Taking Names and Keeping Score
Speed kills
Charlie Anderson
There is a caution that both my father and mother routinely gave me every time I got behind the wheel of a car when I was a teenager. As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, they continued to caution me in that area long after my teenage years and even into the years after I was grown with a family of my own.

Each time, one or the other of them and sometimes both, would tell me to drive carefully and remember, speed kills.Their obvious intent was to caution me that if I drove too fast, my risk of having an accident increased significantly and that the excess speed made it more likely that any accident I might be involved in would be more severe and possibly even fatal. My mother would also add in what my grandmother was credited with saying to her and that is to remember all the fools aren't dead yet'. As you might expect, it took some time but,what they were saying finally sunk in and later I even chose to use the same caution with my two sons as they grew up.

With that said, now let me move on into another area where 'speed kills' is an appropriate caution. That, as many of us who have kept up with changes in the sport world will tell you, is in any form of athletics. As many a coach has said, "there is no substitute for speed." That holds true for any sport but, no where is it more obvious than on the football field.

By now, most if not all of you have heard the final results of the BCS National Championship Game which pitted number one ranked and undefeated Ohio State against number two ranked and once defeated Florida. It was a match-up of the Big Ten Conference Champion and the SEC Conference Champion both of whom had been on the national championship stage in years past. It was also a pairing that sparked lengthy conversations and even disagreements between members of the national media and various football pundits. There were those who felt very strongly that Florida had unfairly been moved ahead of Michigan in the final poll before the BCS bowl lineup was set. That group was adamant that Michigan should get a rematch with Ohio State considering that their only loss to that point had come at the hands of the Buckeyes and by a close margin. Many, including some of the more prominent television annalist even intimated that Florida had very little chance of slowing down the vaunted Buckeye offense much less a chance to win the game. There were even some who went so far as to say that the SEC,normally recognized as one of the better conferences in the nation, was somewhat down this year.

Of course today, in hind site, I'm sure many of those who didn't give Florida a chance over the course of the last month, wish they hadn't been quite so emphatic in their observations and had hedged their bets some. That is particularly true for those who tooted Michigan's horn so loudly considering their debacle in the Rose Bowl against USC.

When all was said and done at the University of Phoenix stadium in Glendale,Arizona, on Monday night, it wasn't the power of the Ohio State offense or the stinginess of their defense that spelled doom for Florida but it was the precision of the Florida offense and the speed of their defense that killed the national championship hopes of the red and silver clad Ohio State faithful.

Add in Notre Dame's dismantling by LSU in the Sugar Bowl and the overall performance of all the SEC teams in the bowl season, including the ones that lost, and it would have to be said that the conference most commonly referred to as the speed conference sent a message to the rest of the football world that even when you think we're down, speed kills.

Until next time….…be safe!

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