FRZ Editor's Note 12-8-2004

Since fireronzook.com has been taken down I thought it would be appropriate to post as much material from that site here as possible. The posts are dated by original publication date.

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Believe it or not, I'm sitting on a train between Brussels and Amsterdam right now, writing my final Editor's note. It's rather appropriate given the fact that during the past 3 years I've felt pretty removed from Florida football. Now you may think, how can that be possible? You've written about Florida football and Ron Zook this entire time! Not exactly true. As you all know by now, this was not really Florida football. This was a bad dream that we can now finally wake up from.

Don't get me wrong...there were some good things that happened. We got Chris Leak. We beat FSU in Doak Choke the Chicken in Campbell Poop Soup stadium. We got ESPN to actually say the words "thong undapant." Who else in the world can actually make that claim!

We also realized the strength of the Gator Nation. As an Alum, this was something I figured I understood very well coming out of college. But over the past three years, the letters and feedback that we've received have been overwhelming. It's no secret that we Florida fans love our football team. It's one of the reasons Florida is the best damn school in the land (with the quality of our co-eds and our parties still sitting rock solid in the top 3.)

Overall, it's been a learning experience. We learned that even the fans who can't afford to give the big bucks can make a substantial impact. We've given other schools, as well as our own, a tough lesson in due diligence and finding the right person for the job, instead of simply picking your golfing buddy. Some said that we gave the university a black eye. We've learned that by losing enough games, those people changed their minds pretty quickly. In the end, we learned Ron Zook is a great recruiter with a good heart, and we learned that sometimes pushing for a change can be confused with attacking someone personally.

We hope you've enjoyed the ride. Based on your letters, we know you saw in this website a dose of therapy as much as we did. It was tough to write the content 2 hours after a huge upset loss, but when the article was written, I somehow felt vindicated. As readers, you told us you somehow did too.

I would like to sincerely thank the fans of the site that stuck with us. Those of you on the message board who kept the site active and alive...you are the true Gator football fans. We provided the means, you provided the substance.

I would also like to thank my fellow FRZ writers. If you've listened to the interviews, you probably know there were about 7 of us who regularly contributed in some form or fashion to this site. So a big thank you to Mike, Roy, Rich, GQ, Quickie and Ed. If you would have told me three years ago that this site would have appeared in print in any newspaper around the world, I would have laughed at you.

Finally, special thanks to my mom...who would simply give a coy smile when her co-workers talked about what they had read on FireRonZook the day before and unknowingly threw compliments at her son.

Urban Meyer will be a great coach, I fully support him and wish him the best of luck. His style of coaching will be exactly what we need to put UF back on top.

It's great to be a Florida Gator. Go Gators!

Mark