ATLANTA - Urban Renewal has paved way to Urban Domination.
One of the more historic runs in recent college football history continued Saturday afternoon as No. 2 UF outlasted No. 1 Alabama 31-20 in front of 75, 892 orange, blue, crimson and white fans at the Georgia Dome, essentially clinching the Gators spot on the national championship game on Jan. 8.
And this time they did it differently than ever before. They won this time by coming from behind. Trailing 20-17 at the start of the fourth quarter, the Gators were 15 scoreless minutes away from a probable Sugar Bowl bid that would've left them in the hallows of the "should ofs" and "would ofs."
"We really haven't had to play in the fourth quarter for a long time," cornerback Joe Haden said.
Tim Tebow must've been saving up his fourth-quarter energy for a long time then. Tebow was about as perfect as a quarterback can be in a quarter as he led the Gators on two scoring drives, sealing the biggest UF win since the Gators national championship game win two years ago.
"I don't know the entire history of the University of Florida," UF coach Urban Meyer said, "but I can imagine that drive and that fourth quarter will go down as one of the greatest ever at University of Florida."
That fourth quarter left UF's Heisman winner all tuckered out, too. As has become tradition, Tebow took a victory lap-but this team he wasn't standing on the sidelines waiting for 15 minutes to take that lap.
"That was practically the hardest part of the day," Tebow said of the victory lap. "I was getting so tired."
So was Alabama's defense. The Gators came in as the team with speed, but they left with much more.
"The only reason they looked past our toughness is because our speed," Haden said. "Our speed outweighs our toughness, but that doesn't mean we're not tough. We can still be fast and tough at the same time. We're just as tough. We can still be pretty and tough at the same time."
Unfortunately for the Tide, they found that out the hard way.
"The say we weren't tough. They say we weren't physical," said senior wide receiver Louis Murphy who had a team-high 86 receiving yards. "Today, we out-toughed and out-physically played them."
While the physicality detriment will probably be taken out of critics' vocabulary, they'll just keep on yapping about the Gators speed. With the emergence of other receivers such as Riley Cooper and David Nelson, the return of Percy Harvin in the potential national championship game is going to make UF's opponents quiver while watching tape.
"We didn't want to come out here today and risk anything serious," Harvin said. "So I'll be ready for the national championship game."
When offensive linemen Carl Johnson and Marcus Gilbert did a chest bump, you could almost see the Gators past opponents squashed in the middle. Now nobody is squashed between them and a trip to the national championship.
"There's no doubt in our mind," Haden said. "I don't see no reason why we shouldn't be in Miami."
After winning nine straight by an average of just more than 36 points, it's hard to argue with that thinking.
"If we don't prepare the right way and we make mistakes and we play without our energy and our passion, they can beat us then," Spikes said. "If we come out and hitting our all our keys and playing with a lot of passion, they can't beat us."
It looks like Oklahoma will be the team who gets a chance to. The final BCS matchups will be announced Sunday night at 8 p.m. Most of the Gators - past and present - know they'll get another national title shot.
"They got one more game to go," said former UF quarterback Chris Leak, who was the starting signal-caller on the 2006 title team.
For Meyer, who was hired four years ago, this is just another chapter in what's starting to become a novel with what Meyer has done at UF in his short time.
"This will go down as one of the great wins in Florida football history," Meyer said.
Just wait until January. Meyer might get used to that sort of phrasing.
