Sunday Hangover: Too Much Florida Fawning?

Miss any of Saturday's action? Get the storylines and implications every Sunday morning with a shot of humor, two of vermouth and a pot full of what's suspected to be either coffee or the pureed remnants of Tulsa's defense.

The only problem is that we have to wait.

And it's not just any kind of wait. It's a the-cable-company-will-be-here-shortly wait. It's sitting-through-an-MLS-match-boring kind of wait. It's a morning economics lecture, spend an afternoon in the dentist waiting room with Al Gore, Christmas morning won't ever come, kind of wait.

For that we have Florida to thank. And Florida to blame.

Week 12 was bland, dull and full of all the flavor of hospital pudding as game after game played by a script Baywatch might have found predictable. By mid-day, Joe Paterno probably wasn't the only one considering napping instead of football.

And then, in the middle of a sea of the non-descript, there was Florida's 56-6 tattooing of South Carolina.

There was Steve Spurrier looking more flabbergasted than Sarah Palin when she realized Africa was a continent and not just a Toto song. There was Percy Harvin blowing the Gamecock secondary out of the television frame like Usain Bolt had just decided to stage an impromptu race with your living room couch. And there were the Gators, running, running and running more like they were headed for a Black Friday sale.

But as sublime as Florida's win was against the landscape of the blindingly mundane, it only reminded us that we'll still have to wait. Wait, that is, to see just how good this Florida team is against someone its own size.

During the Gators' six-game winning streak, they couldn't have received any more adulation from the national media, this column included, if Barack Obama started at quarterback.

There are plenty of reasons, of course, starting with the offensive output that reminds everyone that the "e" button on the calculator has more uses than just tallying Iowa's arrest sheet or Charles Barkley's cholesterol count. Since the loss to Ole Miss, the Gators have crushed their opponents like a grooved fastball, 299-63. By comparison, only 39 teams in all of the bowl subdivision have scored 299 points all season.

And they've wasted no time in doing it.

If you went to get a beer during the first quarter of Saturday's game, you may have left during an excellent start for South Carolina and returned to a rout before you even knocked the suds off. In the span of 2:15, Florida turned a competitive game into a 21-0 laugher. It took three turnovers and four offensive plays.

The Gamecocks are just the latest early-bird-gets-the-whipping Florida has handed out. It has outscored opponents 101-0 in the first quarter during its winning streak. By comparison, Tennessee has scored just 59 points in 34 more quarters of play all season.

But while the Gators have been playing flawless chess, they've been doing it against competition that, comparatively, is one step above being warned not to put the pieces in their mouth.

South Carolina entered with the stingiest defense in the league, but couldn't stop Vanderbilt's 116th-ranked offense when it mattered in Week 2. While the Gamecocks were third in the nation in total yardage allowed when they entered the Swamp, they'd built that resume against four offenses ranked 102nd in the nation and below (and a fifth, Wofford, is an FCS team). The Gamecocks played only one top-25 offense, Georgia, which itself has come within a touchdown of losing to Kentucky and Auburn in consecutive weeks.

Meanwhile, LSU's best win is over the Gamecocks, followed by a narrow victory over an Auburn team that's all but certain to spend the winter at home. Saturday's near collapse and miraculous comeback against Troy in Baton Rouge only underscored the defending champions' vulnerability. Vanderbilt managed to lose to Duke at home and Kentucky is 2-5 in the SEC.

All of which means that while the Gators have racked up wins with style points by the gross, they haven't done it against the level of competition the SEC brand might suggest.

Of course, the list of teams on Florida's level are probably small enough to fit in the backseat of a taxi with room for Charlie Weis and Charlie Weis' ego. There are a handful of Big 12 teams that could at least combine with Florida to give the scoreboard operator carpal tunnel syndrome. And USC's defense seemingly would be a good match (though if the Trojans struggled to contain Oregon State's speedy sub-six-footer, Jacquizz Rodgers, Chris Rainey and Jeffrey Demps might leave smoke trails through the heart of USC's defense).

Can Alabama do it? Maybe as a dominant defensive effort against Mississippi State attests, but beating the 3-7 Bulldogs, even emphatically, inspires as much confidence as a sentence that starts "Matt Millen's idea." Beating a team that played to a 3-2 shootout loss to Auburn is a tough place to start building resume wins.

In fact, the entire SEC, despite its lofty billing, has done little to prove it's the nation's top conference. After hammering the Big Ten all season for beating just one ranked team out-of-conference all season, the much maligned three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust league is about to take a 1-0 advantage in out-of-conference wins over teams currently ranked in the top 25. (Edit: Miami, which lost to Florida in Week 2, jumped from deep in the unwashed masses of others receiving votes to No. 23.) When the polls come out Sunday, the Big Ten will have Penn State's win over Oregon State, the Big 12 will have wins over TCU, Cincinnati and possibly Western Michigan and the Pac-10 will have wins over Ohio State and Michigan State. The SEC, presumably, will have zero.

Even the MAC and Mountain West will have more wins out-of-conference over teams ranked in the top 25. Of course, anyone who suggests the MAC, Mountain West, Pac-10 or the Big Ten are better leagues than the SEC probably drank a can of lighter fluid in the morning. But if we call USC's obliterations in the Pac-10 into question and Penn State's schedule as a fair subject for debate, shouldn't we at least hold our judgment on Florida?

And lest anyone put too much faith in pundit groupthink which now heavily favors another Florida national championship, just remember how lopsided Ohio State's victory over the Gators should have been in the 2006 BCS title game.

Of course, the way the Gators are winning says plenty even if who they're beating doesn't. There are no narrow escapes since the loss to Ole Miss. The Gators aren't keeping you pinned to the television set in the fourth quarter or waiting on a Jarrett Lee to throw another interception to ensure victory. The Gators are rolling through opponents like a Sherman tank in the middle of a bunch of bumper cars.

But let's play out the season before we start finding room for another crystal football at the Swamp.

Even if that means we have a long, boring wait ahead.

The Big 16

Find out who the nation's top teams are each week as we rank the best 16 and set up something heretofore unheard of in college football, a play... wait for it... off. At season's end, the top 16 will compete in two brackets - the Fairburn, Ga. division, ancestral home of Hangover mancrush Eric Berry, and the erstwhile Fort Myers, Fla. division, ancestral home of the pizza bagel.

• 1. Texas Tech Red Raiders: How hard is it to beat Oklahoma in Norman? There have been exactly as many presidents during Bob Stoops' reign (two, three if you count Dick Cheney, four ir you count Obama) than losses (two). While the two teams might earn the scoreboard operator a raise, the team that can run the ball most effectively, not pass it, should win.
• 2. Alabama Crimson Tide: The Tide's 167-yard defensive effort was as good as any this season. Meanwhile, the special teams battle between punt returners Brandon James and Javier Arenas in the SEC title tilt should be its own pay-per-view attraction.
  
• 3. Texas Longhorns: What's most impressive about the Big 12 South is how well the top teams have stomped the rest of the league, excluding Texas Tech's near disaster against Nebraska. But if there's any cause for concern in Texas' three-quarter win over Kansas, it's that feature backs Foswhitt Whittaker and Chris Ogbonnaya ran for just 25 yards.
• 4. Oklahoma Sooners: Even the bye week isn't enough to figure out how to stop Michael Crabtree. But the Sooners are third in the nation in sacks and ninth in tackles-for-loss, which should keep Graham Harrell on the run and give Bob Stoops' team a chance to atone for its second half collapse against Texas.
• 5. Florida Gators: The nation's hottest team has a ruler straight shot at the BCS title and probably deserve to be placed above Oklahoma and Texas. But it's hard to argue a resume built on wins over Georgia and LSU should definitely jump ahead of the Big 12 South teams and with the Big 12's playoff still underway, we'll let the results do the sorting.
• 6. USC Trojans: Some worry that the Trojans are getting shut out of the BCS title unfairly, but the Trojans aren't even in control of their own destiny within the Pac-10. Should Oregon State win out, some unlucky team gets to face an angry USC team somewhere outside of the Rose Bowl.
• 7. Penn State Nittany Lions: It took the Lions a half to get warmed up, at least figuratively speaking, on a damp and chilly day in State College. Now it's just one win for the Roses for Penn State, but it'll have to do a better job of stopping Michigan State's Javon Ringer than it did against Iowa's Shonn Greene.
• 8. Utah Utes: The Utes didn't trip on the last mile of the marathon, easily beating San Diego State on the road. Now they just have to knock off Brigham Young in the "Holy War," a game that has been decided in the final minute or in overtime the last three seasons.
  
• 9. Missouri Tigers: For another week, the Tigers make an opposing team infrequent guests in the end zone, at least by Big 12 standards. Missouri has held its last four opponents to 28 points or less.
• 10. Ohio State Buckeyes: Who needs the foward pass on an ugly day in Champaign? The Buckeyes racked up a Navy-styled 49 yards passing, but ran all over Illinois on the hurdling legs of Beanie Wells. Beat Michigan and get a Penn State upset by Michigan State, and these Buckeyes are headed to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1997, which was in the midst of a run of eight Rose Bowl titles in nine seasons for the Big Ten.
• 11. Oklahoma State Cowboys: Dez Bryant snagged his first touchdown on the road this season, a highlight one-handed grab on a crossing route in the second quarter that ended with a dive into the end zone. The Cowboys are out of the Big 12 title race, and now they've got two weeks to figure out how to make Oklahoma join them on the sidelines.
• 12. Boise State Broncos: Interestingly, the Broncos' 45-10 win over Idaho for the Governor's Cup marked the first time a Bronco back topped 100 yards rushing. And it wasn't star tailback/loving husband/knitting master Ian Johnson. Rather it was sophomore Jeremy Avery, who slipped under, through and past the Vandals for 156 yards and two touchdowns.
• 13. Georgia Bulldogs: The Bulldogs need another fourth-quarter touchdown grab from A.J. Green to knock off what should've been an overmatched foe.
  
• 14. Ball State Cardinals: Even we looked ahead to this week's tilt with Central Michigan last week, forgetting about Tuesday's game with Miami. But the Cardinals 10-0 start could come crashing down with arguably their toughest games, at Central Michigan and home against Western Michigan, up next.
  
• 15. TCU Horned Frogs: It's an off week for the Horned Frogs and coach Gary Patterson, who probably spent the week fielding more job offers than Mark Teixeira.
• 16. Brigham Young Cougars: Three Mountain West teams make the rankings while the Big East and ACC are shut out. Who's the BCS conference again?