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Sunday, May 18, 2025

El Caimán

Eight Gators writers pick eight games from this weekend's college football slate.
SPORTS  |  COLUMNS

Picks column Week 4: Streak week (UK edition)

After Week 3 left us with more questions than answers (Was UF’s win vs. Tennessee a fluke? What really qualifies as a “Hail Mary?” Will freshman DB McArthur Burnett ever get tired of flipping off opposing fans?), the Gators leave behind palm trees for bluegrass as they take on the Kentucky Wildcats in Lexington on Saturday. Kentucky hasn’t beaten Florida in 30 years, since Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and way before Nirvana. What would be more impressive than UK snapping the streak? One of our picks competitors going 8-for-8. But before we meet our pickers, let’s have alligatorSports writers Ian Cohen and Dylan Dixon give us an in-depth breakdown of one of the games we’ll be watching this weekend (if there are no other games on): Ball State @ Western Kentucky.


The last time Kentucky beat Florida was in 1986. UF players, however, say they don't care. “We treat every game as the most important game of the season,” safety Nick Washington said.
SPORTS  |  FOOTBALL

Gators tuning out talk, locked in for matchup with Kentucky

Florida’s football players know about streaks. Last year, they entered a game at Tennessee having won 11 straight over the Volunteers. Former Gators cornerback Quincy Wilson announced he had a message for UT ahead of that game when he asked whether a duck could pull a truck, the point being that ducks don’t pull trucks, and Tennessee doesn’t beat Florida. That’s just the way it is. Or at least the way it was.


Florida Alligator
OPINION  |  DARTS LAURELS

Darts & Laurels

You’re sitting at a table in your favorite local coffee shop, sipping on an oh-so-delicious vanilla latte you’ve been craving all day. You sit there and somewhat pretentiously scribble away in your journal, pretending as though you have some sort of dark, mysterious thing going on. You hope maybe you’ll catch someone’s eye, and they’ll be enamoured by how deep you appear to be.


Florida Alligator
METRO  |  K-12 EDUCATION

The bitter trap of nostalgia: Ruminations on our younger years

High school me was very different than the current me. Now, this column is not going to be about my dynamic growth as a person, so I’m not going to go into too much detail. Here are some highlights: High school me was going to wait until she was 21 to drink (ha). High school me thought it was cool to wear a skirt over jeans. High school me once put a stuffed lobster in her pocket to be quirky. High school me was very self-conscious about wearing glasses. High school me thought no boy would ever like her. High school me didn’t go to parties and then justified that she wasn’t invited with the fact that she wouldn’t have wanted to go anyway.


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