’t help but be.

I wasn’t alone in my ill-equipment. Eddie had actually shown up barefoot. His feet, more like paws, would resemble bloody stumps when practice was finished.

And the man was a Gator.

A Florida Gator. But he seemed more like a prematurely old Alabaman from another era. He called us things like “hairy dogs” and told us “we made him sick to his stomach” when we messed up. Gators don’t talk like that. He sounded more like a Bear. The Bear.

And, while I didn’t know it at the time, this was his first teaching and coaching job. And he was only in his twenties.

We (they) called him “Coach,” which was new to me. I had always called my “gym” teachers (now “P.E.” teachers) “Mr.”

He wore “slaps” and “tennis shoes,” drank “tea,” pulled his car off into the “breakdown lane,” sneaked a peak at a “high steppin’ filly,” “tore it up” on the dance floor, and “cut off” the lights before going to bed at night.

It was another world.

In another time.

“When you’re a Gator and a Scarlet Knight, you just keep choppin.’ You just keep choppin.’”

After thirty years, those were the new first words out of his mouth. And nothing else had to be said.

Now we were both Gators. And me too, a Rutgers man.

My first coach.

And I didn’t know what to do. Still not sure, what, if anything, I’m supposed to do. With the time, that is. The time. Time gone by. Time today.

How do you explain one year out of the past thirty standing out? How can one year of my life be so etched in my heart?

I don’t know what to do about it.

Middle school and junior high are big years for students. I know because I teach them today. It’s the end of an era for them. For me too. They go on to high school upon graduation. The same awaited me. But then we moved. To Florida. From New Jersey. Leaving behind my dear friends, it wasn’t something I was looking forward to.

My father and I went first. My mom, sister, and brother would stay behind and sell the house. Settling in a “mobile home” (until we built the house that would never be built), it was quite a change. Plus, it was summer. No school. No chance to meet (even by coercion) new friends. So I’d go (every day) to the school’s outside basketball courts and shoot baskets. Hoping that someone would show up. But no one ever did. I played alone. Alone with the sand sprinkled on the cement surface. It was Ponte Vedra/Palm Valley before there was “the Island Green” of the 17th at Sawgrass. And it was foreign to me.

I would dream about all the games my winning shots would claim for the team (and school) I’d star for. I’ve got no left hand. I’ve got to get a left hand. Otherwise, I won’t be good enough. Does anyone see me? Will anyone know me? Will I make the team? Who’s the coach? The players?

Can ya hit a lick, Yankee?

He’s still with me.