NCAA Football Player of the Week: Caleb Sturgis

Picasa is making me a little angry at the moment. I've been trying -- unsuccessfully -- to upload my photos from last weekend's visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to my Web Albums for the past week, and it's still not working. I'm working my way through Picasa's list of "Troubleshooting Tips" now. Hmmph.

Never mind. It's time to name this week's Stilettos on the Gridiron NCAA Football Player of the Week!

This week's honoree is Florida Gators kicker Caleb Sturgis. I know, I know -- I'm a huge Gators fan, and for that reason this pick might seem biased (I refer anyone who is skeptical of my ability to be objective to the post about last week's honoree). Caleb is this week's honoree because, with 9 seconds left in the Arkansas game on Saturday, he kicked a game-winning field goal, delivering the Gators a victory in a game that really could have gone either way. To everyone's surprise (including the CBS commentators, who didn't even attempt to hide their surprise), the conference match-up between my beloved Gators and the Arkansas Razorbacks was a hard-fought battle. Truth be told, the Razorbacks easily could have won the game (there were tons of mistakes on both sides of the field), but the Razorbacks' kicker chose an amazingly inopportune time to miss a field goal in the fourth quarter. Fortunately for Gators fans, after missing a 37-yard field goal in the first quarter and then making a career-high 51-yard field goal early in the second half, Caleb Sturgis punctuated what had been an erratic performance with the field goal heard around the world (and by the world, I mean Gainesville).

Saturday's game wasn't perfectly executed (few of Florida's recent games have been). Nevertheless, the Gators pulled out a win -- something they would not have done had it not been for the cool action of Florida's sophomore kicker (so cool, in fact, that Sturgis had the sense of mind to encourage his teammates to take it down a notch when they clamored around him after he sent the football sailing between the goal posts at the end of the game, thus diffusing what may have become an "excessive celebration."

For not letting an early miss discourage him from going on to set a personal record and make an outcome-determinative field goal, Caleb Sturgis is this week's NCAA Football Player of the Week.

Caleb, this trophy's for you:
Congratulations. And on behalf of Gators fans everywhere, thank you.