Last week, alligatorSports columnist and staff writer Jenna Marina offered insight with her list of the top seven moments of the football season.
Very well done. So well done that I'm going to borrow from her idea and come up with a list of my own.
I'm going to look into my crystal ball here and project 2008's five biggest dates in UF sports:
1. Jan. 1: The Capital One Bowl: On paper, UF should defeat Michigan. But, as Ohio State taught us last year, the game's winner will likely be determined by what happens in practice for the remainder of December. Everyone is going to make a big deal out of the whole Big Ten-Southeastern Conference matchup again, and, as somebody who grew up in the Midwest, let me just go off on a little rant here. I'm not ashamed to admit that SEC football blows its Big Ten little brother out of the water. I don't really see why people even bring it up anymore. College football is a religion in the South. Up north, it's far less important. Growing up, college football didn't even make the short list of my favorite sports. Down here, that sort of thinking is blasphemous.
2. March 22/23: NCAA Tournament second round: Billy Donovan's young basketball team will lose after a first round victory in the NCAA Tournament to a second- or third-seeded team that is more experienced and better equipped to handle the pressures of the tourney. It's a happy medium between hard-earned national championships the last two seasons and first-round upsets from Donovan's earlier years.
3. Aug. 30: UF vs. Hawaii, a game that will go down as the "System Bowl." Hawaii coach June Jones said on Sunday that Tim Tebow is a "system quarterback," which basically means Tebow's success is due to UF's spread offense and not his own skill. Tebow will make Jones eat those words in the season opener when he throws for a school-record 500 yards and scores eight touchdowns. Or maybe that will prove Jones' theory? Either way, Hawaii goes down.
4. Dec. 6: SEC Championship Game, UF/Georgia vs. Auburn/Alabama: A lot of people will tab UF as the favorite in the SEC next season, and rightfully so. But I'm not about to argue that a year early. All I will say is that the East Division will likely come down to the Florida-Georgia game in Jacksonville, and the West will likely come down to the Iron Bowl. I see LSU taking a bit of a drop off next year after it loses most of its key parts. I will say this definitively, however. I think the winner of the SEC will go to the national title game. The rest of the country has realized that the SEC is the best conference. Following the recent trend, expect the 2009 BCS Championship Game to pit the best team from the SEC against the best team from the rest of the country.
5. Dec. 13: Tim Tebow repeats as Heisman winner, and why not? Tebow welcomes back All-SEC offensive lineman Phil Trautwein and running back Mon Williams and adds in Emmanuel Moody to the offense. Darren McFadden and Colt Brennan should be gone next year, leaving West Virginia teammates Steve Slaton and Pat White and Big 12 quarterbacks Sam Bradford, Chase Daniel and Colt McCoy as Tebow's primary competition. Georgia running back Knowshon Moreno might have a say in it, too.
