Unless you’re a child on Halloween in the throes of a candy-infused euphoria, we all know one thing to be true: Too much of a good thing ends up being a bad thing.
You know who is keenly aware of that fact this week? The Florida Gators football program. Fresh off of whacking Ole Miss – who were, themselves, fresh off of whacking LSU – the entirety of the college football world was at Florida’s feet.
“Jon Sumrall was the hire of the offseason,” they said.
“Jadan Baugh is the best running back in the country,”
they said.
“[Florida is] back. And not like ‘Texas’ back,” Nate Edwards said.
To be honest, you can’t blame Florida. It’s intoxicating to be at the whims of the college football news cycle. Every story is glowing, every review overflowing with praise. And it’s easy to get swept away with it all. You don’t even have to believe your own hype to get caught up in the moment.
Then suddenly the moment is staring down a four-score loss on the road. Suddenly, you’re not the favored son anymore. Because now? Mizzou is.
“Mizzou is a dark horse CFP contender,” some say.
“Austin Simmons has an NFL future,” scouts infer.
“That was Mizzou’s best win under Drinkwitz,” you all say.
See? Doesn’t it feel awesome? To live in the moment when the whole of the college football universe is gassing you up?
Then, all of the sudden, it’s Saturday afternoon and the team you haven’t beat in over a decade has a target on your back. And if you’re not careful, all that praise could slip away in an instant.
This is the hangover that Mizzou and Eli Drinkwitz are looking to avoid. You would think they would learn from being in a very similar situation to where Florida was not one week ago. Then again, you’d have thought Florida would learn that lesson from Ole Miss. And look how that turned out.
In the classic (if a bit dated) 2009 comedy The Hangover, Ed Helms’ character Stu Price opines in melodic fashion: “ What do Tigers dream of when they take a little Tiger snooze?” One would hope that our Tigers are keeping their loftiest ambitions squarely within the dream realm and focusing their conscious energies on the day-to-day work that causes the improvement Drinkwitz spoke so much about in his post-Florida press conference.
I may be a bit pessimistic here, but I really can envision a world where, just one week out from pounding Florida into submission, the Tigers come out and have a comedy of errors performance similar to the one we see in The Hangover. We can probably surmise that real life tigers, taser demonstrations, Rohypnol, and card counting won’t be involved. But is it so outlandish to envision a game where Dominick Giudice, fresh off maybe his best performance as a Tiger, puts up a handful of false starts and a bad snap that Texas A&M jumps all over? Jamal Roberts has had a bad case of butterfingers this season, and is it unreasonable to think he might let one slip a week after he dropped one of the iconic RB performances in Mizzou’s history? How long can Austin Simmons really keep this interception streak going, especially when he’s being told he’s the next left-handed NFL gunslinger?
The truth is, a massive dud isn’t out of this Tiger team’s wheelhouse, just like it isn’t for almost every single team in college football. Maybe Mizzou is closer to what they showed against Florida than what they showed against Troy and Mississippi State. But they’re not immune to lapses of conc entration or accidentally kidnapping criminal magnates. Well, probably not the second part.
The point I’m trying to get at – if there’s any point to these columns anymore – is that Mizzou is by no means a finished product. They cannot let the Florida win define who they ultimately become, great as it was. The performance was incredible and has earned them, rightfully, a heaping of plaudits from onlookers. But soak those plaudits up too much and you might find yourself sunburned on the roof of a Las Vegas casino hotel looking at a 13th straight defeat at the hands of a stumbling Texas A&M outfit.
That, unlike watching Zach Galifianakis get his bell rung by Mike Tyson, won’t be funny.
That, like 50 percent of what Bradley Cooper says and does in The Hangover, will age poorly.
For causing one of Florida’s worst modern hangovers, Mizzou gets 5 out of 5 Carloses. Just make sure he gets back to his mom on time, guys. You’ve got to focus on Saturday.
