GO GATORS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When Kerry got accepted to the University of Florida we had no choice but to become Gators parents. Anytime I wear a UF shirt someone that I don't know in a mall or at a gas station passes me by and says "go gators". It's what you do when you are a gator or a gator parent. One time I was walking through the Luxor casino in Las Vegas wearing my screaming orange Gator shirt and someone from the top of the pyramid yelled "go gators" at me. I, of course, yelled back. Like I said, it's what you do when you are part of the gator nation.

Saturday night was the SEC championship football game to decide who was going to go to the national championship game. It was between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Florida Gators. It was a HUGE game especially around here in South Florida. One reason for this is that so many of our local kids are up at UF. It's the premier college in Florida and if you can get in you go. The kids all work their asses off all during high school trying to get into UF. If they have great grades, great SATs, great extra circulars, great essays, great letters of recommendations and happen to play a mean clarinet they get in. If not, if's FSU or UCF for them. All Kerry wanted was to go to UF and I am proud to say that she made it, not an easy task these days.

Kerry playing at her junior recital.

The other reason that this was such a huge game was we wanted, we needed, we had to kick Nick Saban's butt. Nick Saban is the coach for Alabama and a few years ago the Miami Dolphins lured him away from college football and hired him as our coach. He sucked as many college coaches do when they come to the NFL. That in itself wasn't so bad but as the media was giving him a hard time for being a sucky coach a rumor started that he was going to leave the Dolphins and go back to college. Even that wasn't so bad. We would have understood that but the corker was when the newspapers and TV people asked him outright "Hey Nick, are you leaving the Dolphins and going back to college?" he said "No, I'm here and you can count on me." Well, needless to say, the next day he was gone. He not only proved himself to be a crappy coach but he was also a liar. This was the real reason that we all wanted the Gators to beat the Crimson Tide. To kick their asses all over the field. To humiliate them.

The game started at 4:00 and I was ready. I was wearing my UF shirt in front of my big screen HDTV with Rigby dressed in two bandanas. One blue and one orange. He is, after all, a Gator dog. I don't remember being this excited about a sporting event since Jimmy Connors played his last US Open or maybe Tiger Woods playing his last US Open. No, this was more important. We HAD to win.

Gator Rigby

It was a very exciting game. Tim Tebow, our superman quarterback, played his ass off as all of our Gator kids did. The lead changed 4 or 5 times. I sat on the bed yelling and screaming and finally the game was over and the Gators poured a huge vat of Gatorade and ice over Coach Urban Meyer's head. We had won. It was not the ass kicking that we all had hoped for but just winning was good enough. Nick Saban had been sent packing with his head down low and us Gators? We are going to the national championship game in Miami of all places. We will be playing the Oklahoma Sooners on January 8.

By the way, the Dolphins won yesterday without Nick Saban and are now leading the division so yeah, GO Dolphins and GO GATORS!!!!!!!