Cool Tebow for Heisman Brochure

I know, the vast majority of my posts in the last several months have been nothing but Gators, Football, and Tebow for Heisman. But now, the season's over (for the most part), after the 45-12 pounding of FSU last Saturday. The story is still the same though - Tebow for Heisman!

Nick tracked down this cool brochure and forwarded it to me this morning. Take a gander at the brochure, then vote Tebow for Heisman! Tebow Brochure

Some Monkey Business...

...going on down at Vote Heisman on ESPN. Just last week, Tebow, the leading candidate on several Heisman Watches, was only about 3000 votes behind front runner Chase Daniel of Missouri. Today? Tebow is behind about 200,000 votes! It's as if every voter who ever voted for any candidate withdrew their original non-Tebow vote and converged on Daniel!

Don't get me wrong. Daniel is no doubt a great, great quarterback that led an unlikely team to a great success this year, possibly to the National Championship Game pending the result of the Big 12 championship. Yes, he has thrown for 4000 yards and tons of touchdowns with minimal interceptions, but Tebow has shattered just about every NCAA record out there. He has accumulated 51 touchdowns over the year, passed for over 3000 yards and 29 TDs on just 6 interceptions, ran for over 800 yards and an NCAA record 22 rushing TDs, scored at least one passing and one rushing touchdown in each of the last 12 games, and scored a minimum of three touchdowns in all but one game this season. There is no offense in the country that is as dependent on their quarterback, and Florida's offense is in the top tier of both yards per game and points scored.

This week was crazy enough even without the nonsense going on at ESPN.com. LSU managed to embarrass itself against Darren McFadden and the Arkansas Razorbacks, and Kansas lost to aforementioned Missouri, causing both the number 1 and number 2 slots to be replaced by Missouri and West Virginia, followed closely by Ohio State and Georgia. Kentucky lost to Tennessee in quadruple overtime, which allowed Tennessee to clinch the SEC East instead of Florida or Georgia, and yet Georgia is ranked higher than both LSU and Tennessee in the BCS rankings! The craziness of the situation would actually allow non-SEC champion Georgia to play for the National Championship in the event that Missouri loses the Big 12 championship against Oklahoma and West Virginia loses to 4-7 Pittsburgh. Sounds unlikely, but we didn't think Stanford would beat USC either.

No pics today, too much work to do!

Record Breaking Madness

Tebow for Heisman.

Do your duty and take a minute out of the day to vote Florida's super sophomore for the coveted College Football award. You won't be making a mistake.

Though I would hardly say Saturday's performance against the budding FAU football program was anywhere near Tebow's best, it certainly wasn't shabby by any account. Tebow tallied up a career high 338 passing yards, logged 3 passing touchdowns, and added one rushing touchdown, extending his streak of at least one passing TD and one rushing TD to twelve games, dating back to last year's BCS National Championship Game. More significantly, Tebow broke the SEC single season rushing TD record - a record that was shared by, among others, current NFL great Shawn Alexander. And yet even more significantly, with Saturday's game, Tim Tebow became the first quarterback in Division 1-A history to accumulate over 20 passing TDs and 20 rushing TDs in a single season! So, if you haven't done so already, go and vote for Tim Tebow for HE15MAN!!! He needs the votes cuz those fools up north have Missouri's Chase Daniel leading the pack!!! Remember, the winner of the fan vote gets one REAL Heisman vote!!! Do it now!!!1one!11!

Now that I'm done lobbying, Grant's Pad needs to take a cue from the officials of the game and take some time out to acknowledge another Gator's great accomplishment. Midway throught the third quarter of the FAU game, the officials took a time out to acknowledge Andre "Bubba" Caldwell's 173rd career reception, placing him at the top of a distinguished list of receivers that includes Gator Greats Carlos Alvarez, Dallas Baker, Jabbar Gaffney, and Ike Hilliard. In the absence of the electric Percy Harvin for the second week in a row, Caldwell finished the game with 13 receptions, just two shy of Carlos Alvarez's single game record of 15 receptions back set way back in the 70s, showing why he was the number 1 rated receiver recruit in America back five years ago!

Eve and Adam

Courtesy of a poster on the ScionLife forums:

"Lord, I have a problem."

"What's the problem, Eve?"

"I know that you created me and provided this beautiful garden and all of these wonderful animals, as well as that hilarious comedic snake, but I'm just not happy."

"And why is that Eve?"

"Lord, I am lonely, and I'm sick to death of apples."

"Well, Eve, in that case, I have a solution. I shall create a man for you."

"Man? What is that Lord?"

"A flawed creature, with many bad traits. He'll lie, cheat and be vain; all in all, he'll give you a hard time. But he'll be bigger, faster and will like to hunt and kill things. I'll create him in such a way that he will satisfy your physical needs. He will be witless and will revel in childish things like fighting and kicking a ball about. He won't be as smart as you, so he will also need your advice to think properly."

"Sounds great," says Eve, with ironically raised eyebrows, "but what's the catch, Lord?"

"Well ... you can have him on one condition."

"And what's that, Lord?"

"As I said, he'll be proud, arrogant and self-admiring .... so you'll have to let him believe that I made him first...And it will have to be our little secret...................You know, woman to woman."

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Actually, there weren't any trains for this particular update, but having a catchy slogan is 50% of your blog's success. That's a fact. Write it down.

Quite a bit has happened since the last post, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. And for good reason too - I haven't actually been at home for just about all of the time since that Vanderbilt game!

After school last weekend (which turned out to be a very disappointing school weekend on my part, reflecting the worst grades I've gotten since the beginning of the program - OH NOES!!! B'S!!!), we immediately headed up to Gainesville for Cherrie's Preview. Preview is basically the mandatory orientation program at UF. I had to go to it, Ed had to go to it, and now Cherrie had to go to it as well. Of course, I'm never really in a place to complain when there's a chance to go to Gainesville. So, after class on Sunday, we took the newly repaired White Knight directly up to Gainesville and spent the night at Ed's place.

Preview was shorter than I remember, but I imagine maybe it's because this time it was exclusively for transfer students. Interestingly, out of what was at least 500 transfers, there were only six students that were going into Cherrie's accounting program, which, after the orientation, seemed like it might be tougher than I thought. Because of the accelerated nature of the program (which is designed to earn a Master's degree along with your Bachelor's degree), several sequential classes have to be taken in the same semester! For example, Accounting and Business Information I and II both have to be taken in Cherrie's first Spring semester, and in order to squeeze both classes, each class only takes up half a semester. To make up for the short duration, however, they double up the number of hours each week for the class!

Immediately after returning from Preview, Tyrone, our new mechanical engineer, and I headed up to Orlando to fly out to Iowa for a business trip. Interestingly, we had our layover in Detroit. For those of you who are not very familiar with U.S. geography, Michigan is north of Iowa, so we had to fly north to get south. For the flight, I wore my newly purchased Gator sweatshirt to try to get a rise out of the Wolverines, and I certainly got more than my share of reactions! There was plenty of Maize and Blue at the Detroit airport to taunt!

Our trip to Iowa was fairly productive. Fortunately, the weather wasn't too bad - most of the daytime, the temperature was around 30 degrees or so! But we were able to make it out without seeing any snow. I finally got around to going to eat at Chop House, a steakhouse that several denizens of Cedar Rapids had mentioned to me before. We went with Ron, who is something of a wine and food connoisseur, so it turned out to be the biggest dinner bill of our trip, but it was worth it!

We also made our first trip out to Iowa City, the home of the Iowa Hawkeyes. Iowa City's population allegedly triples during the school year, when about 30,000 students come in for classes. I'm fairly sure that is a rough estimate, or maybe they meant just the Iowa City downtown, which I can believe is probably about 10,000 population. The campus is actually very beautiful - far more attractive than I expected. It has stone buildings with very nice architecture, for almost all of their buildings! Of greatest interest to us, however, was seeing a dead deer in the bed of some guy's truck driving through campus! Welcome to God's Country, as Ron would say!

Another School Day, Another Florida Game...

... I didn't see. However, unlike last week's game, this one was one I probably would have liked to actually see for myself. Unfortunately, this week fell on one of my OEM program weekends, and I could only read about the game afterwards.

This week was Homecoming Week at UF, and the Number 20 ranked Gators faced a 5-3 Vanderbilt team that I was actually quite worried about - even moreso than for our homecoming game last year against the LSU! However, my worries were unfounded as the Gators rolled nearly 500 yards on Vandy's nationally 14th ranked defense and won the game 49-22! They looked good doing it too, wearing all blue unis for the first time since 2004!

Some records were broken as well. Mercy Percy Harvin became the first Gator ever to record 100 yards receiving and 100 yards rushing in the same game, and Tim Tebow tied the school record for rushing touchdowns in a season with his 13th and 14th. That's saying something, considering one of the greatest running backs of all time, Emmitt Smith, started at UF for three years! Not only did he tie Emmitt's touchdown, he also broke the SEC record for rushing touchdowns in a season by a quarterback, a record which has held since 1983!

In other news, I had quite the busy week this week. Primarily, a lot of time was taken up by trying to get the ol' workhorse, the White Knight, my Toyota Corolla, back up to speed. We took it in to replace the brakes, but found out that my radiator had a small crack in it, and had to go ahead and replace it. The dealer also recommended a bunch of other services, notably a transmission flush, which I later found out could be quite detrimental for older cars like my 94 Corolla! Luckily, one of my football teammates, Joe, directed me to Gatto's, where his brother works, who gave me some great advice and good service to boot! Now, the White Knight is ready to ride again!