Just in case you're wondering, this opinion is wholly mine, and does not reflect the official stance or presence of an official stance of Alligator Army regarding our former football coach.

As Andy posted earlier, Matt Hayes of the Sporting News has finally confirmed, with a measure of journalistic integrity, exactly what Florida Gators fans have long suspected about Urban Meyer: That he ran a fast, loose ship designed to coddle, win, and ultimately crumble. While Hayes delivers the facts, the ultimate verdict on how we should feel about Urban Meyer is left undecided. As a reader/commenter/writer, this is unacceptable. PEOPLE NEED TO BE TOLD WHAT TO THINK. Especially me— left with nothing but my own imagination, a set of facts, and an unending love for the concept of a multiverse, I’ve come up with multiple-case scenarios for playing feelingsball with Urban Meyer’s tenure at Florida (it’s actually two, because there’s only two universes, Regular Universe, and ours, Pirate Universe).

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College basketball is a strange sport.

Basketball, in general, is a more post-season driven sport than either of America's other major team sports, but college basketball takes it to an extreme level. In the NBA, the regular season carries some meaning. Ultimately, though, a player's success is based more on the championships that he's won than the regular season accolades he's accumulated, but to some extent, a player's worth is measured by his performances in the season.

College basketball doesn't care about what happened prior to the tournament one bit, and I tried to keep that in mind while reviewing UF's less consistent, less impressive remainder of the starting five.

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Looking forward to parts II and III - FlaGators.

Andy has the definitive reaction on the end of the season—and if you've somehow missed it GO READ IT NOW—so I'm not going to clumsily retread over how to feel about the Gators' bittersweet multi-act drama. Instead, I'm going to give you what I consider my best: a review of the Gators' up and down season complete with facts and data and other bits of nutritious et cetera. I consider this to be a large task, because watching basketball provides a lot of raw data to analyze and smart people on the internet provide a lot of different tools to use to quantify that data, so I'm going to try and do this in a few equal-ish parts. Today I'll cover the starting guards, Erving Walker, Kenny Boynton, and Bradley Beal. Next I'll look at the front court, then finally the bench.

If at any point this becomes TL;DR, just skip to the end and there will be ARBITRARY SCORES THAT TOTALLY DEFINITIVELY REVIEW THE PLAYERS IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY.

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Some fans are expressing disappointment with Florida's decision to focus on the defensive side of the ball in the class of 2012 despite the Gators' two years of offensive woes. UF signed 11 front seven recruits, and 14 of the 23 recruits were classified as defensive players. Considering UF returns 10 of 11 starters on that side of the ball, this seems a little excessive on its face.

However, there are a host of reasons that anyone thinking this class is somehow disappointing is crazy.

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(Edited, promoted, updated time to push to front, but note that this was written prior to Florida's win over Mississippi Valley State, and thus reflects statistics from then. — Andy)

Basketball barely feels like it has started and yet the Gators have already played a third of their regular season schedule. So far, Florida's about right where they were expected to be, beating every non-top five opponent it has faced, and living up to the hype as the deadliest deep shooting team in the nation. The Gators even answered their biggest question, albeit in a loss, by proving that they can out-rebound good teams even while playing a three-guard, one-combo-forward, one-true-big starting five. A lot of that success has been due to the one true big (I like that as a potential nickname for Patric Young); a lot of it is due to Bradley Beal's Dwyane Wade-ishness. I'll get to both of those things in a minute.

First, after the jump, a full team breakdown.

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(I resent being called a dictator. And benevolent. Edited and fronted. — Andy)

(AP/Pat J. Carter)

Our benevolent dictator and I have had a bit of a twitter debate over who UFs' best athlete is.  I limited the scope over there by only picking Urban Meyer players, but I have far more than 140 characters to work with over here, so I'll open this up into history.  I'm limiting myself to only Meyer recruits because I think that four of the top athletes to ever play at UF came during Meyer's six years.  If you want to pick someone else, pick other and let me know in the comments. After the jump, my four potential candidates (note that these are not in any sort of order).

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Dunno about the rest of you guys, but I'm addicted to this game.  I know there was a Modern Warfare group for EDSBSers so I imagine that a few of you guys have Battlefield.  I went ahead and created a platoon here (BF3's version of a clan, I guess. Also, requires a Battlelog account).  To sign up for EA's dumbass social-murder network, you use whatever email is attached to your xbox live account.  I assume you can just add yourselves to the platoon, but if not, post your gamertags down below and I'll add you.

Also, I think these things are platform specific, so if you're a PS3/PC player feel free to start another EDSBS platoon.

My buddy and I are heading to Gameday tomorrow morning, and we think it's time for the world to acknowledge the allegations swirling around one of their fine announcers/former runningback for SMU.  I have zero skill with photoshop, don't actually own photoshop or a photoshop like program, so I was thinking two signs, one with either

This:

via tamunews.tamu.edu

or This:

via lh5.ggpht.com

and a second sign with "Remember the 5" written in large block letters, and possibly a fish hook drawn on it.  I don't think either will get censored, and we're aiming to get there early enough to get near the front.  I'm open to ideas/EDSBS charity content though, as I have very little artistic talent, so feel free to post suggestions or pictures below, and I'll let ya'll know tonight what the final product will be.

It's senior bowl week, aka the real senior bowl, aka TODD MCSHAY IS ON TV FOR A SOLID WEEK TALKING ABOUT THIS GUY AND HOW GREAT HE IS

via img502.imageshack.us

HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT BODY.  THAT'S A MANOSAURUS REX IF I'VE EVER SEEN ONE, MEL.  I'D HAVE SEX WITH THAT IF I WASN'T TODD MCSHAY AND MARRIED TO THIS HUSTLE.

NFL Network is running some primo coverage, featuring full access practices and a lot of pointless factoring. COLIN KAEPERNICK HAS MAD ARM TATS AND THAT'S GOING TO HURT HIM IN THE DRAFT BECAUSE THAT INK IS SLOWING DOWN HIS ALREADY LONG DELIVERY. /factor'd

via img192.imageshack.us

YOU REALLY HAVE TO WONDER IF ALL THOSE NEEDLES ARE AFFECTING HIS STRINTH.

If you've got the NFL Network and are home from probably 4pm to 5pm (because that's when the show was running today), and you like seeing big guys go from I'm having fun to HOLY SHIT SCOUT SAYS I'M ONLY A THIRD ROUNDER I BETTER TURN ON THE KILLSWITCH in the matter of one play, then tune in.  Or if you're like me and will literally watch anything sports throws at you during a slow week, then tune in and post snark here. Also, there's close ups of EDSBS' favorite ostrichback, Colin Kaepernick.

This is the place to discuss why you're beating chekhov.  Part of that reason will be because Mark Ingram is dead for two weeks and Dion Lewis is an underperformer.  More reasons probably exist but this was posted very drunkenly and I don't care enough to complain right now.

This is also the place to announce that we have a pro-league as well.  We have between 5 and 7 open spots so if anyone would rather draft Maurice Jones Drew than Landry Jones then send me an email at jayhndry@gmailDOTcom.

CBS has a college fantasy option. I'm 99% sure that it's free to play.  I've never played it, but I'd imagine it might be fun. Anyone here interested in doing a league?

Also, if there's any interest in a pro league, I'd be down for that as well. 

If you want to join, send me an email at jayhndry@gmail.com so I can send you an invite.  I haven't set up the pro league yet, but I'm leaning towards yahoo.  If anyone has a strong objection to that, you'll want to let me know soon as I'll probably set that one up in the next couple of days.

Also, don't sweat any rules that are in place (scoring/autodraft/whatever).  Those can all be changed.  I just haven't messed with anything yet.

V1.2: Fixed mistakes, added new stuff

So feed yourselves with caution.  I've been dicking around with Rivals' recruiting rankings and I've compiled conference averages for the yearly talent.

AVG Conference rankings from best to worst (Mean/Median)

SEC: 1526.99/1538 (roughly a top 15-20 team)
Standard Dev: 745.70

Pac 10: 1219.44/1095 (24/25)
Standard Dev: 670.21

Big 12 (Texas): 1173.17/1147.5 (around 30)
Standard Dev: 638.77

ACC: 1085.41/1092 (35ish)
Standard Dev: 650.15

Big 12 (Ohio State): 1020.79 points/977 (39/40)
Standard Dev: 624.01

Big East: 723 points/648 (50ish)
Standard Dev: 496.04

Do with that, what you will.

I'm going to miss that handle.  Big Ten, I know I've called you at least eleven ten different things over the years, but I always revert to "the Big 10leven" in a pinch.  With your pending twelfth member, the name will quickly lose it's relevance, so it's best to retire you now and work on a more accurate replacement.

Bonus: EDSBS, what do you like?  Big 10welve doesn't sound very good, and if you slur it, like say, after a day of drinking, it just sounds like "Big Tuhwelve".  That's going to end up causing confusion and deflect attention from the mis-name.  Big Integer has been in rotation already.  Should we just bump it up to the go-to nickname since it covers all* possibilities?

Double super-bonus: Is the Big 12 the Big 12leven until further notice? 

*Note: Big Integer does not cover partial and irrational possibilities