I watched Florida's trip to Texas A&M with my younger brother. He tends to react with more visceral emotion at this point in our lives. At halftime, he was nigh apoplectic.
I wouldn't describe my reaction as serene, but it was much more cerebral. I waited to see if we'd make adjustments before getting too emotional. I waited to see if we'd compensate for injuries. I waited to see if we'd properly compensate for a quarterback with a, dare I say it, Tebow-esque ability to just "do things" (see the forward flick for a TD in the first half that, while an illegal forward pass that got called back, was nonetheless an inspired play).
We did.
We won. We showed toughness. We showed grit. I don't expect another crystal football this year, next year, or maybe even the year after that, but this result certainly bodes well for future ground-out victories. Jeff Driskel played a solid game that may not have filled the highlight reel, but certainly didn't supply the lowlight reel. He made no mistakes, and accounted for our strengths and weaknesses. The defense tightened up and prevented TAMU from stretching our defense past the breaking point. Special teams didn't allow any gamebreaking returns.
We're going to lose this year. We'll likely do it several times. But gosh golly-gee, it sure helps to win a rough-and-tumble tussle like that one, eh?
I'm listed as a writer on this website. I'm grateful that I ever got listed as such. Like so many volcanoes, I've been dormant for quite some time (real-life jobs and real-life issues take up time, it turns out). But at this point, I'm ready to put something out there once again, although at this point I must quickly abandon the volcano metaphor, since erupting isn't quite what I'm doing here.