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Watch: Florida's Jeremy Foley bids farewell in retirement press conference

A fond farewell it was.

I am loathe to use the word classy in any context. I think of it largely as a cudgel used by any of many people to codify behavior they find agreeable (and assail that which they find objectionable) by their own particular and often shifting standards. There's no one barometer for "class," and thus "classy" is as worthless a word — especially in discussing sports — as any in English.

Jeremy Foley's retirement press conference is going to be called "classy" a lot.

I don't think it was that. I think it was honest, straightforward, dignified, and respectful, both of the job he's held and the work he's done, and I think it gives Florida fans one more reason to be very proud of the person who has led the Gators from, as Foley notes, "sleeping giant" to colossus astride the world of college athletics.

It shouldn't really have surprised me that a Foley farewell would be less about any uncertainty or sadness created by his departure, but pride and confidence in what he — and the thousands who have worked with and for him — have done for Florida, and what more can be done. It did, a little, but I don't mind that in the slightest, just like I didn't mind the jokes about reneging on his decision like Billy Donovan and Urban Meyer did before and the roof over McKethan Stadium that may never come.

There will be more farewells to Foley, here and elsewhere, for many months to come. They probably won't top his own.

People don't tend to do things much better than Jeremy Foley does.