After Monday morning's press conference, UF athletics directory Jeremy Foley complained that only one question in a 20-minute interview was asked to UF coach Urban Meyer about the upcoming Arkansas game.
It was funny at the time, considering the Mississippi game was still fresh in everyone's minds.
But now? Foley has a point. After four straight days of questions almost entirely about the Mississippi loss, I want to pull my hair out.
For nearly a week, we have stood around Meyer and asked him what went wrong against the Rebels. Was it the playcalling? The fumbles? A poor defensive showing?
I don't care anymore about that game. I've heard Meyer say "We have to improve on that" this week more times than I've heard Cubs fans say "This is our year" (which - brief aside - sorry guys, it's not). There are only so many times your brain can take coaches giving the same answers to the same questions before it shuts down.
I'm not upset about all the Mississippi talk because I wanted to see UF win. The problem with this constant harping on the loss is that it's not, you know, news. The game took place six days ago. In today's world of journalism, that might as well be a decade. Tuesday's paper should be the cutoff for any Mississippi talk, but we ran a column Thursday about whose fault on offense the loss was and a column on Wednesday about the defense playing well in that defeat. We sure as hell would not have written four columns about a Gators' 31-30 win over the Rebels praising the offense or defense.
And, yes, I realize the irony of writing about the Mississippi loss to explain how we should have been writing less about it, so don't bother pointing that out.
The point: Arkansas, folks, is just one day away. I think.
Only yesterday did we start touching a bit on Arkansas, the team UF is playing this weekend. And you know what? There are actually great storylines to go with this game.
First, the Gators and Razorbacks met in the 2006 Southeastern Conference Championship Game. The Gators won that game, and the two programs have gone in completely different directions since then. UF has consistency in coaching and talent. Arkansas, well, not so much.
Another huge story is how dramatically dissimilar the Arkansas running game is from last season. Back in 2006, running backs Darren McFadden and Felix Jones combined for 130 yards against UF. Now, the Razorbacks are a shell of an offense struggling to get by in the SEC. The fact that Arkansas can't keep up with the UFs and LSUs of the conference is a giant problem with its program that deserves mention.
Instead, the above two giant topics were confined to two sentences in one paragraph in today's paper.
How about how the Gators' visit to Fayetteville is their longest trip all year? That has to impact a team in some way.
Defensive coordinator Charlie Strong grew up in Arkansas as a Razorbacks fan. There was some funny material in there, but we didn't touch it. Looking back, I wish I had written more about this Arkansas team that we all assume UF is going to cream on Saturday.
But did we care? Nope. We just wanted to enlighten you with the ground-breaking knowledge that fumbling is bad. Now that's news.
