character, dammit!

so apparently we are all terrible about posting to the site. that should change, and i encourage you to email adam and grant mercilessly until they do something about it.

i had the unfortunate honor of being at the uf-auburn game with adam, a disappointing loss in any number of ways. personally, for all the shit our defense takes, i think they were the unit that had the best overall performance in the game. but i digress.

as my fellow posters would probably attest, this was not nearly UF's worst loss or even the worst loss we attended. shit, pick any one of our losses in 2003. that year still leaves an awful taste in my mouth.

but all those losses are good for a football team in the long run, and they're good for the fan base as well. these are what i like to call character losses. granted, losses are never fun, and not all losses are character losses; for instance, the 2003 FSU-UF victory remains the absolute worst officiated game i've ever seen. there's nothing to gain from that except disdain for ACC officials and chris rix, and we really didn't need any more of either.

the beautiful thing about character losses is they make you appreciate big wins and championships all the more. the success of the gators last year doesn't really mean the same thing to you if you hadn't seen these same players struggle and choke and sputter to losses in games they could have won. losses like the auburn game test your fan loyalty, because it's easy to root for a team that wins and wins and wins but harder to support them wholeheartedly when they play a really crappy game. i can still remember the 2002 UF-Miami game in gainesville where it seemed like 1/4 of the student section had sold their tickets because it looked like we were gonna get waxed (coincidentally, we did). that's fucking awful and those are probably the same people buying "gator peat" t-shirts for their kids.

so, oklahoma, texas, rutgers, west virginia, and florida fans, buck up. you may have all lost last saturday, but it's good for your fans. football teams that don't struggle just aren't that interesting.