Let the smack talking begin… and end

Silly Gators, smack talking is for kids. The “W” was barely in the books after Florida whooped up on Hawaii and all the chatter turned to Miami and this Saturday’s contest in Gainesville.

First to run his fat mouth was the Gators second or third-best receiver, Louis Murphy:

“If I’m right, the ‘U’ stands for the University of Miami,” said Murphy. “Well, we’re the University of Florida. We’re the ‘U.’ I don’t refer to them as the ‘U.’ I refer to them as Miami. If the ‘U’ is for university and winning and championships, we’re the ‘U.’ They are Miami, and that’s what I call them.”

Someone needs to give Mr. Murphy a quick history lesson the Miami/Florida rivarly, as well as a sports almanac to learn him a lesson in winning and championships.

Last I checked, the Canes had five football national championships to the Gators’ two and had beaten Florida six straight times. Even with a UiF win this weekend, it’s still 5 titles to 2 and Florida will be 1-6 in their last seven meetings with their oldest state rival.

While nowhere near as classless and idiotic as Murphy, Tim Tebow got in a lick or two of his own after leading the Gator to victory on Saturday. Regarding his recruiting trip to Miami and taking in a game at the Orange Bowl:

“I am huge into the college environment and excitement, and you look around, and there were 30,000 empty seats,” Tebow said. “Then you come to Florida and you see this environment. … Wow, what a difference.”

What a shock, another Gator talking about the fan base and playing the Attendance Bowl. I guess Tebow missed the part of the tour where it was explained that Miami was a private school with upwards of 10,000 undergrads and an off-campus stadium in a big time city.

You don’t have to be a math major to break down the numbers. If Miami has 10K undergrads and gets upwards of 50K in the stadium on game day, isn’t that a better percentage than Florida packing over 90K into The Swamp when there are over 50K undergrads?

Of course the biggest mouth to chime in is one that won’t see the field this weekend and sports a 0-2 record against the Canes; current Miami Dolphins linebacker Channing Crowder.

When you underachieve and fall short, I guess all you can do is talk smack. Crowder’s 2003 Gators fell 38-33 at the Orange Bowl, after sitting on a 33-10 late third quarter lead. A year later, the two teams met in the Peach Bowl, where Miami rolled 27-10, behind a strong defensive and special teams effort.

Maybe the Gators would’ve had a fighting chance if Crowder saved his angst for the field, instead of getting arrested (twice) for brawling outside of night clubs and vandalizing cars.

Crowder has been in the ear of former Canes offensive lineman Vernon Carey, attempting to place a wager on the game and talk as much smack as he can muster up.

“Nobody is taking that bet anywhere in the world because Florida is just going to trample them,” said Crowder. “Jacory Harris was in P.E. six months ago, come on now. They don’t have a chance to beat the Gators, at all. I don’t know why people even talk about this. It’s a warm up game for the Gators.”

Crowder is proving to be another Gator in need of a history lesson. The only one in this series doing any trampling in recent memory have been the Canes. Florida last beat Miami in 1985 and hasn’t taken them to the woodshed since a 28-3 win in 1983, when the Canes went on to win eleven straight and their first national championship.

On Miami’s end, not a peep – outside of Leonard Hankerson, who diplomatically responded to Murphy’s rant. Hankerson and the rest of the Canes arrived to a Sunday night practice and had a copy of Murphy’s quote blown up and posted in their respective lockers.

“It definitely pumped us up,” Hankerson said. “We were already pumped up for this game, but now the guys are really getting excited. We all want to win bad. Right now, we feel like nobody in the nation respects Miami. We’re going to earn our respect.”

Since Murphy’s rant, head coach Urban Meyer has muzzled his barking dog and has made the receiver off limits to the media.

Safe to say the smack-a-thon will be put on ice and the next we’ll hear from both teams will be this Saturday at 8pm ET under the lights.

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