The Tampa-Pinellas Gator Club turned out a crowd of 400 (twice as many as the year before). It was a nice little get-together, and I ran into a couple of Gator friends (Lava and his lovely wife) as well as a Gator Talk newsgroup friend I've known for nearly 20 year but never met in person, so that was some unexpected fun.

Coach Mac talked then took about 20 mintues of questons. He jokingly asked a questioner how much eligibilty he had left, and explained that there were three positions (OL, WR and LB) where freshman could expect to play early. Drawing on his recent experiences at WDW, he commented that he had to wait in line with his family for an hour to get on the Pirates of the Caribbean, and got to know the people waiting with him really well, while other people were fast-tracked with a 5 minute wait time. Yeah, well, the entire OL as well as the LBs are definitely going to be fast-tracked. Someone asked about moving some DL to OL to help with depth, but he said the way they try to rotate the DL, there wasn't as many spares as some people thought, but some DBs could definitely end up on the offensive side of the ball. He also talked about how he was selling the program, telling the players that they probably won't be working in Auburn, Alabama after they graduated. :-)

When asked about the women's clinic, he said that he was excited to attend and they were trying to figure out when to have it, as he wants it to be the first look for the fans at the IPF.

Maybe the best part of the night for us, was the Gator Boosters were there and were able to look up our seats on the computer, and the two season tickets between us weren't renewed this year, so we for the first time, our four seats are all in row together. That's so exciting!