FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Something, we hope, will be proven on the field Thursday night at Dolphin Stadium when Florida and Oklahoma play for the national championship.

One can hope both teams bring their best and the chips simply fall. It doesn’t happen often, a team losing on its best day, but what the Gators and Sooners have done since dropping their only game offers reason to believe one or the other might. Because if two teams bring their best, one must still lose.

So here’s hoping it’s a classic.

On the other hand, what’s already been proven in the buildup to Thursday night is you can take the child out of the foodfight and make him a sportswriter, a sports talking head or a sportscaster, but you can’t take the foodfight out of the child.

Or something like that.

It’s hard to avoid in our soundbite culture and yet Dominique Franks has never been so famous (or infamous) in Sunshine State.

Offering what seemed to be a fairly thoughtful answer, Franks responded to a direct question with a direct response when he said Florida quarterback Tim Tebow might rank No. 4 among Big 12 conference QBs.

Never mind that Franks was probably right; or, perhaps, wrong by not placing Tebow No. 5, behind Chase Daniel; or No. 6, behind Todd Reesing; or No. 7 behind Joe Ganz; or … all right, just having a little fun there. I’m sure Tebow would be among the top six quarterbacks in the Big 12.

The point is it was as if Franks had come out against the Everglades or Crockett and Tubbs or a free Cuba or he’d said Dwyane Wade belongs in the D-League.

There are all kinds of ways to break down the game, but who wants to talk about that when they can turn answers into spitballs?

Still, it was kind of fun.

Florida linebacker Brandon Spikes fired back with this line:

“You talk like that, he’s gonna make you pay for it. The last time a guy talked like that about him, he put 50 on ’em.”

Really, how great is that?

Not only does Spikes sound like Francis telling Sergeant Hulka and everybody else they better call him Psycho in “Stripes,” but if OU only does what it’s done each of its last last six games, Tebow can go right ahead and put up 50 and Florida will lose by at least eight points.