My Advice To Gator Fans

Learn to love and accept it. By now, many of you have seen the Wizard of Odds piece on Urban Meyer and his potential gymnastics/football recruiting violation. Many of you reading this now are here because the article links back to me.

Get used to the negative spin. Florida has regained its status as a national power after an off period of about 5 years thanks to the Tim Tebow era. With that renewed status as both a powerhouse football program (not that it ever really fell apart as bad as Miami's has), comes the scrutiny of a world where the Internet can easily reveal your dirty laundry much quicker than you can imagine. Ten years ago, this probably doesn't make any news.

In all honesty, the recruiting "violation" isn't a huge deal. Admittedly this sort of thing has to happen at many schools, although Meyer seems to have a penchant for dealing with girlfriends (*cough* Deonte *cough*). That's just the point. Though these petty violations happen everywhere because the recruiting game is a dirty business, expect bloggers, message boards, and occasionally the national media (when they aren't fawning over how Tim is such a good boy) to make note of these issues.

Being on top--- which so many Gator fans are quick to remind us about (where were you back when the Zooker was around?)--- simply casts you in the spotlight. Also, having over a dozen arrests in a calendar year after winning the title doesn't help. Before you spew out your tired Thug U and scUM nicknames, I invite you to compare our rap sheets.

Aside from an Antrel Rolle misunderstanding and a drunken Robert Marve breaking a car window on Halloween, none of our players have been arrested while at the U in 10 years. We've had our share of bad apples, brawls and tragedies, so there is no argument here that our boys are all angels. But perhaps the media should reconsider the Thug U label to someone else. UF wouldn't be my first suggestion either, so don't think I'm that biased. I don't even think they are the worst in the SEC, which is easily the slimiest of conferences.

So Meyer will get blasted from time to time with stuff like this. We all know he does it, as do most prominent football coaches. Though many times these allegations can be pure hearsay, where there's smoke, theres usually fire. Sure it's unfair, but deal with it. The media treats Florida and USC with kid gloves enough as it is, so a couple of biased accusations about recruiting violations are a joke compared to the crap the WWL pulls when a Hurricane misses an 8am class.

Call it bias, call it jealousy, call it what you will. I call it karma. In any case, there is absolutely no way the program will get affected by some lousy phone calls to a girlfriend. There's much more serious stuff going on at UF or any other top 25 program to be worried about.