** This thread discusses the Content article: Interview with a Gator Fan **

With the college football season rapidly approaching, Gatorsfirst.com is presenting a different take on the 2009 season every day for the entire month of August. We call it our ''Full Month of College Football Previews''. As part of the project, we are having fellow bloggers and other college football personalities from around the SEC and the rest of the nation give us their take on the current state of college football. This approach will allow us to bring you a much more in-depth look at the 2009 season than we could possibly provide on our own.[/quote]
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For the next in this series, our own James Brown of Gators First answered the same questions we've been posing to all of the others helping us with this project. This should complete the picture, and ensure we are all on record with our opinions on these things. Why would you trust any of our analysis throughout the year, and see through our Gator bias, if you didn't know where we were coming from?[/quote]
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Anyway, here is the ''interview''...[/quote]
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Gatorsfirst (G1): How did you become a fan of your team?[/quote]
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James Brown (J: Short answer: I was born at Shands Hospital on campus.[/quote]
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Longer answer: My dad has been a season ticket holder to Florida basketball games since I was around 4. I went to games, some seasons you could make jokes about exposing your kids to that sort of humiliation, and especially given I was passed along his other sports love, the Red Sox. It’s turned out better recently, though.[/quote]
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I don’t remember too much about football until 1990 (full disclosure: I turned 7 in 1990). The first thing I remember was my dad saying something like, “We got this new football coach”. And I was like “Are those fun to go to, too?” (meaning in addition to going to the O’Dome). They also had a bunch of “Florida Gators: First and Goal” bumper stickers to promote the arrival of Steve Spurrier. Other than that, my early memories of football are fuzzy.[/quote]
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I’m fairly certain I was at the San Jose State game in 1991, and I remember being at the Alabama game (talked about it briefly here). And I remember hating Syracuse way before Gerry McNamara was there, as they beat us pretty good that season.[/quote]
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My point is, I don’t think I had any other choice. Getting two degrees and a wife from there pretty much assured lifetime fandom, if the early brainwashing years did not.[/quote]
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(G1): Give me some thoughts on your coaching staff. Are you satisfied? Do you wish your team ran different schemes? How is recruiting?[/quote]
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(J: When they hired Urban Meyer, I was angry at the way I thought Bernie Machen treated Steve Spurrier. And I still feel sick every time we play South Carolina.[/quote]
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Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked on our coaching staff now. I do think there were some growing pains of Urban learning to be an SEC head coach (though not nearly like the growing pains of Zook learning to be a HC with the nation’s toughest schedule each year), but I am very happy with the way we turned it on the second half of last season.[/quote]
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My main gripe was when I thought Urban was playing ultraconservative against teams with inferior talent, and letting them hang around. But then we started blocking kicks and blowing out teams like UK and Vandy (no offense, guys) in the first quarter. I wrote about his emphasis on special teams here. And I truly think his attention to detail is what sets him apart from 99.9% of coaches.[/quote]
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Recruiting is pretty f’ing spectacular as well.[/quote]
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(G1): Who is a player we might not know from your team that you are excited about this season? Why?[/quote]
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(J: Well, considering most of our audience is made up of Gators fans, this is a tough question. I’m stoked to see Omar Hunter, who Urban Meyer called “the Tim Tebow” of the 2008 class. But that’s who Chris picked.[/quote]
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Considering all the talent we return, I’m just excited to see how all the blue-chip talent fits in. I want to see if we get Emmanuel Moody involved in more “competitive snaps”, to quote Urban. I want to see how the safety rotation goes, it seems like we have 6 guys who would start at a lot of places. And of course, to see backup QB Johnny Brantley, hopefully for the entire second half of most games.[/quote]
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I’m obviously extremely excited to see Joe Haden do his thing out of the Wildcat.[/quote]
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The only place that really needs new blood is at WR. I probably have the most tempered expectations for Andre Debose of anyone I know, so for a player to highlight I’d go with Frankie Hammond, Jr. or Omarius Hines, two guys that supposedly had good springs and should be ready to step in at WR.[/quote]
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(G1): What do you think about conference title games? Would you change something about the conference?[/quote]
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(J: I love the conference title games. It’s a little cheap when you have a year like 2001 when LSU stole a title, but the good far outweighs the bad. Last year’s SEC Title game, I thought, was the best game of the year. And yes, I watch a lot of Big XII as I live in Texas.[/quote]
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As far as changing something about the conference, I can’t really complain about the final product. Hell, even Vanderbilt won a bowl game last season. But I do occasionally wonder how they fit in. And how Arkansas gets the nod over a bunch of other teams that are closer to the other schools. But if they weren’t in Fayetteville, I wouldn’t get the occasional short trip from the Dallas area to see a game. Basically, all is right with the world, this sport, and this league for me right now.[/quote]
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(G1): How much did you like the bowl system pre-BCS? As a fan, how much do you concentrate on 'National Championships'? Has this changed in the last decade or so?[/quote]
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(J: I didn’t mind the old bowl system that much. In fact, I remember Spurrier talking about playoffs, and no one really paying him much attention.[/quote]
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I do like that there’s one definitive game to call a championship, even if there are occasional gripes about it. And for the record, 2004 Auburn is the only team with a legitimate gripe.[/quote]
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As far as concentrating on ‘National Championships’, my emphasis each year is to go out and win the SEC. If you take care of that, you’ve had the best season you can, for things you can control.[/quote]
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The number of national titles for some of these schools are severely skewed, away from less populated areas like the South, because of the way that the championship used to be entirely decided by a vote. For a lot of these reasons, I feel that Florida’s 3 relatively recent titles are more significant than schools with more titles that took place in an era where only 10 teams probably even had a shot to crack the top 5.[/quote]
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I do think the BCS has placed a larger emphasis in the last decade or so on the ‘National Championship’. And the way it has relegated the non-championship BCS bowls to the back seat is another drawback. But overall, I’m probably one of the more content people you’ll meet, in regard to the current system.[/quote]
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(G1): What sort of changes, if any should be made to the BCS system? Does this opinion put you in-line or out-of-line with other fans of your team and conference?[/quote]
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(J: I do think that, compared to most people, I am more likely to leave the system alone than to come up with some strange tweak. The playoff scenarios and conference realignment and whatnot are a fun discussion, but that’s all they are.[/quote]
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I really worry about what would happen to the way this sport is crazy every Saturday. We have probably the most rapidly growing sport of all, and certainly the most passionate fan bases, week-in and week-out. I worry what taking away the importance of each game would do to the sport. College football is found in some strange outposts around the country- if people stopped feeling as much obligation to flock to these places, it would significantly impact the local economies. Which is also a big part of the argument to SEC teams not wanting to give up home games.[/quote]
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Back to the “every Saturday” argument: I love baseball. I’ve called it my favorite sport. But you can sort of follow it tangentially, and really only get caught up in it down the stretch, and see all the important games. In college football, every week is a huge deal (ask Miami about that early season Washington game), and could potentially ruin someone’s entire season.[/quote]
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The idea that whatever team comes out of a playoff unscathed is unquestionably the “best” team from a given sport is a little bizarre to me. You almost had the ARIZONA CARDINALS win the Super Bowl. A couple years back, a St. Louis Cardinals team that barely made the playoffs (83-79) won the World Series. I would say that playoff systems crown a definitive “champion”, but is anyone really satisfied that these teams are always the “best” from their sport each year?[/quote]
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I would say there are probably some tweaks to the existing system- especially regarding strength of schedule- that could improve some things. I also like proposals to make all conferences a little more even (realigning, adding title games). I’m just not sure there’s a completely objective way to separate all the teams, so the polls are always going to be involved in some manner.[/quote]
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The Big East (sorry guys) is just never going to compare to the SEC equally. Especially when most of the reasons they had the chops to pull an auto-bid in the first place come from either programs with shrinking fan bases (Syracuse, Pitt) or are teams that left the conference (Miami, BC, Va Tech) entirely. Again, not to pick on them, but why does newcomer South Florida get to hit the BCS jackpot, while ex-SWC powerhouses like TCU, SMU, and Houston get left out? Even though BYU stole our 1984 National Title, I’d side with them before I stuck up for the right for USF to get an automatic bid.[/quote]
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(G1): Are the polls a good idea in the first place? Should they play a role in determining a 'National Champion'?[/quote]
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(J: I think the poll system is a cool idea that just isn’t carried out very well. But I also think some sort of “Selection Committee” should be involved in either deciding the BCS Championship game or at whatever modified playoff scenario gets implemented.[/quote]
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Let me start with the polls. There are just way, way too many teams in this sport to not include some sort of subjective ranking. Most of the top teams in a given year have very few common opponents. The problem is that the people that are voting in the polls are not completely non-partisan, and probably are not as qualified to rank each and every team 1-25. They probably see less than 3 games per week. I will make the point, that the only real purpose of these polls is to decide 1 vs. 2, and I think most of the voters are informed about the resumes of each individual team. If the odd team gets left off of one person’s ballot, and everyone else has them 15 or 16, while it’s not an excusable omission, it’s hardly catastrophic.[/quote]
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So here is my solution: name a committee whose job for 17 weeks a year is to watch college football. In any given week, there are probably 10-15 games that involve teams that are in the hunt for a championship. Monday morning, give each of the committee members a cut of the game where the commercials, timeouts, half time garbage are cut out (like the NFL Network does with its replays). You need all the plays, as the incomplete passes, botched snaps, etc. would need to be present to give the voter a full picture of the team. These would be about 2 hours each, so a member could easily have the job of watching all of these tapes (assuming we take some of the billions of dollars of revenue generated by college football and pay them to do it). My guess is you’d have plenty of qualified people lining up to do this job.[/quote]
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And yes, I do mean billions, as according to the Orlando Sentinel’s numbers FBS teams totaled over $5.3 billion (revenues, not profits... still) last year. Before ESPN threw $2 billion at the SEC, for their second or third through sixth best games each week.[/quote]
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The main thing is that right now, you probably have the nuttiest people in the sport (the fans) with the most information (sitting at home and watching 6-7 different games every week), while the supposedly more rational and more intelligent folks (the coaches, media) are rarely focused on more than one game per week. I also think this is part of the reason why you have more people flocking to non-traditional college football outlets (like gatorsfirst.com, for instance) than the traditional media outlets. But that’s at least the 18th controversial thing I’ve said in this interview, and I’ll leave it for another time.[/quote]
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(G1): How much should non-BCS teams be included in the BCS- and other high payout- bowls? How much do you watch these teams?[/quote]
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(J: I actually don’t think they should have a spot at the table, currently. I do think the MWC, in particular, is gaining a lot of ground, competitively, for a variety of reasons. But the BCS and the high payout bowls got that way because of the viewership for those specific teams involved, and giving some handouts to the little guys is a little un-American. Keep the money in the hands of those who earned it.[/quote]
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I am not opposed to finding some way to get them involved with the national championship race, and to somehow work the 5-6 worthy teams in with the current BCS leagues. But I also think that there is always going to be some inherent “unfair” parts of the system- there are just too many teams and too few games.[/quote]
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I do like to watch the cream of the crop, like last year’s Poinsettia Bowl. So I watch these teams occasionally. However, I did not find the actual game all that interesting when I went to an SMU-Houston game last season. So don’t think I’m totally enlightened. But if it’s interesting, and it’s on my TV, I’ll watch it or, more likely, set the DVR.[/quote]
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