Chad Smith

BATON ROUGE, La. — Heading into Tiger Stadium on Saturday evening, we had to walk through a gauntlet of liquored- and revved-up LSU fans who, naturally and understandably, took their share of potshots. Most of the taunting involved Florida’s quarterback and Second Coming of Wuerffel, Spurrier and Jesus Christ combined, Tim Tebow.

The most creative jab came in the form of a mannequin, creepily stripped bare save for a sign on its chest: “Tebow circumcised me.” Perfectly acceptable.

But the not-so-good-natured-yet-strangely-endearing roasting turned nasty minutes before the game. No, not when a group of Florida players jumped on the eye of the tiger at midfield. I was getting a hot dog and didn’t witness that. This had nothing to do with fans, players or coaches but with whatever staff member puts together the Tigers’ pre-game video montage (which, I must say, was about as lame as most universities’ TV spots that almost without fail will show a. the pastoral campus, b. the multicultural group lounging at the student union and c. a professor and student intently staring into a beaker).

First of all, I’m not sure why said staffer felt it necessary to include clips of the Gators. I’m assuming it’s a weekly thing, showing footage of the Tigers’ opponent. Personally, I found it sophomoric, even for the 128th-ranked university in the country. Lame strike No. 2. But when the clip reel included the vicious hit Tebow suffered at Kentucky I lost my shit. Here, in the week leading up the game, you had LSU coach Les Miles and his players saying all the right things about wanting Tebow to bounce back, to be OK, to be on the field. Then to show that “highlight”? That was about as classy as the LSU offense was prolific.

In the end, though, Tebow lined up in victory formation, took the snap and took a knee, and I could look up at the video board and smile: UF 13, LSU 3. See if they show that shit in two years.

ABOARD AIRTRAN FLIGHT 450 — I’m 30,000 (or something) feet in the air, somewhere between Atlanta and New Orleans, getting more nervous by the minute about the impending game Saturday night at Death Valley.

I just read an article in The New York Times (print edition, duh) about Tim Tebow’s concussion. Before that I read a column by ESPN’s Pat Forde on the (gray) matter (I stole Forde’s pun). Earlier, in the Atlanta airport, a CNN anchor mentioned Tebow, and it gave me pause. I doubt we’ll know whether he’ll play until 8 p.m., when the ball is kicked off at Tiger Stadium, but I had myself convinced that he would. As the game nears and the speculation intensifies, doubts are creeping in.

OK. The plane is beginning its descent into the Crescent City. The last time I arrived here for a football game was late December 1996. A few days later, Florida avenged its loss to hated in-state rival Florida State to win the Sugar Bowl — and its first national championship.

Good sign? In the airspace over a state rife with voodoo, I’ll take it as such.

They say it takes a lifetime for an empire to fall (to quote the Boston hardcore band The Suicide File). Really, as we found out Saturday, it only takes as long as it takes a defensive end to come off tackle unscathed and wollop your wunderkind, Christlike, saintly, promise-keeping, doesn’t-just-walk-but-runs-for-touchdowns-on-water quarteback.

I was in the newsroom last Saturday evening, feeling good that the Gators were manhandling Kentucky in the third quarter and were about to put more points on the board. Then, all of a sudden, on a third down, the world stopped. I was looking at my monitor when a sports writer says something like, Whoa, did you see that hit?

“What?” I asked and looked up. “Is that Tim?”

Then the clock started ticking on the longest five minutes in the 103-year history of University of Florida football. I’ve seen big hits, but Jesus, I’ve never seen anything like that. At least not to a Florida player. Let alone the greatest Florida player ever. Let alone (probably) the greatest college football player ever.

I was anxious about my (and the Gators’) trip to Death Valley on Oct. 10 before The Hit. Now I have no idea what to think. It will be interesting to see how Louisiana State stacks up against Georgia between the hedges. No matter, it will be a whole other ball game, a whole other world when the Gators, the No. 1 team in the universe, take to the field at Tiger Stadium. And if No. 15 isn’t suiting up, I don’t know if I’ll want to be in that world. I hope the players don’t feel the same way.

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Attorneys, bailiffs, the alleged victim and her family scrambled around the courtroom, and I was shooed into the hall, the courtroom locked, and no one told me what was happening. But from what I overheard and observed, I knew something Shakespearean had just happened. And I knew I had a Shakespearean story to write. I couldn’t do much but wait in the courthouse hallway, so I took a beat, looked out the third-floor window and thought something like, Oh, my god. This is the craziest shit I’ve ever covered.

The defendant in the sexual battery trial I had been covering all that week, William Telano Evans, had not shown up after the jury announced it reached a verdict. He wasn’t in court 20 minutes later when the judge decided to have the verdict read anyway. And he wasn’t there to hear the words jury foremen rarely utter in St. Johns County: “not guilty.”

At some point during the roughly 130 minutes it took the jury to deliberate, Evans got into his truck, drove home and shot himself. He was found dead a matter of minutes after the verdict was read.

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After the game Saturday I was walking around the southwest corner of the stadium when I saw a sign that read, “RIP Lane Kiffin 5.9.75-9.19.09.” Naturally, this made me smile and as I was getting out my iPhone to photograph it, two Tennessee staffers, pictured above in those horrendous burnt orange adidas polos, came walking by.

A passing Florida fan talked a little shit, though I can’t remember what he said. Homeboy pushing the cart paused and was trying really, really hard to think of something to say. Then his colleague insisted he shrug it off. So he muttered something profane and continued down Stadium Road.

After chatting with an Alligator photographer I ran into, I grabbed the sign from the wall and went to meet up with the Record reporter covering the game. (Interestingly, I opened The New York Times on Sunday, and the game story made reference to the sign to describe the mob mentality awaiting Kiffin in Gainesville.) I have no idea what in the hell I’m going to do with it — the aforementioned reporter suggested making it a shower curtain. At the very least, it will serve as a reminder that Lane Kiffin is an asshole and will keep me motivated to sing the hell out of “We Are the Boys” if I’m in Knoxville come Sept. 18.

Just had some chicken and Gatorade, and I’m ready for kickoff.

There’s a tailgate nearby flying an orange and blue Confederate flag. We do football right here in the South, but there are some areas where we could use improving.

‘Neath the orange and blue victorious
Our love shall never fail
There’s no other name so glorious
All hail, Florida, hail
University of Florida alma mater

I’ve decided to chronicle my experiences of the 2009 college football season — either from the stands or in front of the TV — because, well, Florida football is the one thing in the world I love more than Morrissey, and I think I’ve blogged that horse to death. There is little to report about the first two games — just watched the bloodbaths at home over frozen pizza. So, just as it does for the team, my real season starts Saturday.

Saturday, oh Saturday: “Rocky Top,” Lane Kiffin, Smokey, that shade of orange that both resembles vomit and induces it, the dumb camo hats emblazoned with that even dumber T. They’ll all be at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Saturday, and my blood is boiling just thinking about it.

There have been few regular season games I have looked forward to more than this one. I know the Vols are shells of their former selves, but their fucking coach has put such a target on their backs that their shoddy record over the last few years matters not. Not that Florida ever takes Tennessee lightly. But I have a feeling a 40-point win would be extra sweet for Urban Meyer and Co. this year after the shit Kiffin talked over the summer. Dude was in the league for 10 minutes and couldn’t keep his yap shut. At least Mark Richt was holding on to his gig like grim death when he pulled his stunt in Jacksonville in 2007. Sure, Richt won that battle. But war is hell, and he’ll learn that.

Saturday, Kiffin gets his first lesson.

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Six years and two months ago my friend Sean died of leukemia. Today he would have turned 23.

A few years ago, my friend Tom, who had been in a pop-punk band with Sean, wrote a song about his death. Now every Aug. 10 I listen to the song and think about the two of them and our lost time.

This course is marked and you’re setting sail
Ready to depart this broken world
These winds won’t die until you make it home
And that’s where we want to be
But it’s too much for us now
This water’s just too deep for us to tread it with you

So pack up a piece of me and leave your love behind
This loss is victory and I know that you are fine
But it’s still taking every part of me to make this come out right
I know this is not goodbye

This tide is slowly fleeting and this current remains strong
But no one knows what hour’s left until they both are gone
These words will never leave me
I’ll use them to hold on
I’ll take a breath and sing each note in memory of you

I was listening to the song at about 2:30 this morning, driving east on State Road 206 coming back from Gainesville. Given the hour, there were few other cars on the road. But a few miles from the Matanzas River one came from the other direction.

As we were about to pass, a fox darted into the road from my left. I braked quickly but couldn’t stop. From the clunk coming from underneath my car, I thought the fox must have died. I had never hit an animal before, and I wasn’t ready for how unsettling that noise was. With the dark and the condensation covering the rear window, though, I couldn’t see if it was still in the roadway or had limped away.

Even if it had made it to the shoulder, I doubt it would have survived. But I don’t know for sure. So, as I drove over the river, I thought about the fox and my friend and hoped they both made it home. Whatever that means.

In high school, before MySpace took its place, LiveJournal was the shit, and my LJ handle was rooney_eats_it. People would occasionally ask, Is that referring to Jason Schwartzman’s brother’s shitty band? And I’d emphatically reply, No, retard! Edward R. Rooney!

Ed Rooney, of course, was the dean of students at Ferris Bueller’s high school. Most people evidently fail to notice the graffiti on the school bus toward the end of the movie that reads, “Rooney eats it!!” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” ranked near the top of my list for a long time, before I developed a more sophisticated taste. But, as I tweeted earlier, I still laugh whenever someone says the words “nine times.”

So I was reflective tonight when I read that John Hughes died at 59. Hughes wrote and directed “Ferris” along with a slew of other quintessential teen angst movies of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Not only did I grow up watching his films, thus a natural connection to them, but they captured the insanity that was and is being a teenager in America, whether in 1986, when I was born and when “Ferris” was released, or in 2004, when I graduated from high school, or now.

Not to mention that he taught us “each one us is a brain and an athlete and a basket case and a princess and a criminal.”

Got a bike, a Raleigh Technium 420 (ironically), about a week ago. Since the above photograph was taken brakes have been installed. Now I need a helmet. I don’t want to go out riding a fixed-gear down A1A. There are worse ways, sure, but no thanks.

In any event, I haven’t felt this attached to a bike since the 5th grade, when I had a Robinson Rebel. In those days, bikes were independence. In the summertime we would ride all over town, sometimes aimlessly or sometimes to a friend’s house, just because we could. Needless to say, that changed in high school, when the first of the gang got a car. Also needless to say, I don’t have that kind of energy anymore, not to mention that I now start dripping sweat in the time it takes to walk from my front door to my car.

But my goal is to be able to get the point where I can saddle up (that’s what the commentators said during the Tour de France) and ride for hours. Either way, I’m still not inspired by Lance Armstrong. Take that, America.