This Florida/Alabama thing that we were somehow convinced was a significant football game has finally ended, and it turns out that Alabama is still Alabama and Florida is still a Muschamp-ian version of Florida. 42-21 was your final. It was not that close.
The much-hyped individual matchup was Florida corner Vernon Hargreaves III against Alabama receiver Amari Cooper, and that one was stopped in the early rounds due to excessive bludgeoning. Cooper had 175 yards … at the half. Hargreaves wasn't covering him for all of those, but he was there for a lot of them.
The first half was a statistical bloodbath, but remained close on the scoreboard because Alabama kept dropping the football, but the second half was your more traditional, all-encompassing bloodbath. It wasn't until the third quarter that Alabama quit playing around and started gutpunching Florida with Derrick Henry and TJ Yeldon. They then embarked on three straight 60+ yard touchdown drives, two of them ending with Amari Cooper scoring touchdowns in front of Florida defenders who are not nearly as good at football as he is.
[Photo credit: Getty Images]