All Things Longhorn

ATL had the unique opportunity to pose some questions to two of the funniest college football writers you’ll find, Orson Swindle and Stranko Montana, co-authors of Every Day Should Be Saturday. Along with having the coolest named blog around, they’re laugh-out-loud funny, and poignant, to boot. Graduates of the University of Florida, the two authors of EDSBS answered a few questions for ATL. We couldn’t have enjoyed their answers more. We’re sure you will, too.

ATL: Describe Florida's season in one sentence for us.

EDSBS: Florida's season has been a treat for the whole family, a story both adults and children can love featuring the unique vocal talents of Aaron Carter, Tom Waits, and Stephen Hawking.

Seriously? Shit, that's not easy. Try this on: one long scrimmage with mixed results.

ATL: What's up with Chris Leak? He looks like such an impressive quarterback to us, but he doesn't seem to be taking to Urban Meyer's system that well? Help us out: what's up?

EDSBS: Leak's being asked to do two things he's never done prior to this year. First, he's supposed to run an option, which a great number of high school quarterbacks get at least some experience doing along the way. Not so for Leak, who essentially ran the same static spread offense all the way from high school through his first two years of college. It hasn't been pretty, but with the recent tweaks in the run game it's been a little less horrific the past two games.

Second, he's being asked to make calls at the line for the first time in both the run and pass game. Believe it or not, film monster and workaholic Leak--who youthink would have been given a certain amount of trust before--was never given the option to audible at the line.

Finally, remember this: Leak's only a junior. It feels like he's been around forever, but he's only had one season prior to this one as the full-time starter in an entirely different offense. He just had his best game of the season, and Meyer seems to know what to do with him now. He'll probably leave Florida as a disappointment in some people's eyes, but given the banana republic drama of the Zook years, that's a cheap shot, we think.

ATL: How does the next year or two look for Florida? Are you optimistic?

EDSBS: We are. The talent pipeline is wide open and Meyer is texting recruits in their sleep, so recruiting won't be an issue. The mystique-building that took a hitunder Zook (we just kicked our dog again--look what you made us do!!!) is recovering somewhat.

And for most of the year, people can still walk around Gainesville half-naked, which goes a long way when you're dealing with oversexed and indulged 18-year old athletes. Why can't Notre Dame recruit with USC and Miami? Ever tried walking around South Bend in hot pants and a bandana top? We have, and let me tell you, chapped penis does not spell fun in anyone's dictionary.

More important than that is Urban Meyer's ability to win games despite a sputtering offense and first-year kinks in the system. He's won low-scoring grappling matches like the Tennessee and Georgia games. He's won a shootout in the Vandy game. He almost won at LSU. Really, there's only been one game where we had our asses handed to us, and that was against the only undefeated team in the conference.

And he adjusted when he had to, giving Leak a wider comfort zone for the Georgia and Vandy games. If we split the last two games, Florida goes 8-3 per our prediction and lives up to first-year billing. Not bad for someone's first year in a big boy conference.

The only real concern is the weakness of the conference in the bottom five teams and how that will reflect on our strength of schedule. Everyone needs to just hold on to their coaches for a while and let them do some real work, especially over in the West, where for some reason the trigger's a little quicker. Look at Bobby Johnson at Vandy, who's worked miracles with his team given a fair amount of time. Take a deep breath. Have a Fresca, in the words of Judge Smails from Caddyshack.

ATL: Vince Young, Reggie Bush, or Matt Leinart for Heisman?

EDSBS: Vince Young. Even Bevo-haters begin their arguments with "Well, without Young you'd be 3-7, in the C-USA, totally gay and loving it, blah blah blah... " That'sa great testament to how important he really is. The agony for us is imagining the holy terror he'd be in the Florida offense. He embarrasses people in the Mack-attack, but he'd straight burn stadiums to the ground in the spread option and sow salt on the ground when he left. A Halley's comet talent who still doesn't get the pub he deserves because he's closer to Texarkana than New York or Los Angeles. Enjoy him.

ATL: Assume a Texas-USC Rose Bowl. Who wins it?

EDSBS: Hate me now: USC. That's money talking, though--we'd love to see what Gene Chizik would cook up for that game. We have a feeling it would involve chickenblood, the hair of a dead man, six hours of dancing around a bonfire and one picture of Matt Leinart. Texas provides the toughest matchup, we think, but theUSC offense is epochal. They're going a long way down from it next year.

ATL: You hear a lot of SEC-bashing these days. Do you think it's overblown?

EDSBS: Not really, but there's a fair amount of Gomer-pointing involved in it too. We cheat. We lie. We schedule cupcakes. All true, too, but when someone can give a critique without invoking the hayseed angle--as John Walters did in CNNSI--we listen. You don't hear that as often as you hear the evil redneck angle.

It goes to a larger pattern in college football coverage that anything not aligned with the media poles of LA and New York is considered strange or otherwise lesser. Regionality is hard to market, so it's pushed to the side in favor of easy branding. USC and Notre Dame coming back to national prominence means something easy for the big networks to latch on to--historical brands with big name recognition. Texas or Florida's a little harder for them to pitch to thecoasts.

This all explains why living in Atlanta is so, so good for a college football fan: the college game is THE game here, and everything else scrambles for second. Note the huge contingent of bloggers in the Atlanta area--Georgia Sports, Sexy Results, ATL Eagle, The Drizzle, Braves and Birds...there's reasons to be here, and they mostly happen in the fall.

ATL: Do you have a gripe with the BCS system or are you relatively satisfied with the status quo?

EDSBS: Yes. It's fraud and a beauty pageant. But not a Miss America-style pageant; no, it's more like a bad state fair pageant, where two or three qualified contestants keep straight faces while Miss Bucksnort county clogs for the judges with five pounds of makeup on her pockmarked skin before launching into her screeching,country-rap-rock version of "Hollaback Girl." And Miss Bucksnort county's daddy is on the judges' panel, too, so you know she's at least getting into the final round.

Miss Bucksnort couldn't actually compete her way to the crown, though--which is why we need a playoff like we need a drink just thinking about the shambolic BCS scenarios that could still play out this year.

--PB--

# posted by PB at BON @ 10:09 AM