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As is the case in most cities with professional franchises, the buildings that host Florida's professional sports teams have been built with the assistance of taxpayer contributions. It's played off as a symbiotic relationship (new stadium means new jobs, more revenue coming in, etc.) but most of the time feels parasitic. Well, destitute Floridians know a thing or two about that. More »
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Sure, Tiger was the one sleeping around and doing all manner of filthy things to all kinds of filthy ladies, but Elin Nordegren, apparently, is the one who left their children with a broken home. As reported earlier this week, Nordegren bought a $12 million house in North Palm Beach, Florida only to raze the 9,000 square foot estate. More »
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I want to reveal to you a big secret, that college football would rather not have you know: sometimes coaches don't stay with a single team forever, and sometimes they even take other jobs. Scandalous. More »
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College football trundles on, and so do we. Chat about it below. More »
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Before we dive in, let's play Ohio Or Florida! It's Florida. More »
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Your p.m. roundup for Aug. 24, the day we learned how much to tip whom, and for what. Photo credit @johnfayman, via The Big Lead. Got any stories or photos for us? Tip your editors. More »
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The world's greatest undrafted free agent held his first "official" autograph signing last weekend and since he's no longer an amateur, his signature will now cost you a pretty penny. Or $160 if you want to get technical about it. More »
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So last weekend I went with @girlfriend to the teensie tiny town of Wetumpka, Alabama, which meant I had the chance to see the Iron Bowl in its natural habitat. More »
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Buckeye linebacker Tyler Moeller will miss the entire year because a complete stranger punched him in the head at a restaurant in Florida. (It wasn't a Gator fan.) The moral, as always, is that Florida is awful. [Columbus Dispatch] More »
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"Which baseball heartthrob may be playing for the other team? He secretly slides into bed with Florida fellas." [Gatecrasher via Gawker] More »
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Leave it to Las Vegas to sate all our needs. Even those we didn't know we had before. (I'm looking at you midget escort service.) Everyone knows that the idea of a playoff is so awfully complicated that it would require a Manhattan Project-level commitment before anything could happen. Or, you know, a sports book could just seed the top 8 teams based on the final BCS standings and run the odds for each of those match-ups. Like the guys at BetOnline.com did. The result is a USC victory. But what would the odds look like on your Oklahoma-Penn State game? Or your Florida-Texas Tech game? Click on for the colorful bracket. Then wipe away the drool from your computer keyboards. More »
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It's Oklahoma and Florida for the BCS Title—an imperfect end to a season when no football team was perfect. Except, you know, Utah and Boise State. But they don't really count. What with their small conferences and even smaller media markets and exposure. The BCS is fair and impartial. Except, you know, this is a business and there's money to be made. Otherwise how do you explain Boise State getting beat for the BCS out by a 10-2 Ohio State team whose best win all season is Michigan State. Second best? Northwestern. But, to be fair, no one cares about the vast majority of the bowl games this season. (College football bowl monopolizers, ESPN, excluded.) Yeah, Penn State-USC should be fun to watch. But, like every other game, it's meaningless. Thanks to the bowl drafting order of the BCS, we don't even get to see Texas play Alabama. Instead we get Utah-Alabama and Texas-Ohio State. And don't even get me started on Cincinnati-Virginia Tech. Just like it does every season the BCS conspires to make everyone feel a bit cheated. Sigh. On to the round-up. More »
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Of all the ridiculous aspects of the BCS system, the conference championship game pisses me off more than any other because it points out the flagrant hypocrisy of the college presidents. In the same time period when they've fought a college football playoff because of the time it would add to the season, they've added conference championship games and a 12th game to the regular season. But that's not the only reason. I think conference championship games are ludicrous because in an era when every team is fighting to get to the BCS, only half of the BCS leagues actually require their teams to play them. So the Big 12, SEC, and ACC teams have to run the gauntlet of their regular season schedule and then slug out yet another game while the three other conference champs cool their heels and wait to advance. That's such a joke. Anyway, on to the preview...in a moment. I'm just getting warmed up. More »
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Oklahoma beat Oklahoma State late Saturday night 61-41. This score was enough to vault the Sooners ahead of Texas in the BCS Standings and, as a result, send them into the Big 12 Title Game against Missouri courtesy of the fifth tiebreak. (The sixth tiebreak was, in a nice nod to BCS totalitariianism, "Who does Kim Jong-Il think is better?") In raising Oklahoma the BCS computers managed to solve the quandary that left human pollsters uncertain: which of three tied teams deserves the opportunity to compete for a national championship? Of course this only mattered because Texas Tech stormed back to defeat Baylor before Oklahoma even kicked off. If Tech lost that game, then the Oklahoma game wouldn't even have mattered. and Texas is playing for the title. This all makes an awful lot of sense, right? More »
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Texas beat Texas A&M 49-9 yesterday. They're now 11-1. But unless you were in Texas you had no idea this game was happening. Even I didn't think to check this score until late Thursday night. That's because I spent Thanksgiving with family. Included in part of my day was a trip to Ford Field to watch the Titans destroy the Lions in person. Watching a team get beat as badly as the Lions was kind of uncomfortable. Especially when your wife's family is mostly Lions fans. It's kind of sad. Don't get me wrong, as a Titans fan it was great, but the Detroit fans were so abusive of their team it was like watching a couple you know is about to be divorced get into a nasty verbal fight in a room full of people. You want to tune it out and enjoy your day, but you just can't. The infinite variety of unique and fascinating ways I heard the Lions cursed yesterday could fill a novel. And the entire time I felt like I shouldn't be hearing it all, like this was something that should be happening behind closed doors. Anyway, on to a weekend in college football where Oregon, Auburn, Oklahoma State, Virginia, and Florida State all have a chance to ruin their most-hated in-state rivals' season. More »
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The most interesting thing about this weekend was Barack Obama continuing his jeremiad against the BCS. At first you thought his Monday Night Football interview with Berman was probably just a flippant aside. But now he's carried the anti-BCS flame into office and laid out an 8-team playoff plan. Already the commissioner of the BCS. John Swofford, has stepped out of his dark cave, waved his short arms, put on his Rose Bowl hat and dismissed the possibility. But even still, should we give Obama more credit on this? Could bringing about an end to the BCS end the Republican stranglehold on the deep South in 2012? Is it time for us to acknowledge the incredible boldness of Obama's new southern strategy? More »
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Now that everyone knows exactly what's going to happen with the rest of the college football season, this is when something inevitably blows up. Because if there's one thing we know about the convoluted BCS system, it's this: nothing is certain with three weekends to go. Alabama still has to get past Mississippi State and then beat a desperate Auburn team for the first time since 2001. Florida has to get past the Ole Ball Coach and then go on the road to play Florida State. Meanwhile Texas goes to Kansas and tries to avoid getting Mangino'd (the possibilities of exactly what this would entail are endless.) Without further ado, here are the 11 most intriguing games of the weekend. Do dive in. More »
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In honor of BCS clarity arriving (thanks to Iowa we now know that the Big 12 will play the SEC for all the gold in Zimbabwe—that isn't already smuggled to Zurich), we bring you two striking young lasses who recently transferred from Arkansas to rejoin their daddy at Ole Miss. Meet Hailey and Hanna Nutt, the 20-year old twin daughters of Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt. To help celebrate Halloween in Oxford, the two donned football-themed costumes. Having seen Halloween in Columbia, I can't imagine what Halloween in Oxford was like. Actually, yes I can. I need to take a break now....Okay, I'm back. These are the Nutt twins according to a reader email submission that includes this line. ("P.S. Don't mention my name in any post.") These are always the best tips. On to the roundup. More »
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Alabama's John Parker Wilson is the latest SEC player attempting to overcome the LSU fans snagging his cell phone number and listing it everywhere on the internets. Confounding Cajuns. You'll recall that earlier this season Knowshon Moreno and A.J. Green were the victims. They joined Tim Tebow from last year. Imagine what people in Louisiana would be capable of if they focused as much energy on literacy. Anyway, for the record, John Parker Wilson's old cell phone number was 205-910-2876. It's already been disconnected, so it's too late for you to call and make fun of his 'Bama Bangs. How pissed would you be if LSU fans put your cell phone number on the internet and you had to switch to another number? Especially if you were a starting quarterback in the SEC and didn't even remember the names of most of your regular, ahem, post midnight lady calls. Yeah, thought so. Nick Saban should thank his lucky stars that his number didn't get out there. Anyway, here are 9 interesting games worth noting. More »
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In a move reminiscent of the final rap contest between Rabbit and Papa Doc, Florida fans have embraced their greatest flaw: the you wear jorts insult that Georgia fans have been hurling for the better part of a decade. Yep, there's an organized movement afoot for Gator fans to show up in jorts for the Cocktail Party. Already this has provoked the ire of the Georgia student newspaper: More »
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For those of you who emailed and asked whether the bearded guy in the orange shirt on the sideline at UT-Georgia was me. Yep, it was. There's a refined sense of pleasure in being a fan and watching your team suffer a drubbing from the sideline. I think I spoke about five words the entire game because I was afraid of getting in the way or getting leveled. Early on one of UT's student managers said, "Clay, keep your head on a swivel." So I was terrified of getting Weis'd and laying on the ground while my cell phone buzzed with text messages from friends making fun of how badly I got wrecked. Slow motion instant replays would not be my friend. I also didn't want to cheer too aggressively or really talk to the players too much for fear of them saying, "Who's the weird dude with the beard who just slapped me on the side of the helmet?" If you'll look closely at the above picture you can see that I've got a notepad so I can take notes for my book. Also, I'm not certain but I believe I became the first person to wear flip-flops on the sideline of a football game as well. All of this combined means I'm the biggest loser to be on the sideline for a major college football game since Bob Davie was still coaching. Anyway, here are 11 other things I noted during a week of carnage. More »
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The biggest week of college football games comes at a good time. Your stocks are tanking, summer is fading, you may or may not get fired in the newest round of layoffs, and you're thinking about getting an MBA or going to law school but you're not sure whether it makes sense to take out the student loads. As if that weren't enough a presidential election is bearing down on you and your condoms broke with the bartender who needs to lose fifteen pounds and eight years. Yeah, you need a weekend on the couch. Good for you. So do I. Especially because my son is learning to walk and this means that my job is to hold his hands and chase him wherever he wants to go. All the stooping is killing my back. It actually hurts to type right now. This is not a good sign. Thank God for football. Here's my breakdown of the 8 biggest games of the weekend. More »
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I was in Knoxville for UT-Florida, a game with all the suspense of watching one of those live chickens try and survive hanging over the alligator pits. Occasionally the chickens break their neck in a fearful attempt to escape. Which is sort of what the UT football team did on Saturday. Right now UT quarterback Jonathan Crompton is playing with all the intelligence of the guy who buys pre-frayed baseball caps. There’s a real argument to be made about which of the plays during this game summed up the Tennessee season best. A roster of possibilities: More »
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Chris Fowler summed up the second week of college football when he said on ESPN Gameday: "The fans deserve a better slate of games than these." He was right. Several of the games turned out to be exciting but there was nothing particularly gripping about a roster that only featured seven games, seven, where the point spread was fewer than seven points. Nonetheless we college football fans persevered. What's more, I wasn't on the road this weekend so I was able to sit and watch every major game on Saturday. Here are 11 things that jumped out at me from Saturday's games. More »
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We've entered college football season. Hark, it lurks but three days hence. And, perhaps even more importantly, we've entered the top 5 of college football. Today's Florida previews is brought to you by Orson Swindle/Spencer Hall, a man who can slit your team's throat so skillfully you're still laughing while the blood gurgles out of your throat. He blogs at EDSBS.com where he's quick to discuss his smoldering flame for Trev Alberts. He also has the prodigious chest fur of a 1970's porn star. Enjoy. More »
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On Friday, that is. So all of you who have print media subscriptions in Orlando can kick the underside of your desks in anger that I've ruined your suspense. The two candidates are pictured holding footballs with the American flag on them. It's really tasteful. It's almost like Florida's an important...hey, I get it. More »
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Gators offensive guard Ronnie Wilson was arrested in April of 2007 for firing an AK-47. According to Wilson, he did it because he wanted the intended victim to know what it felt like to be scared. Makes complete sense. Well, now, the 911 phone call that led to Wilson's arrest has been released. You can actually hear a gunshot in the background as the guy makes an incredibly detailed 911 call. Why is this an issue a year later? Because Urban Meyer has allowed Wilson to rejoin the football team. Presumably he had to leave the AK-47 behind. More »
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1. This Year's Team, Nothing Like Last Year's Team. 32.3 minutes, 11.6 points, 5.1 rebounds and 2.4 assists. Those were the combined averages of the three Gators left over from last year's championship team. In all, the Gators lost 87 percent of last year's scoring, including their entire starting five and top reserve (not to mention 100 percent of their dress-wearers). This year's Gators are a young bunch, led by do-everything Freshman Nick Calathes (think Kirk Hinrich) and sophomore forward/center Marresse Speights (think Al Jefferson). They're joined by freshman guard Jai Lucas, son of former NBA coach John Lucas, who can apparently cure you of a marijuana addiction. Most important, one familiar face that did return from last year's team: head coach Billy Donovan. Billy D got to third base with the Orlando Magic in the offseason (down the pants but no penetration), but decided to come back to Gainesville, possibly helped by a $3.5 million-per-year contract. Donovan immediately set out on the recruiting trail, signing Lucas and five of next year's top 70 high school seniors. More »
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