Getting away with it. All our lives. Complain about the officiating as much as you like, but if you look as odious as Florida's offense looked for a half and still win, you did something right. This is what happens when you've emptied the hotel suite of all of its contents and stand looking them through the empty rectangle where a Vegas suite window once stood, shimmering under the blue water. It's all about getting perspective, really. (We missed with the second flatscreen. It made a spectacular sound hitting the pavement from eleven stories up. Fortunately we registered under our pseudonym, Richard Reilly. )
The dazed aftermath doesn't shield a few essentials about Florida, though. Something is terribly palsied in the offense, in the execution, and in the playcalling. Arkansas played like mad bastards, especially Dennis Johnson the rolling water buffalo on rails, last seen bowling through the entire Florida defense, and wideout Greg Childs. The playcalling is relentlessly uninventive, and the line buckled under pressure from the Razorbacks' d-line, the other set of Ro-beasts hounding Tebow and sacking him six times. This offense is, in the words of Sophocles, "kinda shitty."
Arkansas deserves not your pity, nor any opining about the officiating. If they hit two field goals, they win this game, horrific calls and all. The one irritating us most: another inane taunting penalty in the first half, moving SEC officiating further away from the application of rules from a handbook, and more towards the spontaneous review of interpretive dance.
They didn't, and now Florida will fall to where they properly belong: number two at best, and possibly three if you're partial to Texas. If they faced Alabama tomorrow, the Gators lose by ten. There's time to improve, but the problems go deeper than Percy Harvin demonstrating his mutant skills in the NFL. For now, we're the Iowa of the SEC, and like Iowa, we're getting away with it for the moment. As dirty as it feels, it is better than the alternative.
(Excuse us. We have to leave the hotel, as "Mr. Reilly" is wanted for a conversation with the management he would rather not have.)