Behind Enemy Lines: A Wildcat Living In Florida

A reader from Gator Land submitted this piece to KSR to remind fans that, while Florida's dominance in football is incredible, it doesn't touch Kentucky's dominance on the basketball court. Check the scoreboard. ***** Behind Enemy Lines: A Wildcat Living In Florida Not Bryan The Intern Call me Ishmael. No, strike that — but call me amused. I’d like to address how delusional and arrogant Gator fans truly are, and how their attitude is so damn funny. Now, don’t get me wrong — much like Moby Dick, a gator can be a big, bad boy… but then again, so is the Shoney’s mascot on crack. No, what keeps me amused is how they pretend that the men’s basketball and football programs are so superior, always have been, and how we’re all just DARN lucky that they haven’t won MORE games & titles! They especially have this skewed attitude when it comes to Kentucky. For instance, for all their struttin’ and chompin’, the Gators have exactly 3 National Titles in football: UK has 1 (if you count the 1950 season under Bear Bryant and their Sugar Bowl victory over #1 Oklahoma, which I do). Now granted, they are on a much better roll over Kentucky here in the modern era, but COME ON -- it’s only 3-1!! It gets even funnier in basketball. For instance, on the day in 2003 when Florida finally achieved the #1 ranking in the polls — for only the first time in the program’s history (UK’s been there about 1.3 million times, I believe) — a Florida sportswriter loudly proclaimed in his newspaper column that Florida had “surpassed Kentucky as THE DOMINATE basketball program in the SEC.” Gator fans went nuts, held parades, and went skinny-dipping… Trouble is, that swamp was shallow and cold, and the very next night UK absolutely RIPPED the cocky Gators on national TV, humiliating Billy’s boys with a 30-point rout in the 1st half en route to the easy victory. But did that epic spanking and rebuke of such delusional thinking change their minds and slap them back into reality? Well, sortof. They blamed the weather, Bigfoot and the Swine Flu — ANYTHING but the obvious: that while admirable gains had been made in their program, they had MILES to go before even being in the same conversation with UK, and that they had been pandered to by the Florida media. In fact, the next day that same sportswriter tried to bury his forced “retraction” under such a litany of excuses, to help protect the ruse to the still-delusional Gator masses. The continued smack-talking was hilarious: “We’re still better, don’t mind that blip!” Yes, Florida has become a good program, but even with the aberration that was their 2 National Championships in basketball, which finally did come in the mid-2000’s (good for them, go SEC!), since 2003 the Cats have more than kept pace and won as many games and league titles (4) as have the Gators, not to mention Cal’s recent mastery over them and his 2012 National Championship. By the way, Gator fans, in basketball that now makes it 8 to 2, Kentucky, and 9 to 5 overall — SO SHUT UP!!!!!! Then again, such “dominance” should be celebrated. And that IS worth a chuckle!