The Tears of the Florida Fanbase Spill Here

Alright, alright, alright. Sip some haterade with me, won't you?

First, the Shanoff tweets.

Early on:

Tim Tebow's eye-black for SECCG: John 16:33 (Key phrase: "...In this world you will have trouble. But take heart!...")

Uh oh...

Chances Florida comes back out in the 2nd half with usual orange helmets? High. Like fans who change seats to shake up a seat jinx.

After the Tebow passing TD to cut the lead...

New game, folks. RT @osgators It's like a re-run of Seinfeld that you know is on -- Tebow pumping up the crowd after a big gain.

It sure was, folks....NOT!

Hmmmm...

Consider that no one remembers last year's SECCG 1st half and that Bama's 3rd qtr last year was more dominating than its 1st half this year.

Don't jinx it, now!

Ridiculous hyperbole to hedge bets in case of the loss?

Alabama has played the most impressive first three quarters of a game that I've ever seen a team play.

The validation:

INT?!?! I just collapsed.

Handing it over to the messiah:

"They were just a better team than us." Tim Tebow sums it up better than a thousand pundits will.

Taking anger out on Texas:

It would be cynical and intellectually dishonest for any BCS voter to rank Texas ahead of TCU, even if Texas wins.

And, finally, aligning himself with SEC triumphalism:

What Florida did to Oklahoma a year ago, Alabama is going to do to Texas x 2. UT: What an unimpressive finalist. Horns ARE No. 2...in Texas.

If Florida can't beat the Tide, no one can!!!!!! NO ONE!!!!

Yeah, nevermind the fact that Texas was going against an equally impressive defense but actually, you know, prevailed in victory. Nevermind the fact that Alabama has looked completely beatable at many different points this season. They beat the mighty Florida. Remember, the team Shanoff touted as the potential greatest of all time? Hahaha.

Over at DanShanoff.com, the headline "Championship or Failure: It is Failure" was a pretty good time. Still, the heavy duty Alabama praise became a recurring theme:

Congratulations to Alabama and its fans.

That was the most comprehensively impressive performance I have ever seen a great team play against another great team -- most impressive because Alabama made a great Florida team look... ordinary.

The Tide dominated on both sides of the ball, like I've never seen a team dominate Florida in the Tebow Era.

Again, because they deserve the credit: I've never seen a defense dominate Florida as thoroughly as Alabama did; I've never seen an offense dominate Florida as thoroughly as Alabama did.

Florida's defense was as good as I've seen this decade in college football -- Alabama destroyed them. And while Florida's offense has been up and down, Alabama neutered it.

The line "I've never seen an offense dominate Florida as thoroughly as Alabama did" completely ignores the Capital One bowl where my beloved Michigan Wolverines hung 41 on Florida's defense in 2008 -- forever ago! I posted this direct proof counterargument in the comments of his post, but, as usual, he refused to approve my dissent. (Update: He approved it. Fair enough.)

So it goes.

Things continued quite swimmingly over at TimTeblog.com, where I made my first intentional visit of the year. Shanoff posted the Tebow quote he had on Twitter, with a quick note attached:

That sums it up better than anyone ever could in hundreds or thousands of extra words. Much much more coming, obviously.

Very very disappointing. To say the least.

Things continued even more swimmingly in the comments, where disgruntled Florida fans said ridiculous things which seemingly all concluded with overenthusiastic decrees via caps-lock or exclamation points.

This one was probably the best (by DRU2012):

So much to be said, so little inclination to do so, right now. Even before reading his poignant words (I left the game-party after the interception and I'm not interested in the postmortems--all too obvious what went wrong), bad as I felt, soaked in frustration and disappointment, I felt worse for Tim. I don't care what anyone else thinks about this: Tim Tebow is the one Gator who DESERVES to live his dream. However, that was always dependent upon a lot of other people, the team he loves and leads so well. That we know he thinks he let his team down, rather than the other way around, THAT'S Tim Tebow. There'll be other days, other championships, but here and now and from this point forward, just because there IS a Tim Tebow I, in addition to being unendingly proud of him, will remain unwaveringly PROUD TO BE A FLORIDA GATOR.

Again, if you waver back and forth between liking or disliking Florida... how on earth could you support something like that?

One more (HB814):

It breaks my heart to see him cry.

Mine too.

The only thing that's really upsetting is knowing we'll probably have to wait until Monday for the unquestionably terrific Tebow crying photoshops and GIFs. If that's the only negative thing to come out of today, then I think we're doing alright. Fortunatley, the first suggestion you get when you type "tebow" in Google is "tebow crying alabama."

So I think we're definitely headed in the right direction.

'Bama bangs to take us home? You know me too well.

Later.