RattlerGator Blog

Traveling to Havana, Cuba

Thanks to a sister who should have attended the University of Florida but got scooped up by the Ivy League (Penn) and never left Philadelphia after graduation, I'm headed with she and the Penn Alumni Travel group to Havana, Cuba on Saturday for a solid week of cultural exchange lectures and performances.

This trip was planned a year ago, long before Barack made his executive decision. My sister has now retired and come back to Jax; this trip is her retirement gift to herself and she invited me to tag along. I said, of course, heck yeah! We'll be staying at various times at the Hotel Saratoga and the Melia Marina Varadero and I'm very pleased with the looks of the accommodations.

I'm a fan of Marco Rubio and tend to agree with his position on American outreach to Cuba but I do see the other side as well. Greater interaction could be our friend, as long as we aren't primarily propping up the dictatorship.

More in the coming weeks.

Englishville, Georgia and Andersonville

Last weekend my oldest sister (Cyndi) and I made a quick trip into the upper reaches of South Georgia, back to the land where both of our parents were born (Jimmy Carter Country), to meet with a father and daughter -- white folks -- who may turn out to be family members.

Map of the Area:

 

We met at the Windsor Hotel in Americus:

It turned out to be a fantastic meeting, both Dean and Maxie were tremendous hosts and fun company. They drove us all around the area, all of us told stories from our past and became better acquainted with one another. I'll have more in a week or so, after I return from a week-long trip to Havana, Cuba (thank you, Cyndi!). Hopefully I'll have more then on that trip as well.

But I can tell you right now that I'm approaching this era of discovery (I've opened up an ancestry.com account) with a spirit of reconciliation and acceptance, along with a whole bunch of other feelings -- including excitement. I've known all of my life that people are people, and that most folks are good folks. We may find what we suspect; direct links between our two lines. There may be heartbreak and apparent cruelty, there may be benevolence, goodness, benign neglect -- who the heck knows? But we're going to try and find out what we can.

So, without further adieu . . .

Cyndi and Maxie on the porch of the old home that will soon become, the good Lord willing, an English Family Museum:

The Outhouse!

Barn dating back to the late 1800s:

Heartbreak in the Cemetery:

There you have it; as I indicated earlier, I hope to have more on this journey of discovery in the coming weeks. It may prove to be uniquely American, uniquely Southern, and uniquely Florida-Georgia all in one.

Later, Gators!

A Salute to Gatorade: 50 Years of Sweat Equity

A salute to Gatorade: 50 Years!

Gatorade’s 50th anniversary: A product of sweat equity http://t.co/eh4afZesft pic.twitter.com/WYyt3Vzrco

— Miami Herald Sports (@HeraldSports) January 18, 2015

It should also be noted here that fhe family of a primary inventor of Gatorade, the Cade Family, is building The Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville and annually sponsors the Cade Museum Prize, an annual competition for early-stage inventors and entrepreneurs in Florida. Dr. Robert Cade was on the faculty of the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville as an assistant professor of internal medicine in its renal division.

As reported in the Herald article:

As part of Gatorade’s 50th anniversary celebration, its early history will be relived in an ESPN documentary, The Sweat Solution, which will air Wednesday night on the network’s Grantland.com web platform. A future showing on the TV network is also planned.

Congratulations, Gatorade -- the University of Florida gift that keeps on giving.

Jeb Can't Overcome His Obstacles

I'm a fan of Jeb Bush. He was an outstanding Governor for the State of Florida and I'm sure he'd make an outstanding President. But he has, unfortunately, the arc of history working against him and I'd like to think he's smart enough to conclude as much at the end of his "exploratory" period.

Jim Geraghty lays out serious problem number one:

More recently, former president George W. Bush has referred to Bill Clinton as “my brother from another mother” and to Hillary Clinton as his “sister-in-law.” On September 11, 2013, Jeb Bush, chair of the National Constitution Center, honored the former secretary of state with the organization’s Liberty Medal, marking Clinton’s “lifelong career in public service.” At a March conference on education, Hillary Clinton praised Jeb Bush as someone “who really focused on education during his time as governor in Florida, and who has continued that work with passion and dedication in the years since.”

Sigh.

Insert all the standard boilerplate about the joy of friendship and personal relationships, and how political opponents don’t need to be lifelong enemies. Yes, it’s nice that the 1992 election results didn’t cause these two families to hate each other forever. Yes, it’s nice that the former presidents have come together to help noble causes and can unite to help charities and the vulnerable when they need it.

But come on, man.

. . . Hillary’s philosophy of government, approach to public power, foreign-policy vision, vindictiveness to critics, and record of leadership matter, and the Republican party’s grassroots voters have good reason to require a nominee who doesn’t think of his Democratic rival as part of his family.

Over the past six years, we on the right -- and in particular, the previous Republican nominee -- have been proven right time and again. Russia is indeed behaving like our preeminent geopolitical foe. Negotiating with the Taliban was a stupid idea. We knew leaving absolutely no U.S. military presence in Iraq was a formula for trouble. We never dismissed ISIS as a “jayvee team.” Democrats didn’t need to pass Obamacare for us to know what was in it. The Obama team scoffed at Romney’s idea of giving veterans vouchers for care at private hospitals, assuring us that the Department of Veterans Affairs was reducing the backlog and giving our veterans the care they deserved. We talked about the need for a secure border decades before Central America decided to turn our border into a giant open-air day care center.

We do not like Hillary Clinton. We do not like her philosophies, her decisions, or the weapons-grade pabulum that she stuffs in her books and offers for six figures per speech. Perhaps in person she is warm and funny and all of those things her hagiographic media fans insist. But her record in public life -- and that of her allies, and her party -- has been an absolute disaster for the country for the past six years, and the 2016 Republican nominee needs to be able to make that case and win that argument six days a week and twice on Sundays.

Perhaps Jeb Bush can be that man. But to do so, he’ll have to bring his A-game to the task of thoroughly defeating his metaphorical sister-in-law.

And Charles C. W. Cooke accurately explains serious problem number two when he says Jeb is the wrong guy and the wrong time:

I am fundamentally opposed to his candidacy on more basic grounds: Namely, that he’s the wrong man, at the wrong time — and in the wrong country, too. “As loathsome and un-American as it may seem to hold someone’s family name against him,” Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote earlier this week, “this point needs to be emphasized: the GOP and the country don’t need another Bush.” Dougherty is right. The United States is a republic, and in republics the citizenry should be reflexively nervous about dynasties, regardless of how much they like their individual members. Certainly, America has survived the emergence of great and powerful families before. President John Quincy Adams was President John Adams’s son; President Benjamin Harrison was President William Henry Harrison’s grandson; and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President Theodore Roosevelt’s fifth cousin. (These relationships, you will note, get less and less intimate as times goes on.) But these were departures from the norm, rather than the norm itself. If Jeb Bush does manage to make it all the way to the top, we will be in uncharted dynastic territory — territory that, frankly, should begin to worry us.

Agreed.

In an era when the absurdities of a pre-ordained and partisan leftist political narrative (or three) are being brazenly asserted in the face of, and in contravention to, the objective truth -- well, this is not a time for a man from a Republican political dynasty. Period, end of story.

Jeb, you're a student of history & policy, and you fully understand the American experience: get behind Marco Rubio, man. Help us elect this worthy man to the presidency. Step away from the dynastic cloak that is inevitably associated with your name even though it isn't of your making. It isn't, however, an accident of your birth. You are still part and parcel of that dynasty and your ascension to the presidency isn't good for the country.

Bama Trippin' while Gator Clubbin'

 

[originally written September 30, 2014]

 

The game may have turned into

something of a debacle but the

Capital Area Gator Club road trip

turned out to be fun for all

 

A look back at the CAGC Road Trip to Tuscaloosa.

Road trip!

That was my initial thought when months ago I saw that Tallahassee’s own Capital Area Gator Club was offering a bus ride to the upcoming Gators vs. Bama game in Tuscaloosa. Little did I know then that by the time the actual game week would arrive, writing trip would be more appropriate. And, a bus ride to an away game isn't exactly a classic road trip. But mixing with Gators rarely disappoints and (as I think you’ll see) the Bama trip was no different.

7 a.m. departure

The excitement of a college football Saturday is hard to beat, whether you're watching at home, the sports bar, or with friends. Actually traveling to a game, however, is a different thing entirely. It's like convoying to a battle. This bus trip was a first-time experience for me. I've done very little with the local Gator Club over my quarter-century in Tallahassee so I was curious to see what was what on this writing excursion.

Stephen Lawson, Club president, greeted us Saturday morning at the prescribed location – Gator chompin’ to be sure but, because of work requirements, not joining us on the trip. It’s an election year for state government in Florida, Tallahassee is the epicenter of Florida politics, and Lawson is a partisan participant in this year’s gubernatorial election. So we’ll give him a pass.

Matt Hall, a recent UF graduate and current Master of Public Administration grad student at FSU, was placed in charge of coordinating things, making sure we had food for our tailgate, and all made it back on the bus for the return trip home. It would be too much to say that Matt turned out to be something of a bon vivant but he certainly did mix and mingle well and would provide some genuine humor on the long trip home (I’ll not write about the substitute bus driver who took over in Dothan on the ride back home but if you see Matt, ask him about it!).

We boarded our charter bus in the Killearn area of Tallahassee near Interstate 10 for a trip that would take ordinarily around 5 hours on a bus. Gameday, I knew, might add one hour to the time. So, as we settled in for the long ride, my mind floated as I cruised through my subconscious and variously sampled thoughts such as these:

• Is today the day I firmly believe it is? The day we announce to the college football world that the Beasts of the SEC East are back and we do so by sneaking out of Tuscaloosa with a bigtime win?
• How well does Jeff Driskel demonstrate some command presence to start the game and maintain it throughout? (remember, the question for me riding over to Tuscaloosa wasn’t whether Jeff would demonstrate such – I knew he would – the question was how well he would do so)
• Is the promised Capital Area Gator Club tailgate going to happen at our parking area?
• Will the Alabama campus make a beautiful impression on me?
• Will I be able to hook up with that group of 10 Gators who are graduates of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences who get together for one road trip a year and Bama is the choice this year?
• Is Treon going to get a series in the 2^nd quarter?
• Can Demarcus Robinson match Amari Cooper or at least come close to it?
• Can the Gator defense deal with the curve balls Lane Kiffin is going to throw at us?

Yes, that is yours truly front left -- trying to get some early morning rest on the way to Bama.

In hindsight, the answers to all of the posed questions floating around in my head on the ride over to Bama (with the exception of hooking up with the group of 10) were a resounding no, no, and no. But who could know that on the ride over? Everything was blissful as we geared our minds for spectator battle in support of our Gators. There was decent chatter back and forth all over the bus, Matt was doing a good job of mixing and mingling, and we were able to watch ESPN Gameday on the satellite television screens. Sitting behind me was Matt and Matt’s sister Alissa Rich, who is a pharmacist. Sitting across from me were two of Alissa’s friends, Katy and Karen, also pharmacists. Everything was copacetic on the Gator Club Bus as we bopped our way down the highway.

Trouble?

Well, not real trouble as it turned out, but I didn't know that at the time.

My first sign came after we exited Interstate 10, headed up US 231 out of Florida and into Alabama, and well after we passed through Dothan. In fact, it was as we were negotiating Montgomery. I had taken this same route months ago while driving from Tallahassee to Memphis to cheer on our basketball Gators in the March Madness regional. I clearly remembered passing through the area of the State Capitol, I remembered seeing the new Alabama State football stadium, etc., and then heading up Interstate 65 for Birmingham. But I was headed for Memphis on that trip, not Tuscaloosa. Why the hell is our bus driver heading for Birmingham ???

At Hoover, we made a turn and headed southwest for Tuscaloosa. Heavy traffic greeted us, and we eventually hit something of a slow parking lot crawl. As I feared. Most of the Bama traffic, I suspected, would be coming from places East and North of the place (Atlanta, Birmingham, Huntsville, etc.). We were coming from the South; why not take US 82 out of Montgomery?

Who the hell knows, I thought at the time, but that’s what we did. And I wasn’t happy. Later, I checked Google Maps of course – I’m anal in that kind of way – and noticed that US 82 in Alabama, incredibly, is a two-lane road. And may have been a longer slow parking lot crawl than Interstate 22. So, I thought to myself, you did exactly as you should have, Black Man: shut the heck up and let the bus driver handle his business.

All was fairly uneventful from there. We did run into heavy gameday traffic, our driver did briefly try an alternate route but quickly discovered the selected two-lane road was packed so he immediately turned around and got back on the interstate. Matt Hall smartly decided that we should have some of our “tailgate” food now as we crawled closer to campus and we all wolfed down the assorted sandwiches and chips.

The Bama Invasion

Eventually we arrived around 1:15 Eastern at our spot on Hackberry Lane; the town of Tuscaloosa, what little I took note of, looked okay. The campus, what little I saw, didn’t particularly look good or bad. The fans, however, would prove to be outstanding and cordial.

On arrival everyone quickly exited, but I had to take a picture of one particular Gator before we traipsed off to various spots on the Bama campus for further tailgating. Get a good look at Alissa Rich, y’all:

Yes, very pregnant. Believe it or not, this was the very first time she and her friends Katy and Karen were attending a Gator game on the road. Alissa is married to a Georgia Bulldog, recently moved to Tallahassee, and didn’t want to miss this opportunity to cheer on her Gators. So, against the advice of more than a few, she decided to soldier on with us to Tuscaloosa.

That’s dedication.

Our spot on Hackberry Lane was conveniently right across from a “Jack’s” fast food restaurant; this proved important for postgame munchies. From our location it was just a bit less than a mile to the stadium. Will Atkins and Clarence Anthony (yes, he’s Reidel’s brother), two Gator alums who came up from Gainesville to ride with us, headed off to meet acquaintances and check out the Bama campus, Matt and much of the bus crew headed off to tailgate on Alabama’s Quad, and I marched off a mile in the other direction looking for another story: Ryan Pender (President-elect of the Palm Beach County Gator Club), Brian Sapp (Director of Operations at the increasingly prominent White Oak Pastures farm in Bluffton, Georgia), and a group of fellow College of Agriculture and Life Sciences graduates who had decided to make this their one away game trip of the year.

They are a story I hope to write later in the year.

Eventually we all made our way into the stadium and checked out some of Bama’s pregame festivities.

It still bugs me to hear a Florida band, from Jacksonville no less, singing "Sweet Home Alabama" but -- what the hell, ain't much you can do about that.

All of us were tremendously excited and -- speaking for myself -- I had high hopes of coming out of there with a victory. It was now time for some SEC football!

And, well . . . the game was what it was. I’ve already written about that. The general consensus of the Capital Area Gator Club group was this: bad result, good experience.

The Post-Game

Will Atkins said he had an amazing time experiencing SEC football at a different institution. After linking up with some other Gator and Crimson Tide fans, he visited the quad and found it lively and well organized. “We had fun. I felt no real hostility from the Bama fans, certainly not as hostile as I expected them to be. In the stands, I sat next to the band – it was exciting and fun.

Alissa Rich, our pregnant Gator fan, may have best typified the road trip. Honestly, I was afraid she was going to have the baby in the stadium! As it was, she said Bama fans were funny and kind to her. After observing her hiking up the upper deck steps (her seat, like mine, was one row from the top of the stadium), and knowing she had likely climbed the interminable Bryant-Denny walkway that led to the upper deck and went around and around and around seemingly forever, some simply said things like this: “You go, girl, you’re my hero!” Or this: “If you have that baby in this stadium you have to name him Bryant!”

In fact, one Alabama fan after the game came by in a golf cart, saw her walking back to God knows where, graciously offered her a ride, and personally drove her the near-mile back to our bus.

Yes, they had just won a big victory over a bigtime foe but that’s SEC family, y’all, and that’s what we do in this conference – knock the hell out of one another on the field, cheer like crazy for our team in the stands, and then head on back to the real world after it’s all over. Most of the time, in a very civil kind of way.

I had no idea then of just how much would go wrong during this season nor just how frustrated I would become with my starting quarterback -- a man I was certain would have an all-conference season and lead us back to Atlanta.

Though the season has been tremendously disappointing, hope springs eternal and -- as is ever the case --it's great to be a Florida Gator!

Now

Florida-Georgia 2014 In Review

Here's a well-done recap of the 2014 Florida-Georgia game from GatorZone.com:

So sweet, so sweet, so sweet!

Whipped Puppy, 2014 Edition

Courtesy of Vindibudd over at GatorCountry.com -- here's what has become a treasured Gator tradition after a victory over the University of Georgia -- please enjoy the faux magazine cover that is . . . Whipped Puppy 2014 !!!

Great job, Vindibudd, absolutely great job !!!

Here's to Coach Muschamp continuing to cool down that hot seat.

Florida-Georgia 2014 was Pure Gator Domination

After the weirdest Gator season in three decades, this first half plus of the 2014 season has been equally weird. But thanks to the hated Georgia Bulldogs, we can now put all of that behind us. The score was 38-20 but it might as well have been 75-0 because it was just that sweet.

First up, the pre-game hype video:

Now, the post-game all-access video from GatorZone.com:

I will cherish this memory for a long, long time. Way to go, Gators !!!

After Florida vs Bama, Is It Time for Treon the Transcendent?

As the season evolved, the first real hint of serious trouble occurred in the Kentucky game. I didn't write a column in the aftermath of that game. I got so bent out of shape at the first half ineptitude of Jeff Driskel, that I probably thought I needed to calm myself. I had tremendously high hopes for the season and for Jeff's individual play. Ever since he committed to U.F., all I could see was his tremendous potential. When you look at him, you might think what I definitely thought: this guy should be an absolute beast at quarterback.

But it hasn't happened. He was surprisingly bad in the first half against Kentucky and then played much better in the 2nd half. But the Bama game was always going to be my litmus test for Jeff Driskel. 

My column for GatorCountry.com on that game was written on September 22, 2014. Titled Treon the Transcendent: Has His Time Already Arrived?, it reflected my tremendous disappointment with Jeff Driskel in the Bama game. I treated it as a final exam for Jeff, and Jeff failed the final miserably. This is how I opened the column:

As I sat in the scorching hot sun of Bryant-Denny Stadium, up on the second-to-the-last-row (row 30, seat 20, section NN) of the stadium, underneath a beautiful late-summer Alabama sky, I listened to a Florida band piped through the speakers perform Sweet Home Alabama I couldn’t help but think to myself: these sap suckers don’t know what’s about to hit ‘em! We’re gonna have us a game today!

I took video of the scene, and included it in the column:

I then wrote this:

Of course, Lynyrd Skynyrd isn’t just any Florida band. They are probably the most iconic Florida band of all-time and “Free Bird” is for man the signature song of the southern rock genre. Their talent transcended the Southland and launched them to worldwide fame; they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. And Alabama football, of course, isn’t just any other college football program.

So, I settled in to watch what are probably the SEC’s two most iconic programs of the modern era do battle. Two gentlemen from Atlanta happened to sit next to me. Both were cheering for the Gators but one was a UF alumnus and the other one was a season ticket holder of the Michigan Wolverines and a UM alum. As the game began and as a seemingly long first quarter played out (television timeouts, wow!), they joined me in my assessment: We’re gonna have us a game today!

Well, we kinda did and we kinda didn't. Bama embarrassed us. And I focused my anger on Jeff Driskel. I wrote:

There’s no charitable way to critique Jeff on this; all the available evidence demonstrates that Jeff doesn’t know how to command this offense so as to consistently move the chains. For the second SEC game in a row, Jeff’s inefficiency squandered a first half effort that was entirely sufficent to blow out Kentucky and compete with the Crimson Tide (yes, Bama out-schemed us offensively on over the top passes – I give them all the credit for that; 4 plays accounting for 250 yards or so is incredible) but our front seven completely held Bama in check in the first half. But it was hot as hell at that game, and the mathematical certainties clearly caught up with us.

Having failed his final exam, I turned my attention to the most important recruit in our 2014 class, the legendary yet unheralded (how can that be? ) Treon Harris and provided this definition:

tran·scend·ent

tranˈsendənt/

adjective; surpassing the ordinary; exceptional.

That defined the young man's high school career. Giving him the complete benefit of the doubt, I did my usual: until prove otherwise that, too, will define his Gator career.

Give him the damn ball, Coach, turn him loose!

So, now I head off to EverBank Field to see if our young, unheralded phenom can do the impossible.

Not just do the impossible, mind you, but do it under impossible circumstances, during an impossible football year for the Fightin' Florida Gators, after surviving a crazy sexual assault allegation that saw him banned from campus and disallowed from participating in a game he likely could have won for us against LSU.

Treon may be transcendent, but is he superhuman too ??? It may take that kind of effort to defeat the hated Georgia Bulldogs today. It's time to lace 'em up and have at it. Go Gators !!!

The Eastern Michigan Blowout Victory

After the Gators finally played a football game in the 2014 season, I wrote a column for GatorCountry.com subscribers. The game may or may not turn out to be historic, but it was a very easy win for the Orange and Blue.

Titled Sixty-Five Points for Seven Frustrations, this is how it began:

All is well in Gator Country this week as Gator Nation celebrates the ending of a 30-year aberration (a losing season for the Orange and Blue) with a sigh of relief and the giddy excitement of possibilities. The excitement of this season is heightened by the unusual circumstances surrounding it, circumstances that may be best encapsulated through seven particular frustrations attendant to the build-up of the 2014 college football season for Gator fans everywhere. 

Well, what were those seven frustrations (in an nutshell)?

Glad you asked:

Frustration 1: Opening Weekend (the non-game);

Frustration 2: Muschamp Era Transitions (Floridians like seeing the football tossed around via the forward pass);

Frustration 3: Beasts of the East, Humbled (the most successful athletic program of this era suffers 4-8 season with a loss to Georgia Southern -- nuff said);

Frustration 4: The Quarterbacks (Gator Nation is completely exasperated with inferior quarterback play);

Frustration 5: Running Backs and Offensive Line (Muschamp got caught emulating the Nick Saban model at the very moment when its kryptonite appeared on the scene in the form of Gus Malzahn -- not good for a coach in transition or a notoriously impatient fanbase.);

Frustration 6: The Receivers and Tight Ends (2013 was the perfect storm here, need more be said?);

Frustration 7: The Defense (generally superior play has been squandered in the Muschamp era because the offense can't get fixed).

What was my opinion when writing that column? "All of these frustrations, every single one of them, would be exorcised in the Eastern Michigan game." And that was true. For all of one game.

Then came Kentucky.

Still, I am stubbornly hanging on to at least part of the sentiment expressed near the end of that column:

Jeff Driskel? A whopping 45 attempted passes, with 31 completions with one touchdown and no interceptions. Take your pick on what was most important among those statistics (I’d say the combination of 45 passes and no interceptions – that was what Roper promised, and that is what Jeff delivered). Most intriguing for me, however, was the other quarterback that stepped on Florida Field. A Florida high school legend that won two straight state championships and one mythical national title. A man with a phenomenal pedigree but remarkably little Gator hoopla who stepped onto the hallowed ground of Florida Field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and showed not only The (much-celebrating) Swamp but one and all: I am neither a wildcat quarterback nor a package quarterback, I am an elite quarterback, a pass-first-run-second quarterback, and don’t you forget it.

Treon Harris, ladies and gentlemen.

Two passing attempts, two touchdowns, 148 yards – a feat which set Gators and Gator Haters everywhere buzzing all over the universe. Yes, the mustard and ketchup crowd are in denial but it isn’t fooling anyone. Yes, the Canes have shut the hell up and are in full fear that a Dade County phenom with University of Miami ties is set to do his thing in Gainesville, F.L.A. Yes, my exuberance runneth over – but (until proven otherwise) I smell championships!

Until proven otherwise.

Come on, Treon. Make it happen, brother.