A Plea For the Gators to STOP WINNING CHAMPIONSHIPS!!

Dear Florida Gators,

I write to you pleading for your help in some personal issues I am having at home. Can you please, for the love of God, please STOP WINNING CHAMPIONSHIPS!! It is hurting me psychologically, emotionally, and financially. Enough already.

You see, my husband is a Gator alumni, and therefore a huge Gator fan. (Let's call him 'Catorghuckie' to protect his identity). And he does his best to live up to the origin of the word 'fan'... because he is truly a fanatic about the Gators.

It's bad enough that I have to put up with Catorghuckie's annual trek to Las Vegas for the first weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament (flight, hotel, food, drink, gambling...you can imagine the cost associated with this trip!!),

There's that one weekend every July when Catorghuckie will come home from a routine trip to the grocery store with about 10 pre-season football magazines published by Lindy's, Sporting News, Athlon, and a throng of others. At $5-6 each, that's about $60 he spends annually just on these magazines. And then I lose him as a husband and father for the full weekend as he 'analyzes' each magazine down in his man-cave.

And I'm already sacrificing every Saturday in the fall (well, except for those two lovely BYE dates...woo hoo!) when I don't see Catorghuckie because he goes down into the man-cave to watch college football all day, of which I know I am an enabler because I also allow our annual purchase of the entire Full Season ESPN Gameplan for those one or two games that the Gators play which are not on national tv.

These things I have learned to put up with.

However, whenever the Gators are 'in the running' for a National Championship (which recently seems like it's been every year in every sport), Catorghuckie exudes additional symptoms:

* Catorghuckie will lobby me to allow him to make a trip to the championship games, regardless of cost (of the 2 basketball and 3 football championships, I've successfully fended off 3 of these attempts).

* Catorghuckie does nothing around the house for the days leading up to the championship game (he says he's too nervous to wash dishes, do laundry, or read to the kids before bed).

* Catorghuckie either throws a big party at our house to watch the game (which I have to clean up), or goes to the bar and drinks way too much during the game and is non-functional the next day. Bar tab is usually over $100, and there is nothing worse than sleeping next to a guy who smells like a he's been in a bar all night.

* And then, over the following weeks when he should be spending time with his family, Catorghuckie instead spends hours on-line making non-budgeted purchases of championship clothing and memorabilia to either wear or stash somewhere in his basement man-cave. Let's see, a basketball signed by the entire 2007 Gator basketball team, a winter snow hat in the shape of a Gator football helmet, a piece of the Final Four basketball court from Indianapolis, and a coconut with the Florida Gators logo painted on it is just a small sample of the silly (and expensive) things that he buys.

It's for these additional symptoms that I desperately implore you to help me out by stopping it. Stop winning National Championships, darn it. There was a time when you won a national championship once every 10 years, and were happy just to make it to a Final Four. I can deal with that timing...once a decade was the perfect frequency for me to have deal with his madness. But 4 championships in 3 years??? Come on!!! I can't take any more!

Can you please do something to help me out? Is there any way to bring back Ron Zook or Gary Darnell to coach football? How about bringing back Don DeVoe for basketball? Just anything to keep all of these championships from happening. My psyche (and finances) are in dire need of an intervention here.

Thank you ahead of time for anything you can do to address this issue.

Signed,

Mrs. Gatorchuckie