I arrived in Atlanta tonight for the annual Florida-Alabama game. Oops. I mean the SEC Championship game. And it's going to be a cold one!

Of course, once the game starts, I am an impartial, unbiased reporter. But for now, GO GATORS! And, while I'm at it ... GO LONGHORNS! The reporter and the Gator in me have been waiting for that matchup for a year, along with the rest of the college football world. Let's hope we all aren't robbed of Tebow-McCoy this year. That will be a good one.

Check back for updates throughout the weekend, or follow me on Twitter at @roenigka.

If I didn't mention it already, It's cold here in the dirty south. So cold, that tomorrow, local weather forecasters are calling for gameday snow. Yep. You read that right. Chances of snow flurries throughout the day—at the SEC Championship game. In Atlanta! What the heck is going on?!

This afternoon, I headed over to the Georgia Dome for back-to-back press conferences. Urban Meyer first, followed by a photo op interlude, and then Nick Saban. I won't bore you with the details. Press conferences always feel empty to me. Reporters asking empty questions followed by, in this instance, coaches, responding with empty answers. Every once in a while someone slips in a good ask or a coach or athlete actually answers a question sufficiently or provides a great anecdote or real emotion. But those moments are few and far between. And they rarely come the day before the game.

So, instead, I like to observe press conferences. Because the interesting stuff isn't in the questions and answers. It's in the in-between. Some observations from today ...

- Coach Meyer says he holds Nick Saban in the same esteem as his other coaching idols, Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler. However, when Meyer called Saban looking for a coaching position when Saban was at Toldeo, Saban never called back.

- Journalist: "Urban, How do you react to Lane Kiffin saying Bama has the coaching edge in this game?" Urban Meyer: "No comment." / Saban's first comments praising Florida were that the Gators were "probably well prepared and pretty well coached."

- Coach Saban began his session by thanking the media for "all you do" and for our "interest in Alabama football and college football in general." He said that his players don't know how to express their gratitude, but they know that without the media, they would not be up for national awards. "I just want to thank you all," he said. Then he spent the next 30 minutes lambasting the media for placing unnecessary expectations on players, creating speculation and controversy, and thinking he thinks about things he doesn't think about.

- My favorite part of Saban's conference was monitoring his constant misuse of air quotes. It was as if his hands had a mind of their own. Saban is well known for speaking with his hands, but someone should teach his hands the correct use of this symbol. It is not to emphasize words like "statistically" or "Ingram." The scene reminded me of the episode of Friends where Chandler teaches Joey to properly use air quotes. Clearly Coach Saban missed this episode. And it's probably not the sort of image he wants the media thinking about while he's speaking about his team's biggest game of the season.

24 hours till kickoff!

Saturday night, there was crying in football. And I kind of loved it.

Not the series of events that preceded the tears. As a Gator fan, it was hard to watch Florida lose the SEC title and a shot at the Texas-Florida matchup we've been anticipating for a year. But the meaning behind those tears. Sitting in the press box as the clock on the 2009 SEC Championship ticked down to 0:00, it was hard not to get a little teary-eyed. You didn't have to be a Gator fan, or a Tim Tebow fan, to understand where those tears were coming from. Those tears were about heart. And passion. Teammates and fans. Those tears were about loss. And they were about love.

As an impartial member of the media, I couldn't help but be impressed by an Alabama team that played itself into championship form over the past few weeks. Bama was nearly flawless at every position, and they played their best game of football on the day they needed to play their very best. They made plays when they needed to make plays. Florida did not. Florida looked hungover. Perhaps it was a DOH (delayed-onset hangover) from the high of last year's SEC championship.

Before the game, I began reporting out a few possible stories for our BCS preview issue. Although we sure did try, we couldn't predict who would win either conference championship Saturday night. One of those stories, in case Florida and Texas were headed to Pasadena, was a Tebow-McCoy piece about what it means to be an icon. What it means to be the most beloved player in your school's history headed into a game to play another most-beloved player for a national title.

I spoke to fans and cheerleaders, the UF Mic Man, Gainesville sports radio hosts and Reidel Anthony, who was standing on the Florida sideline. I asked them all how they felt about Tebow, what he meant to them, what he meant to the University of Florida and why people have responded to him in a way they have never responded to a college athlete. Anthony ranks him #1 all-time and says he made people forget about his own QB. "When I was here, I thought Danny [Wuerffel] was God. Everyone thought Danny was God," Anthony said. "That was nothing compared to the way people feel about Tim."

I got a lot of great thoughts from folks wearing a lot of orange and blue. Unfortunately, that story will not be written. But one answer that stuck with me after the game came from Holly Reed, a member of the Gator cheerleading team and a lifelong Gator fan. Before the game, Holly told me the reason people love Tim Tebow is because he's not afraid to be who he is all the time. He's not afraid of what being himself might make other people think about him. He rides a scooter around campus. He is open about his beliefs, religious and otherwise. He head butts linemen during games, makes impassioned promises and then keeps them, and he is never too busy for anyone.

But, above all, she said, "He isn't afraid to cry. And he doesn't care who sees him."

I can't believe it is snowboard contest season! It seems like only last week I was sitting in a press box at a southern college football game. Wait. That was last week. (Stay tuned for our BCS Championship preview issue. I'll be deconstructing the McLeadership styles of Alabama QB Greg McElroy and Texas QB Colt McCoy.)

This week, I've been in Breckenridge and Copper Mountain, where the average temp has been 0. In Breck, I spent a couple days with X Games ski pipe champ Simon Dumont and his Colorado crew for a story that will run in our Winter X Games preview issue. Stay tuned!

Then I headed to Copper for the first U.S. snowboard Grand Prix halfpipe contest of the season. After much anticipation, the first contest is finally in the books and the Olympic team is beginning to take shape.

Check out my ESPN.com column, Five-Ring Circus, for a full recap of this week's event.

On the women's side, Kelly Clark, Gretchen Bleiler and Ellery Hollingsworth earned first-, second- and third-place points. No surprise there. On the men's side it was Shaun White, Louie Vito and rookie team member Jack Black. He surprised even himself. Hopefully everyone worked out the nerves at this event. Next stop, and the next chance for a post-contest Dance Party USA: Mammoth Mountain, Calif., Jan 7-10.