GAINESVILLE, Fla. – You know you’ve got a chance of a worthwhile entry when the Scott’s Shots caravan travels anywhere south of the Bay State. This entry will quickly dispel that faulty logic, but we offer it up anyway.

• If you haven’t been to the greater Gainesville area – and more specifically the sprawling campus home to about 48,000 students – you simply haven’t experienced life in College Football Country. And for us Nor-easters, it’s hard to comprehend on many levels. But know this: Even the fat chicks are good-looking here (the concealing benefit of sun, we suppose).

• Total number of hot-pressed Cuban sandwiches consumed by Shots: four in three days of meals. One, however was a actually a hot-pressed steak sandwich with tomatoes, onions and potato sticks. Soooooo. Gooooooood.

• If he stays for the seven years of his contract, new Head Gator, Urban Meyer stands to make upwards of $14 million. When the school released the contract info (on a Friday in early May) the AP reported: “Meyer’s base salary begins at $225,000 for the 2005 season and increases about $7,000 each year thereafter. He also receives $500,000 a year for his apparel contract, $300,000 annually for his radio and television contract and $200,000 annually for speaking to the school’s booster clubs.”

Winning a BCS national championship could get him another $400,000-plus in incentives.

By the way, the 200K for the booster club talks was money well-spent: Meyer is closing in on his 20th “Gator Gathering” and Shots caught the sold out event in Sarasota on Wednesday night. The crowd was relatively small (750 or so) seeing how some of the prior 16 had seen1200 boosters on hand to get an autograph, eat some steam-warmed vittles and hear the New Gospel of Gator Football from the new Pope Urban. ‘The New Football Coach’ (as opposed to the Ole Football Coach) had the high-rollers (more wine and cheesers than Rednecks in Sarasota) eating out of his hands. It was something to behold, and again, something that just doesn’t happen in places like Boston or New York or Philly.

• We’re not in a position to give you the front-runner for the Heisman (and we’d argue no one really is at this point), but let’s say this: If junior Chris Leak follows the offensive strategy set forth by Meyer and executes with reasonable efficiency, the likable, quiet Leak is going to have numbers too hard to ignore.

• We hear so much of how the Patriots have changed the way the competing NFL teams do business. Here’s the new coach of one of college football’s most important programs, Florida’s Urban Meyer, on what he gleaned from Bill Belichick on the coach’s pre-Draft visit to Gainesville:

“I love telling this story because I love the guy and I don’t really know him. About a month and a half ago I get a phone call and he says “Hi, this Coach Bill Belichick,” and I’m thinking it’s one of my friends and I’m about ready to go, “Yeah, this is Pete Rose.” And it really was him. He started asking about some of our players and said, ‘Well, I’d really like to come down and visit with you about your offense and about some of the players getting ready for the draft.” And I said, sure, I’d love to have you. I go, ‘Wow, a great opportunity to visit with the best coach going right now.’

So he came down and we started to talking to him. The one thing about Bill Belichick . . . if you think about his teams – I did watch the Super Bowl (despite not being an NFL fan) – and I watched the New England Patriots when I got the chance. But more importantly I like to read about what’s going on. The one thing about Bill Belichick’s team, the New England Patriots, there are no issues. You never hear about a guy form the Patriots getting in trouble on Main Street. You watch them play and you don’t see them do those silly things after a touchdown. They go hug their teammates. It’s the best team in all of professional sports. Think about that. They are the best – I don’t care basketball – I’ll fight ya and argue on that – but they’re the best team going.

Why are they the best team? Who’s their superstar? Tom Brady? Tom Brady is not a superstar, but he’s a great football player that raises the level of play of everyone around him. Tedy Bruschi. . . he’s not a superstar. What is he? He’s a great leader.

So Bill Belichick is sitting there and he wants to talk offense and different things and I keep asking about: ‘Coach, tell me about motivation. Tell me about discipline. Tell me about building a team. Tell me about teamwork. Tell me about attitude.’

And you can tell he’s getting a little upset with me because all he wants to do is draw circles on the board and talk about our players that they’re thinking about drafting. Finally I ask him again about something like that and he says listen, “At New England,” and this is verbatim the way he said it, he looked me right in the eye and said, “At New England, all we do is win Super Bowls.”

Isn’t that a hell of a deal?

Some people would say that’s arrogant or cocky. But that’s all they do – they don’t have those issues.

There are other guys who are superstars, but they can’t beat the Patriots.

What’s happened is he’s created, with the help of all his players and leaders on his team, he’s created a team that everyone wants to be like. I want to be like that. I had that at Utah with this last team. We had a great player – our quarterback (Alex Smith) was phenomenal, but he wasn’t one of those guys that brought attention to himself. Here’s a guy that circled the troops and made the average players around him play great.

If you don’t think that’s important, you haven’t really been reading the sports section with all the trouble these SEC schools and other schools – a bunch of kids acting like knuckleheads. If you don’t truly think that’s important then you don’t truly understand 18-22 year-olds. What they need is direction but they need direction from within that team.”

• Meyer’s rapidly rising Offensive Coordinator, Dan Mullen, confirmed how excited Meyer was to see Belichick: “It was flattering for all of us, because he sat in on some of our meetings and was really into it – you could see Belichick really paying attention. You want to be around successful people if you want to be successful so it was amazing to have The Guy – and he is the THE Guy right now – in our offices and I know Coach Meyer got a kick out of it.”

• They still haven’t quite figured out Iced Coffee down in these parts. They pour hot coffee over ice and shrug it off. It’s not brain surgery, but who are we to tell the locals how to run their businesses. They do, after all, have Sweet Tea and Hot Pressed Cubans. Soooooo. Goooooood

• The UF J School (Journalism) is an impressive campus attraction and has surely had some Gannett money pumped into its coffers. Shots walked into one auditorium to see if the kids still sleep during lectures, but class had yet to start and the air conditioning was cranked so high that anyone who dared fall asleep would surely suffer hypothermia. Which, we might add, makes for some interesting co-ed viewing in the chestial region. Nuff said.

• Shots had the pleasure of meeting Gator beat writer, Andy Staples, of the Tampa Tribune at Wednesday’s Sarasota Gator Gathering (in an old Sam’s Club that now serves as an International Convention Center – true story). A walk-on member of the 1996 National Champ, Gators, Staples saw the light and came to the press box. It’s always refreshing to see a new generation writer who really gets it (Michael Kruse, who starts at the St. Petersburg Times on June 6, comes immediately to mind – his farewell column in New York last week was worth the view, even if you have no idea of the places he’s discussing: (http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2005/05/22/mkbyew.htm).
Staples, during the hiring of Meyer, went to Utah and actually took one of Meyer’s wife’s spin classes she was teaching at a local gym. He then wrote about the experience. Let me ask you something? Would Mike Shalin or Mark Blaudschun ever give you college coverage like that. We think not.)

It’s not so much that young is always better, it’s just that young is often more creative and less jaded.

• Staples had been to seven of the 16 gator Gatherings and there were three other writers at the Sarasota event. Mostly, they were all just playing defense against each other JUST IN CASE Meyer said something of note. That’s a small sample of how competitive the Gator beat is in the Sunshine State.

• We went to the additional length of visiting The Swamp, a local institution that placed 8th in the Sports Illustrated on Campus Top 10 Sports Bar list, this past season (by the way, SIOC is a great mag that you probably never see, but should).

Any place that has a wide screen TV on the patio, thus fulfilling our outdoor dining AND hoops viewing mandate, is more than okay with us. The fact that several future Mrs. Shots littered the dining area was only the clincher.

Food, you ask? Average pub fare, but the point is there were future Mrs. Shots in attendance.

Gainesville, you had me at ‘Hello.’

• Joe’s Deli also gets the two thumbs up (in no small part due to the side of breasts that were serving my HPC), as does the strip mall sleeper Virtual Cuban. Lastly, we thank Steve at Mochanow for taking the pride and devotion it takes to personally steep our iced coffee and do it all with the joy of a wish-granter.

• The deadbolt and the chain were in full operation on Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Gainesville Marriott Residence Inn. The reason?

Parked next to the Scott’s Shots Alamo jalopy (a fire red Monte Carlo w/sun roof and w/o Sirius, XM or a navigation system), was a white Dodge Van, and according to its blue and gold decals, it belonged to the Florida State Extraditions department: Fugitive Unit.

It’s right about here where I need a good one-liner from Wheelman Bret Bearup. Wait. He’s not my wheelman, he’s Dan Wetzel’s.

• I need a wheelman. Someone who might ask: Where are they extraditing the fugitives to? Is Marriott a regular stop for all fugitives? Do Marriott Points carry over once you’ve been extradited to say, Gitmo? Wouldn’t the Days Inn or a Motel 6 be more befitting of a fugitive being extradited?

• And while we’re on the Wetzel subject (sort of), we have to extend an olive branch in our long-running feud over the merits of Highway Rest Stop Vending Machine Coffee. The return trip north up Route 75 on Wednesday past, led to a large coffee from the scary dispenser that I always claimed was just selling recycled truck oil from the big rigs that sleep in the lots.

Untrue indeed. For 70 cents I got sweetener AND lightener and just the right jolt of Joe to get be back to G’ville safe and sound – if not a bit wired.

The coffee is cost-effective, if nothing else. And fairly tasty.

• Couple of good t-shirts – as always on a TRUE college campus – but our favorite was probably the one carried at the aforementioned Swamp Restaurant. It read in a Miller Lite font: “It’s Meyer Time – Great Coach, Less Losses.”

Ron Zook, safe to say, is not missed, in these here parts.

• Other t-shirts spotted at the Gator Bazaar (held in conjunction with the Gator Gatherings) included a $2.99 special on the “SOS Spurrier” shirts that had surfaced last year when it was rumored that Stevie Wonder might return to G’ville (Shots got two because we have a rule about t-shirts under $3 – ‘Buy ‘em’); Got Urban? (Front); “We do! The Legend Has Arrived. Gainesville is ready to rock. (Back) We can’t fit any more phrases on this thing; and Urbanotors.

• The hourlong signing session wit Meyer was highlighted by a request to sign a custom-made birdhouse and at least two footballs where Meyer’s name wound up sharing space with that of Ron Zook. Said one woman who possessed the rare double-graph of Gator guys: “This one (Meyer’s signature) will be good for a while.”

• Shots always tends to compares youngish, up-and-coming guys with one John Calipari, because we were there to witness some of those early and middle years of Cal’s reign in Amherst. Meyer, at the least, equals Cal in terms of drive and desire. Before Wednesday’s talk in ‘Sota, Meyer had been recruiting in both Alabama and Mississippi (the benefits of having a University plane). . . Like Calipari, Meyer has some bravado that will not go over well in places like Tallahassee or Miami. At 41, he’s still young enough to get away with talking cool and having the kids believe it and the moms love it. . .There was a lot of talk about the 90s and returning to those days when the Gators had swagger and titles; the oft-touched Gator Head (which Meyer has temporarily removed from the Swamp_ and Meyer’s favorite “one percent of one percent,” which somehow is supposed to represent what it means to be a Gator.

• As sister papers go for the Boston Globe (ergo the New York Times) the Gainesville Sun falls somewhere between ‘awful’ and ‘unbearable.” The Hull Times, published once a week, is easily 10 times the quality.

• No Billy The Kid Donovan sightings, but we did glimpse a gymnastics practice upon our perusal around the O’Connell Center. You can sense how the mini-dome (it holds around 12,000) can get rocking for some of the more heated rivalry games. When you’re recruiting to a building that sits a bounce pass from the monstrosity known as Ben Hill Griffin, aka The Swamp, aka College Football’s Most Intimidating Venue, you’re half way there with a good portion of the kids. And Donovan has it rolling for sure.

• The Swamp itself loses some oomph when there’s no lines painted on the grass and nary a soul in the joint, but just the quick glimpse down into the bowl brings to mind the raucousness awaiting young co-eds and old alum alike come Sept. Three vs. Wyoming

• You travel a little bit and you star to see these FOX Sports Bars popping up at various airports and you wonder “How long until Tom Arnold is clearing tables at the Charlotte location in Terminal C?”

• Sad to read of the passing of Daron “Bubba” Stinson of Lake City, who, according to the Gainesville Sun report, “co-wrote. . . . ‘The Gator Chomp’. . . recorded by the band Highway 47 in 1990.”

A sampling of the lyrics: “Down in Gainesville, they’ve got a big swamp/Got a mean alligator behind every stump/All these gators are tried and true/’Cause we whipped Tennessee and Florida state, too.”

Personally, I was always fond of the rap version of that ditty.

• You do realize that Florida has a grand total of ONE national championship (1996), right? They own the SEC, and have since 1990, but this program needs to re-establish its national dominance and the weight of that chore is squarely on Meyer’s shoulders.

And then, upon our return to the Peninsula Town of Note, we find it necessary to offer these observations:

• Shots takes off for four days and the two most irrelevant guys in the region’s “fringe media” – Eddie Andelman and Steve Dirt Dog Silva – wind up gaining some relevance for, once again, being irrelevant.

Andelman hasn’t said anything worth hearing since 1986 and he’s grasping at straws by trying to pick on the big boys down the dial. Problem is, no one cares. The only thing worse than having Sporting News run 1510 into the ground would be having Andelman do it. Go away, Eddie, and take your bitterness, pettiness and come to think of it, your sons, with you. . . As for Silva – The Globe deserves everything they get with this bozo. He’s left unregulated at a time when more supervision is needed at all levels of True News Organizations. Some parts of his site are updated, others aren’t and even others are simply too confounding to understand. He’s not a journalist and wouldn’t know where to begin with a definition of one. But the Globe lets him continued unfettered and it won’t be until the inevitable major lawsuit that they clean up his sad act.

Both “gentlemen” have overstayed their welcome on the local scene. And that’s being kind.


• After more than a few requests from our dedicated readership to provide us with the name (and/or contact numbers/marriage proposal parameters) for the Mercury Spokeswoman, we have hit paydirt with a couple of tips from sharp Shots’ fans: The woman of our desires is Jill Wagner, a former cast member of the awful Ashton Kutcher MTV joint, “Punk’d” and was also the subject of a slutted-up Maxim spread, available at their website. I like her better in the Mariner or Montego, personally, but I’m old school, as you know.

Here’s how Shots’ correspondent Robert of Needham described our Mercury Mama: “Hi Dave,. . . a few Google clicks and some surfing took me to Jill Wagner. Not much on her except the link below. Jill certainly makes watching those boring NBA games on TNT more appealing. Her commercials are in heavy rotation and I could almost count on one per commercial break…http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/PersonDetail/personid-260104 Keep up the good work. Robert, Needham, MA

• Babbling Bob Lobel’s “25 in 25” on Sunday night, was as My Boss Bruce pointed out on Monday, riveting TV for any Boston Sports Fan. The Three Bobs – Lobie, Neumie and Ryan – offered a good dose of “I was there” insight and the Buckner sound byte from almost three weeks before the ’86 Game 6 World Series was indeed, chilling. After a week of Get Fuzzygate, the “Sports Final” special was a reminder of just how much sports news Lobel has delivered to our eyes and ears over the years. He has lost a step in recent years and that time frame coincides with Boston’s most glorious sports experiences so his foibles are magnified. But Lobel has persevered like few of his peers and that was evident throughout the retrospective. . . Credit CBS4 for running the 25 minutes uninterrupted and then allowing the Bobs to chat it up for an extended period. The temptation would have been to cut the segment up into three or four bits and talk after each bit – we’re guessing the Jeep sponsorhip helped alleviate that need and made for much better viewing. . . Now with the pleasantries disposed of, we do have to ask: What was Lobel talking about when he asked us to “watch out for the priest” prior to the running of the package? Sounded like a catholic school warning to new students and was never followed up upon by Lobie. . .The Get Fuzzy story appears to have a bunch of layers that sound more deserving of a story line on Desperate Housewives than in a local media story.

• Boy, sure did get bitter waiting 40 minutes for luggage and then being re-routed all over Boston after exiting Logan.

I’ll be better after a weekend of sun, fun and Sox-Yanks.

Enjoy the weekend, and for one last time: Go Gators!

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. and can be reached at shots@bostonsportsmedia.com