Lessons on perseverance from two of my favorite sports teams.

Let's face it: the Florida Gators are playing more like a high school JV team than a 3-time national championship team from the SEC. (And yes, the SEC is the best conference in college football.) Well, today they opened conference play against Texas A&M. This is Texas A&M's first conference game in the SEC, first game ever after joining the SEC, and first game ever against Florida. The game started off looking like a typical SEC defensive slug-fest: it took TAM almost 5 minutes to march the field, and they only came away with a field goal. As son as Florida's offense to the field, they lit up TAM like a cheap firework show. Then, Florida started to suck. Florida could not contain TAM's offense, and they never made it back into TAM's side of the field. They ended the first half down 17-7, with less than 100 yards total offense. The game was completely different in the second half. TAM had ZERO total yards offense in the 3rd quarter, and Florida outscored TAM 13-0 to win, finishing with 280 total yards offense. (Okay, 280 is nothing to brag about, but we won, and that's what matters.)

Then, tonight was the final NASCAR race before "the chase" ( NASCAR's playoffs) begin next Sunday. (Click here to learn about how "the chase" works.) Well, Jeff Gordon, who's been my favorite driver since I was 7, was 12 points behind Kyle Bush for the 2nd Wild Card position. This means he has to finish 13 spots ahead of Kyle Bush to make the chase. Jeff started 2nd and led the first 2 laps of the race. Then, his car just bit it. He was running some of the slowest lap times of the field and his car did not handle properly. His team tried and tried and tried to fix whatever it was but didn't make any difference. At lap 192 (of 400) he was 1 lap down (meaning he had been passed by the leader once) and in 25th, while Kyle Bush was in the top 10. After a short rain delay in lap 193, Jeff's crew did something (probably a sacrifice to the NASCAR Gods) and all of sudden Jeff had the fastest car on the track. He got his lap back, drove his way all the way around to 4th, fell back to 12th and a lap down again after pitting, made up that lap too and finished 2nd. Kyle Bush finished 15th. He is now in the NASCAR playoffs again, and he has a chance to win his 5th championship. 

In other news, K-Med is not mortal. His guy can toss a baseball. He and the Atlanta Braves (My favorite Baseball Team) whooped the NY Mets 11-3. 

It's been a wonderful day in the world of athletics.