5-0?

- It's put up or shut up time for the Tide, and I'm strangely calm. Last week I was sweating bullets over the Arkansas game when everyone else was all "USC hung 70 on them!", but that's what made me nervous. At some point the real Reggie Herring would have to stand up and what better time than the week after an old fashioned ass whipping? Further, they pounded the ball for something like 280 yards rushing against a Trojan defense that should have held them to less. Arkansas was underrated coming into the game and it made me nervous. Bama always seems like it believes it's own hype and screws up in trap games like that. It's like what Bryant said about his late seventies teams, they were used to winning and didn't see themselves as the underdogs fighting for respect anymore. I know this team isn't used to winning, but after all the praise they got for whipping Spurrier on the road and the hype about Bama's backticity their heads had to be getting a little big. Anyway, we survived Arkansas, thankfully, and it's made me even more confident. Arkansas isn't Florida by any stretch of the imagination, but seeing Bama make mistake after mistake and play a terrible game and then still manage to finish had to be heartening for every Crimson Tide fan out there. We've had two seasons (three if you count Fran's snatching defeat from the jaws of victory against OU, UGA, and Auburn in 2002) where we were in every game we played but never could put the other team away and now it's looking like those problems have been worked out and Bama is ready to resume it's rightful place in both the SEC and College Football as a whole. Besides pulling a W while playing lousy, they made enough mistakes for the coaches to get all over them during this week's prep for Florida and you know those receivers won't be dropping a damn thing after seeing their lousy performances on film and Harper won't be getting stiff armed this weekend after Kines is through with him.

- Florida? I respect the Gators, but not the spread option. In all the hype over the Urban Meyer offense no one thought to look at the other side of the ball, and I'm impressed by their defense's agressive nature. This weekend could very easily turn into a low scoring slug fest, which I like, even if the left arm tinglies do return. I'm calling 17-14 Bama.