Who was that masked man, and what’s he doing kicking field goals?!

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I’m told a thin film of food product is healthy for the more delicate reaches of the face: cucumbers on the eyes, maybe a mask of yogurt if you’re a hippie (or yoghurt if you’re one of those hippies that likes emphasizing the heuristic wonders of pretentious spelling), etc.

I’m not sure if flecks of shell help, though. Egg all over my face.

It’s not often that a prediction is exposed as a farce on the very first play of the game, but Ted Ginn, Jr. upped the data sample by one tonight: a fluid 93 yard kickoff returned for a touchdown. The starting kickoff. I said he’d have 0 yards on such returns, banking on touchbacks or even a deliberate kick out-of-bounds here and there. Whoops.

Similar mistakes made with Heisman winner Troy Smith, the oft-criticized Chris Leak, the overall impact of special teams… pretty much everything. I can’t even hang my hat on Florida kicker John Hetland shanking his way to 1 of 3. Instead? He was nails, booting that faux leather through the uprights like someone who previously wasn’t a complete and utter fuck up in doing such things. And Hetland was that before tonight (4 for 13 prior to his molestation of the pigskin in Glendale).

I can take solace in the fact that it seemed like the majority of experts, pundits, etc. picked Ohio State. And no one - no one - predicted that Troy Smith would have such a horrible game. (Was it horrible? It was emphatically horrible, but more so for a guy from whom anything less than a good to transcendent performance would be shocking, from the guy who absolutely shredded Texas and Michigan, from the Heisman Trophy winne- Okay, maybe that last one isn’t surprising but the rest was.) And many people noted that if Florida was to win one of the deciding factors would be if Chris Leak triumphed over Evil Chris Leak and finally delivered that performance we all expected when he signed with Florida in 2003… but you’d be hard pressed to find that many people also willing to bet he would do such a thing. 55-60% completion, maybe. 200 yards certainly. A high probability of a positive touchdown to interception ratio, sure. But to completely outclass the Heisman winner in the title game? I think a lot of people outside of Gainesville are surprised. Hell, I think maybe more people in Gainesville are surprised.

Oh, and that defense. They’re decent.

In retrospect I should’ve just gone against my instincts, my cursed instincts. Those instincts told me that it would take a fourth quarter triumph to beat Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, that USC would breeze past Texas by three scores, that Michigan was a better than fifty percent chance to win.

Stupid instincts! You go squish now!

And just to show how wrong I was, a look back at some of my more inaccurate pieces this past season:

“You have 72 hours to give me the Genesis Device,” says Tressel to U.N., NCAA
Meyer demands rock-paper-scissors showdown in lieu of BCS title game
Urban Meyer introduces new “leave before Chris Leak gets on the bus” offense

Congrats, Florida.

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