Feet on the ground/ head in the sky

Perhaps the two most crestfallen souls of the college football universe found redemption on the same day, tearing at the cosmic fabric of the universe. Karl Dorrell, UCLA’s downtrodden coach and proverbial dead-man-walking, and Chris Leak, Florida’s condemned quarterback and nemesis of an overzealous evangelist’s son, conquered different demons just hours apart.

But while Dorrell’s faux revival marked one of the most satisfying upsets of my life, I can find no solace in the fact that Florida’s forlorn, once-prized warrior has been rescued from a cruel abyss. No, not because he will in all likelihood keep Michigan from the National Championship – I am chivalrous enough to concede defeat to a team that deserves it. It is because the University of Florida does not possess a football team that warrants my sympathy or praise. You have Florida president Bernie Machen, a detestable prick who says things like “We should be packing our bags for Glendale,” which seems excessively bitter and condescending. He’s also the man who once fought to add another BCS game when he was president at Utah, when that seemed to be the only way for a mid-major to get their hands on the multi-million dollar cash prize, and now complains that “In the end, it's all about the money. It's all about the money.”

There is Florida’s head coach, Urban Meyer, who I watched after halftime unconvincingly pretend, with an arrogant grin, that he and his players had no idea that Southern Cal had already lost. “(At halftime) it was firing through the locker room pretty quick,” Meyer told Mark Schlabach when the game was over, no doubt with his feet kicked up on the desk and his hands clasped behind his head, as if he'd fooled someone. Deceit seemed like such a classless move on Meyer’s part, especially when compared to Lloyd Carr’s stoicism and graciousness – the latter perhaps his tragic flaw. But I suppose we should have expected nothing more from the same sniveling fuck who once said “I plan on staying at Utah a long time,” and spent the better portion of a November begging for a chance to play in the Title Game. And the people in power can only glorify Saturday night’s sloppy triumph over an overachieving foe, not simply oblivious Meyer’s childishness, but almost canonizing it, as if it were something admirable; an act of devotion.

University of Georgia graduate Mark Schlabach wrote 1,300 words worth of “nonpartisan analysis” (Mark, did you find it difficult to type while you had Urban’s cock in your hand?); Stewart Mandel fights for objectivity, but is quite obviously entranced by Florida’s flawed and yet successful voyage; Pat Forde writes as if thankful to be detached from such a debate, and yet admits that he favors Florida, citing the baffling maxims that “Florida won its conference,” and that “Michigan had its chance already.”

Michigan is a far better team than Florida is; it’s the only one that could keep from embarrassing themselves against Ohio State, too. That much I am positive of. But it pains me to say that by tomorrow morning, I fear the bellows of the ignorant will have drowned out the quiet voices of the enlightened.