While you were working the grill or stretching out your arm for beer pong Saturday night, Florida signee Jeff Demps was trying to qualify for the Olympics. In the 100-meter dash quarterfinals, Demps finished second and ran 10.01.

Wait, now in bold.

10.01

The only reason why he was second? Tyson Gay set the American Record with a 9.77, .05 away from a world record. But Demps sets the High School record, since he is competing as a high school student. The previous mark was 10.08.

"It's an honor to break that record," Demps said by phone 45 minutes after his performance. "I can't really explain how it feels right now. I'm so excited."

First off, 100 yards is about 91 meters, so for those of you imagining one of the world's fastest men returning kicks for UF, it might actually be less than 10 seconds goal line to goal line. (But in pads, it might be about 10 seconds.) Demps is only 5-9, 170, perfect for a sprinter, not so much for a football player. As it stands, Demps is only in the semifinals, with two races Sunday between him and Beijing.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt though, let's say he is one of the athletes who qualifies for the Olympics. Should he become a pro track athlete or head to Florida and uphold the ideals of the amateur athlete? He could be too damn fast for Florida Football and start cashing checks.

Chris Leak has only been with the Montreal Alouettes for a few days, but Number 12 seems much more comfortable with the Als than the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. On Monday, he was still explaining why a college player of his caliber has become a nomad on the football landscape.

"We all have different stories," said Leak, who was quickly signed by Montreal after his Hamilton sojourn ended, and received clearance to start practising this weekend, after recovering from a shoulder injury.

"It's just the game of life and ball. That's how the game is," he continued. "There's always high expectations coming out of college, especially when you play at Florida and win a national title. But that's how the NFL draft goes. Teams have different needs.

"I'm excited to be in Montreal."

As was the case with Hamilton, Montreal has a crowded backfield too, with Leak making it six “pivots” on the roster, including veteran starter Anthony Calvillo and the one, the only Adrian McPherson. Just like a typical NFL rookie, it will be a struggle for Leak to get some snaps and make the team. But the kid hasn’t given up.

Leak’s mistake was not waiting to get in the CFL. It was being conned into believing the AAFL was a legitimate enterprise. You could make the case that the time Leak spent hoping that league would get off the ground actually hurt him.

By the way, the title of this post is “Orange and Blue to Red, White, and Blue” in French. Even I’m trying to be optimistic about Leak in the CFL now.

Before Urban Meyer's first season, two videos made their way around campus. The first was clips of the Gators and Urban Meyer's first press conference set to Coldplay's "Fix You." It had the combined effect of hating Zook even more (since the theme was how horribly screwed up the team was after he was fired) but you wanted to run through a brick wall afterwards because Urban Meyer quotes made a Coldplay song seem badass. That is if you could see through your tears. (Not that I was crying or anything. It was just really dusty.)

The second video inspired the famous comment from my friend Hanson about how it made him "happy," if you know what I mean. (I'm sure he was joking, but you can never be sure.) It is all the significant plays Utah made against Pitt in the Fiesta Bowl, including a "hook-and-lateral" when Utah is up by 21. If Utah looked that fast, imagine what Meyer would do at UF with world class athletes.

Collegiate success does not guarantee professional success, no matter if you’re a football player or business grad. Unfortunately, Chris Leak knows this too well. After falling flat in NFL camps and becoming the face of Gainesville’s AAFL franchise, Christopher is now on his second CFL camp. A few days after joining the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (or Ticats if you watch the Canadian game on Gainesville’s channel 67 or Catch 47 in Tampa), Leak is now on his way to Montreal, which is like going from Green Bay to New Orleans without the history of Green Bay or politeness of the Crescent City.

Even though I’m one of those fans who were firmly on the Tebow Bandwagon even as Leak was leading UF to a National Championship, the level of fandom attached to Leak always concerned me. Maybe it was because he was Zook’s boy or he was quiet or he wasn’t Huck Finn and Paul Bunyan rolled into one, but Leak never got the outpouring of support number 15 has. Even now, knowing Leak is struggling to find jobs doesn’t bother me. But if someone tells me Tebow won’t be a NFL QB, I will punch them in the mouth.

Sadly, there are 64 better QBs in the NFL (or, I guess, 96) and Leak has to look at the three-down game just like former Gator Kerwin Bell. Leak has already found Canada isn’t the SEC or even a town game at the rec center. The bigger ball, bigger field and bigger formations create a supercharged game, drawing from rugby as much as football. To be honest, Leak won’t make it in Canada either. The rule and style differences are too much to overcome. Give credit to Leak on this though; he’s not yet quit. Until you’re buying a car or cable service from him, Leak still thinks he has a chance to play ball.

There is an article in today’s St. Pete Times about Florida’s new football offices. If you’ve been on campus in the past few months, it’s hard to miss. But who knew the Smithsonian of football was also being built?

The facility, which mirrors those of the basketball and swimming programs (on a larger scale), will feature a line of black granite bricks at the entrance honoring each of UF's All-Americans. The "Gateway of Champions" will include a 16-foot bronzed Gator. A bronzed plaque/bust of every member of the college football Hall of Fame will be showcased, along with every SEC, national championship, Heisman and other trophies former Gators have earned.

Twenty-eight million dollars will buy you that. (By the way, that’s $28 million of donations. We’re not FSU. We don’t hide empty classrooms in our stadium to get tax dollars. Sorry, it’s been a while since I ripped on the state’s third place university.) Luckily, Florida alums have the cash to provide for these facilities even as donations to charities have fallen in the current economy. So, at what point does this building end?

Just looking from 2002 when I was a freshman, UF has added skyboxes and club seats to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, nearly rebuilt McKethan Stadium, and now this. That doesn’t include the 2001 additions at the basketball complex and softball stadium. The only thing UF has left to do is build an indoor tennis facility instead of the three courts they have under a massive car port.

The facilities race has been going on since the mid-1990’s when the new bowl game and basketball tournament television packages made athletic departments into Fortune 500 companies. Since “a rising tide lifts all boats” the non-revenue sports benefited as well. Even as the economy is crawling along, college sports are still worth a lot of money. As long as CBS, ESPN and Fox are willing to throw buckets of cash at colleges, the facilities race will continue. Just don’t be surprised when Tennessee expands to 150,000 people/2000 teeth.

We continue our look back at the 1996 championship season. Today is the game that announced Florida was ready to challenge again for a title; Gators at Volunteers.

Peyton Manning is the quarterback for No. 2 Tennessee (2-0), but he is also their researcher and scientist, breaking down not just game film of the No. 4 Gators (2-0) but also of Kansas State. That is were Florida defensive coordinator Bob Stoops was last season, using an aggressive scheme to allow only 13.2 points per game and propel the Wildcats to a 10-2 record.

The new scheme has inspired confidence in the Gators, especially against the Vols quarterback.

''They look vulnerable, very vulnerable,'' Tim Beauchamp, a defensive end, told reporters earlier this week. ''As much as we blitz, it should get pretty ugly.''

On the subject of Manning, who is operating behind a rebuilt offensive line, Beauchamp was just as blunt. He maintained that Manning holds the ball near his waist, a habit that the Gators could exploit. ''He gets rattled,'' Beauchamp said. ''He has real jumpy feet, and he holds the ball out here. We've got a chance to strip that ball.''

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It was not the 62-37 destruction the Gators laid on Tennessee in Gainesville a year earlier, but Florida’s 35-29 victory Saturday in Knoxville may have been more destructive to the fragile ego of Tennessee football. This was supposed to be the year the Vols (2-1) broke the strangle hold Florida (3-0) has on the SEC East. After racing out to a 35-0 lead, the Gators were able to hold on, and now hold the top rank in the nation.

Tennessee’s much hyped quarterback, Peyton Manning, filled the stat sheet with 492 yards and four TDs, but he also threw four interceptions. Manning and the Vols were outclassed by a Gator offense that gained 141 on the ground and Danny Wuerffel’s four TD passes, on only 11-22 passing. The win was especially pleasing for the senior from Ft. Walton Beach. From Sports Illustrated;

In the cool darkness of last Saturday evening, Florida quarterback Danny Wuerffel jogged from the floor of Tennessee's Neyland Stadium, his head humbly bowed and his face expressionless. Only when he neared the tunnel at the south end of the field did Wuerffel lift his chin, gently shake his right fist once, twice, three times and let a soft smile crease his face as if he were savoring some small, private success. "He remembers that game in Arizona last January," said Wuerffel's father, Jon, who stood nearby in a thicket of Gators fans. Behind Wuerffel, teammate Johnny Rutledge, a sophomore linebacker, rumbled through the tunnel like a storm, raising his orange helmet overhead and then lowering it as he yelled, almost in disbelief, "They really thought they would win!"

Wuerffel has sometimes been belittled as merely the latest beneficiary of Spurrier's pass-happy offense, but in fact he has proved to be talented, tough and reliable. He has endured his coach's demands with extreme patience, and after shredding Tennessee on Saturday he seemed ready to put questions about the Fiesta Bowl loss behind him forever. "This is a new game and a new season," Wuerffel said. "That [Nebraska] game was a long time ago."

The Gators face Kentucky next week.

Urban Meyer was in Miami Wednesday when he made comments addressing the latest incident that involved Jamar Hornsby and a stolen credit card. Rather an acknowledge mistakes made by the program (failing to properly discipline Hornsby for two prior incidents) he placed part of the blame on the NCAA.

''The NCAA is pulling us off the recruiting process,'' he said, in comments reported by South Florida media outlets. "I'm not allowed to go out [to visit players] anymore. I'm not allowed to text message. I'm trying to find out as best I can. You just keep re-evaluating.

"If you just look around and see some of the things that are going on, it's amazing. It's concerning. It's alarming," Meyer said. "So we take a great deal of time and effort in trying to educate guys, work with them and recruit character. Are we perfect? Absolutely not."

I cannot speak for Florida Football because I don’t know the depth of punishment Hornsby received for being charged with criminal mischief and for selling his Georgia tickets. Any college student or athlete could do that and still be a fine citizen. But it takes a special level of narcissism and disrespect to do what Hornsby did. And that is where Florida and every institution has failed.

One of the things that has always bothered me about college sports was the appearance that some of the players (sorry, student-athletes) are merely screws in a giant money making machine. This idea has filtered down to now looking at high school kids and judging them on 40 times and bench reps. What’s the difference then between men on Wall Street salivating over the next big IPO and men on Gator Country boards salivating over the next big QB? After all, if the IPO or QB fails, there will be another one to fill the spot in a few months.

I’m not saying Hornsby was another screw in the machine, but the lack of effort put into punishing him reflects back on UF. Was there a lack of effort because they did not care? Or because they needed him so desperately on special teams? I tend to think it is the first option. Think of it this way; if your son causes $750 in damage and then breaks a rule, how hard do you punish him the second time? Is it hard enough that he learns a lesson? I would think so.

Pointing the finger at Meyer or even the Gators coaches is not my point here because this is a national thing that has been going on for years. Christian Peter at Nebraska, Jerramy Stevens at Washington; examples of young adults allowed to do what as they please. Universities have to take a much larger role in the lives of their athletes. Don’t just give them physicals, send them to a psychiatrist, and not to, “Awaken the Giant within,” or some motivational BS. (Most schools have the cash to do this. But they spend it on leather chairs in skyboxes.) Colleges have to learn more about these kids beyond 40 times and bench reps. Maybe something could be spotted before one athlete thinks it is acceptable to steal a dead student’s credit card. Meyer wants to address character, well, getting back texting privileges won’t lead to any deeper understanding of the mind of an 18-year old.

I don’t know what leads to teams keeping on players who break rules. Maybe they are afraid what happened to Florida women’s basketball will happen to them. In 2005, Florida standout Bernice Mosby thought the appropriate way to deal with a teammate was to attack her. She was kicked out of school, went to Baylor and was an All-American candidate who was drafted in the WNBA. She could have helped Florida, but made a personal decision and UF responded.

Meyer and all college coaches need to understand that if you’re not going to put in the effort to understand these kids, don’t put in the effort to keep them around.

Defensive lineman Matt Patchan is recovering from getting shot in the shoulder. While everyone keeps saying it’s not serious, it’s a freaking bullet! In him! Seriously!

"I don't know what he was doing there or why they were there," Patchan's high school coach, Sean Callahan told the St. Petersburg Times. "I don't know all the details. I just know he went to the Brandon hospital. They left [the bullet] in. It's not serious. It's in the soft tissue."

To be fair, gun play is not new to Eastern Hillsborough County. The early enrollee is expected to fully recover before the season begins.

Thursday in Jacksonville, former Gators quarterback and the executive director of Desire Street Ministries, Danny Wuerffel, is hosting a luncheon to raise awareness and money for the Louisiana-based charity. I exchanged a few emails with him about football and Desire Street. He was nice enough to respond.

mlmintampa: On Alligator Army, I've been going back over the 1996 championship season in part because I think the pressure the Gators face this season, might be similar to what the '96 team faced after the Nebraska loss. What was the mood like for that team returning and were you concerned that you might have missed your chance at winning a National Championship?

Danny Wuerffel: I think the loss helped prepare us for the next season. We had gotten so close and tasted the championship. And I think it helped us to prepare better for the Sugar Bowl the next year as well.

 
mlm: Tim Tebow seems to be reaching folk hero status. In your interactions with him, has he changed at all since coming to UF?

DW: Tim is so blessed to come from such a great family. He is very grounded and still seems to me to be the last person to know he isn’t a folk hero.

mlm: So much is made of what Tebow does in the community and his work in the Philippines. For many fans though, you're the gold standard in terms of being a student athlete and serving the community as a role model. What were the things you did while in school and how did that affect you in the future?

DW: I was very involved with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and did a lot of community service through that organization. The relationships through FCA helped to shape who I’ve become and all I’ve done since.

mlm: Many Gator fans are familiar with Desire Street Ministries but it might just be another charity to some. What makes Desire Street special and for the children in the program, what would their alternative be if it wasn't for the ministry?

DW: We work in communities where children often don’t get the same opportunities of most kids. We believe that our job is to build relationships, create opportunities, restore hope and build leaders who will then take the initiative to transform their own communities. Not only are we a Christian organization that plants churches and does spiritual development, but we also address areas such as healthcare, housing, economic development, and education.

mlm: Do you ever worry that people might forget about rebuilding New Orleans?

DW: Unfortunately, our society often pays attention only to what’s on the news. So as the story of New Orleans fades away, so does people’s interest in helping. For us, though, we are committed to rebuilding not just buildings, but lives and communities as well, and we’ve been so blessed to have so many wonderful people from all around the country continue to partner with us towards that end.

mlm: I visited New Orleans at the end of 2006 and I was heartbroken by what I saw. (ed: Here's that story from my old blog.) Driving in from Florida on Interstate 10, the first areas you see are the areas that were most affected by Hurricane Katrina. How soon will those areas recover and when will the Desire Street Academy move back from Baton Rouge? What can people do to assist that process?

DW: The Ninth Ward was devastated by the storm and will take a long time to recover. Our facility is in what’s called the "upper ninth ward" and is in a little better shape (relatively). We have started several new initiatives in New Orleans (building programs, recreational programs, church etc…for more info and ways to help, please visit our website www.desirestreet.org).

However, since Katrina, Desire Street Ministries has been focusing on replicating our ministry model in other impoverished communities as well. To that end, we’ve decided to leave our school, Desire Street Academy in Baton Rouge and begin another community transformation ministry around it. Additionally, we’re hoping to help start and grow other urban ministries and churches all over the country.

If you cannot get to Jacksonville Thursday, visit Desire Street’s website to learn more about their programs. You can donate, volunteer in Baton Rouge or New Orleans, or sponsor a student.

Huge thanks to Danny Wuerffel and Desire Street for giving me an opportunity to speak to one of my boyhood heroes. Those of us who just graduated are old enough to remember Wuerffel at UF (I was 12 in ’96) and got to experience another National Championship. But Wuerffel is still our hero. Now that he is taking on one of our biggest challenges as a society, our admiration will only grow.

Coming Monday, we’ll have an interview with Danny Wuerffel. We asked him about the pressures his 1996 team faced prior to winning the National Championship, Tim Tebow, and about his work with the Desire Street Ministries in New Orleans. Thursday, he will be speaking to The Jacksonville Touchdown Club to raise awareness about the ministry.