ABSTRACT
So this is it. This is the stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor of those perennial Sports Illustrated exposés claiming to offer the “exclusive and uncensored” take on our favorite franchises. This is sacred ground, unpolluted by sportswriter sharks and Vegas bookies, where nineteen-year-old giants get to be nineteen-year-old kids. It would be difficult for anyone to mask intimidation here, stashed away in the bathroom corner of a shoebox of a locker room at Jacksonville Coliseum, just within earshot of my official introduction to life on the road. We are nearing midseason, and the Florida Gator men’s basketball team finds itself down by four points at halftime to a drastically undermanned but home-standing Jacksonville University Dolphin squad.
