I quit reading when I got to “Poodles” (the same way you would have quit reading any article that referred to Florida as the “Gayturds”), but the idea that a frequently-investigated guy on the television committee would have been in a position (or had the desire) to get an annual rival put on probation during an era in which probation routinely was accompanied by television bans is treading into tinfoil hat territory.

As for 1990, Galen Hall was fired midway through the 1989 season; the Florida administration evidently thought he’d done something wrong. (He was not the first Gator coach to be fired partway into a season, by the way; that’s how Hall got the job.) Florida was found guilty of a major violation within five years of being found guilty of a major violation. Harsh sanctions are a given. Would Dooley, who by then was athletic director but not head coach (and, hence, was mostly concerned with the revenue side of things) have exposed Florida to the possibility of the death penalty (SMU was just four years before, after all), knowing how much the loss of the annual game with Florida would have hurt Georgia financially? That’s crazy talk.

Don’t get me wrong . . . we hate each other, in a friendly sort of way, but our partisanship stops at the water’s edge (the water in question being the St. John’s River, of course). We don’t rat each other out, if for no other reason than the fact that, in the 1980s, it would have been like Robert Shaw calling out Paul Newman for “cheating better than me.” We’re civilized rivals who drink together, before and after; we’re not Alabama and Tennessee, for crying out loud!