Florida's 48 for 2014, No. 29: Saturdays in The Swamp

I took the above picture this morning at Florida's open practice. It's admittedly kind of a crappy picture: No one's in the stands, as per usual for an open practice held on a Saturday morning, and the only camera I had on me was my iPhone 4, which was last cutting-edge technology back in 2011. I didn't zoom in on anything, and my angle wasn't great.

I don't care. It's still a picture of the Florida Gators in The Swamp on a Saturday.

One of the things that I hated most about the 2013 season is being made to feel guilty for enjoying Florida's season despite how painful it was. No, it's not fun to watch a team lose, and especially not fun to watch a team get its entrails repeatedly removed and cleated into the grass.

But I still found it fun to go to games, to watch them with friends, to yell, to sway and sing "We Are the Boys," to sweat through my shirt and get my weekly sunburn. I enjoyed the celebrity guests who portrayed Mr. Two Bits, and love cheering for the various Florida teams that got to bask in the appreciation of 80,000 — I'm not kidding myself — Gators who aren't always paying attention to them, because they don't play football.

There are only so many years, months, and days in a life. I get to spend some of my Saturdays watching one of the best games in human history played on what I consider hallowed ground.

I try not to take that for granted.