NASHVILLE, Tenn. - There was no extravagant celebration Saturday night.
Sure, UF's players sang with the band, Tim Tebow did his usual victory lap, and the Gators were smiling as they ran off the field at Vanderbilt Stadium.
But an ignorant bystander would have had no idea UF just clinched a spot in the Southeastern Conference Championship with its 42-14 blowout of Vanderbilt on Saturday night.
The biggest on-field celebration, in fact, came from Shelley Meyer, who Gator Chomped along with fans.
Welcome to the 2008 Gators, a team that says it's just beginning to reach its goals.
UF will make its ninth appearance in the SEC title game on Dec. 6 against No. 1 Alabama. The Gators are 6-2 in their previous games but both losses ('92 and '99) came against the Crimson Tide.
"There was a little celebration, but we expected to win, and we came out and got it done," said linebacker Brandon Spikes, who led a UF defense that held Vanderbilt to 93 first-half yards. "We just gotta get focused on beating South Carolina now."
That was the lingering theme Saturday night.
The path has just begun, and since UF slipped up against Ole Miss in September, it wants to make sure it doesn't happen again over the next few weeks.
The Gators' 28-point victory margin Saturday night kept them from being just the second team in SEC history to win five straight league games by 30 or more points.
The only team to do it? UF in 1996.
Now the talk in Gainesville and elsewhere will be all about the Gators and their attempt to get to a second national title game in three years.
The road got a little easier Saturday night when No. 3 Penn State lost 24-23 on a last-second field goal at unranked Iowa.
The game finished just before kickoff in Nashville, and the Gators were well aware of the Nittany Lions' gift.
UF came into this week at No. 5 in the BCS and will likely jump to at least No. 4 with the Penn State loss.
Spikes said UF is playing the best in America and sees fewer and fewer obstacles to a trip to Miami, site of the 2009 BCS National Championship Game.
"I think we're in the driver's seat," he said. "We just take care of business, week in and week out, and we'll be OK."
The newest BCS standings will be released around 4:30 p.m. Sunday, and coach Urban Meyer plans to sit his team down and talk about the possible ramifications.
"I learned this back at Utah," Meyer said. "We're going to have a state of the union meeting on Sunday and I'll go through that with them. They're going to hear it and instead of uncle Jim or someone like that, they're going to hear exactly what's going on with the BCS. For us to just avoid it, that's the right way to do. They're going to be talking about it, so let's talk about it."
UF's ability to play such complete games is the key to its recent success. The Gators jumped on the Commodores early, forcing a three-and-out on defense before defensive end Carlos Dunlap blocked Vanderbilt's punt.
Then Tebow and the offense proceeded to score on its first four possessions, with the quarterback accounting for all four scores, two on the ground and two through the air on passes to Louis Murphy and Riley Cooper. The third drive was set up by a Ahmad Black interception at the Vanderbilt 26.
And the Gators would have made it five straight drives with a score if not for a convtroversial fumble by Percy Harvin at the goal line. Televion replays seemed to show that Harvin was down before the ball squirted out, but the officiating crew upheld the call after review.
UF would still tack on another 7 points before halftime with a 40-yard pass from Tebow to David Nelson with 8 seconds left in the second quarter.
With that the rout was on, most of the black-and-gold-clad Vanderbilt fans had left, and UF fans braved the cold temperatures to celebrate UF's second-straight appearance in the league title game.
You just probably won't see too much partying from the Gators just yet.
"It's not like it's going to be easy going into Atlanta," Tebow said. "We gotta focus on [South Carolina and Florida State] if we wanna be in the biggest game of all."
