Official pat-on-the-back prognostication post

Like many of you out there, I am avid devouring (as well as trying to decipher) the slew of pre-season college football publications, like Lindy’s and The Sporting News.

In reading Lindy’s take on Florida, note is made of the outstanding nature of Florida’s defense last year. A defense that led to a national championship per Lindy’s.

Which reminded me that we called “it” right here at Saurian Sagacity last October.

What did we call? Well, we pointed out in our October 11 post “What’s Different This Time” that Florida’s defense, at that point in the season, was on a path to be of national championship caliber.

In that post, we mentioned some “defensively famous national title teams”, and their average points against, as well as the most points given up during the season.

To recap, those teams were the following (most points given up in brackets).
Alabama 1992 – 9.4 (21)
Miami 2001 – 9.8 (27)
Ohio State 2002 – 13 (24)
LSU 2003 – 11 (24)

At the time of that post, the 6-0 Gators were surrendering only 9.5 points per game.

By season’s end, the overall defensive stat’s for the Gators looked thus –

Florida 2006 – 13.5 (28)

The 28 points was given up to Arkansas in the SEC title game.

While the 2006 UF squad didn’t quite hold opponents to the stingy numbers displayed by the teams above, it was enough to bring home a mythical national title.

The 2006 Gator defense was something special – and you heard it first here in October at SS.