I thought this Saturday’s game between the Florida Gators and LSU Tigers was going to be the biggest one of the year, and maybe the biggest in rivalry history.
I was wrong. Very wrong.
This isn’t even as big as a normal Florida-LSU game — at least, it isn’t for me.
Maybe I’m different from you. Maybe I’m taking dozens dying as bullets rained from the night at a music festival harder than you are. Maybe Tom Petty passing doesn’t have you ruminating on the transience of all our lives. Maybe I’m more worried about LSU fans heading home to floodwaters than you are. Maybe the way the world is right now hasn’t muted your life, washed out the color in your pictures.
But for me, from as far away as I am, this is just another game on just another Saturday.
I hope it is different for those there. I hope The Swamp is a seething cauldron of joy and fire today, a crucible that the Gators get out of alive. I hope Florida stamps itself as A Legit Good Team with a rout of a Tigers outfit that is licking its wounds. I hope this game creates the sort of memories that inspire traditions, or returns, or songs.
From here, for me, it probably won’t.
But I hope I get surprised — in the best ways — too.
Go Gators.