I was cool with the Gators not playing Miami anymore. No this Gator wasn't going to be baited by the hordes of obnoxious Johnny come lately SCum fans who are likely to ever know more about their supposed favorite team (much less attend their home games) than me. Betcha most of em don't have a clue that Mark Richt once played qb for em or that they once played a guy named Brodsky, Smoky Roan or even that OJ Anderson played for a guy named Saban. Yet they all seethed at the mention of Coach Spurrier and found every opportunity to take low blow pot shots at him. I knew they were Miami fans only because they were the next hottest thing in South Florida. At least until loss or two would free up their Saturdays again and let em focus on the Dolphins. I pointed to our schedule pointed to the location of the Georgia affair and the number of our home games with pride and told em to to climb a tree (or something like that). I knew Florida had good economic reasons to drop the Hurricanes a couple of years ago. We all knew, the Gators were hardly the only SEC team to drop traditional games when the league expanded its schedule years ago. Afterall, why should the Gators rescue SCum from their cowardly choice to join the Big Least by giving em at least one sellout every 2nd year. Afterall, Miami needed Florida a lot more than Florida needed SCum. The Gators need not make any apologies to anyone for playing an SEC schedule and FSU every year. All of our games would be sellouts. I've changed my mind. I think the Gator's Program would be well served by playing Miami every year whether that means moving Georgia out of Jacksonville or even if it costs us a cool million or 2. Here's why. As I understand it, coach Spurrier came to Florida with 3 basic goals. Win the SEC, the state championship and make Florida one of the elite programs in the nation. Spurrier's goals were good ones and the road to 2 of those goals runs through Miami. Coach Spurrier wasn't able to overcome the Seminoles on a consistent basis but he did become the top state program from 95-97. In my estimation, the reason he couldn't do so is that aside from being a bit too finesse oriented our defensive units and running games only rarely stacked up to the semis. In my estimation, FSU is a lot like the Japaneese. Rarely do the come up with a lot of really good original ideas but they are very good at coopting the good things that others are doing. The Japaneese learned how to build cars that Americans wanted from the good ol USA and the semis learned all about playing defense from the kandy kanes. Bobby learned a lot about program building from playing Jimmy Johnson's teams in the late 80's which are some of the most talented units of all time. It formed the blue print for the semis recruiting prowess in the 90's. Those Johnson teams set the standard for the semi teams to come. Similarly, it was also very interesting to see what Bobby learned about the passing game from playing the fun and gun. Think he would've dared to throw it most of the time if he had never matched wits with Spurrier? Playing top competition makes you better. Playing the Canes this year made it clear, first to Zook, and then to most of the rest of us that somehow right under our noses SCum had built a football machine replete with all of the best parts. Somehow we did not match up with them. They did it with a lot of unheralded recruiting classes. They did it while they were on probation. They did at the same time Lee Corso was predicting that UCF was going to become the 3rd best team in the state over Butchie Davis's clan. The absolute best way for the University of Florida to accomplish the Big 3 goals is to measure ourselves and our progress against the best team out there. It could easily mean an extra loss until Zook rights this ship that is Gator football but the best way for the Gators to become the top program in the state is to put those clowns back on our schedule every year.