ESPN/Andrea: Are you willing to come out with the truth at any point soon?

I know that the job of the Worldwide Leader in Snorts is to purport these competitions to be legitimate and above the table.

But a comment from ESPN's Andrea Adelson about the recent firing of Florida football Dan Mullen struck me, and tweaked by antennae:

In asking what Mullen's greatest flaw was, Adelson said:

"Let me take you back to a foggy night in Gainesville nearly one year ago, when Florida ranked No. 6 in the country and its long-shot College Football Playoff hopes were still alive. Depleted LSU waltzed into the Swamp and came away with a 37-34 win after Marco Wilson threw his shoe -- resulting in a 15-yard penalty that set up the winning field goal. Ever since the shoe toss, Florida is 2-8 against Power 5 opponents."

Adelson then says the shoe toss cannot be considered the point where everything changed...

I, for one, would care to disagree.

They have defeated Tennessee and Vanderbilt, two teams who should NOT have football programs anymore, for their only two Power 5 wins since the incident.  (I said it, @ me, I don't care...)

They've lost six of those eight by one touchdown or less...

I said the following on December 16th of last year after the incident, after calling for his suspension or expulsion from the University of Florida:

"But, then, it does leave you asking one material question:   

What, short of a suspicious act, possesses you to do THAT in that situation?

Same question I asked about the guy from Ole Miss who literally dog-pissed his team out of a bowl bid and a loss in the Egg Bowl...

If football is THAT IMPORTANT, then should he not be actionable, both as a function of Student Conduct policies, but a real question of the man's character, integrity, and whether he was actually part of fixing a game??"

There are only two real possibilities -- and, yes, I am going to say this now goes far further than Marco Wilson or just the one game, but has now permeated the Florida program:

Either:

1. You are purporting students who are so inept and stupid that they couldn't even get the words "Do you want fries with that?" out, (And, given some of the reports we've heard over years and decades, this cannot be ruled out...)
2. Or you have a match-fixing scandal at the University of Florida and you (and ESPN) refuse to admit it.

The word "recruiting" came up as a remedy for all this, and that would be obvious -- if it weren't equally obvious that all I have to do, as a recruiter from Alabama (or Georgia, or Clemson), is walk over to any prominent high school football player in the state of Florida and say "Play with the best, or go down like the rest.  Champions see The Show.  Champions get The Dough.", and that should be the end of the discussion, especially in the post-NIL model of what is left of college sports.

Florida, you're like USC, UCLA (and if the crowd at that rivalry game didn't tell people volumes on Saturday in LA!!!), Nebraska, etc.

YOU'RE DONE.

Why do you think that the top teams are multiple-touchdown favorites over Top 15 opponents?

We have superteams in college football because no one wants to admit that no one wants to play for a loser.

So when is ESPN going to admit that a lot of these name programs are just plain DONE and should no longer merit real discussion or time on the network?

(And that -- see above -- is the BENIGN answer to that question.  That doesn't get into the possibility that the Florida drug gangs which make Pop Warner football a professional enterprise and gamble on it haven't permeated the likes of the Florida program and created a match-fixing situation!)