Charlie O

Med/Peds DO, PHS, FHU, WVSOM & USF Med/Peds alum. #gogators #golions #gopanthers

[Dave McCormick @DaveMcCormickPA]

Deeply moved by @BenSasse’s
perspective, honesty and courage.

Facing cancer with faith, clarity, and conviction is no small thing.

His strength inspires all of us to live with purpose.
https://t.co/XrT45dAfMt

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@157Gale The biggest criticism of the hire is lack of experience and lack of big time games. What else can we want than being able to work on that weakness within weeks of being hired?

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@GA_Gator12 I’ll believe it when I see it, hopefully they do because it’s his only chance.

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@AdamBlackburn32 @slightwork352 It’s not so much him it’s that I know the admin won’t give a guy like him the resources needed to compete. They hire guys that aren’t big enough to force them to make changes. A big level hire can control the whole athletic department, he won’t be able to fight them on much.

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@BourbonGator84 @AverageGatorGuy We refuse to hire dynamic, successful people, at best we hire unknowns and at worst it’s “hey maybe they don’t suck anymore.”

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

By far the best thing going for sumrall is rock bottom expectations. If he’s smart he floods the media for a year with 2-3 win expectations and then turns a 4-6 win season into a surprise. Hold NIL funds till year two. Year two is the make or break year.

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@GatorRyan You know what is not funded heavily? His salary. Lol. Going to be one of the lowest salaries in the SEC. 99% chance his staff and NIL budget reflects.

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@AstuteAlligator With inflation we just hired a guy we value the same or less than Napier.

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

I hope sumrall looked at the kiffin NIL package and realized he would need 30% more to field a similar team. I’m sure he will get much less. As with Napier this hire makes no sense unless he has a staff and NIL budget that surpasses the competition and that’s just to break even

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@swolder The amount of NIL money to keep any of the decent players will be 20-30% higher for sumrall than it would have been for a big name coach.

[Chris @MrChrisBits]

Remove Scott Stricklin, from Athletic Director at the University of Florida - Sign the Petition! https://t.co/XdWnU1Baqk via @Change

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@A1555045A @BOGBackup1 It is certainly hard to understand stricklins ability to continue to keep a job, with the steady decline in athletics over multiple sports, if there are not other motives at play.

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@A1555045A @BOGBackup1 Conlan construction is, they are a big company so would need to see the contracts to know if it moves the needle for them.

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@BourbonGator84 Still waiting on Napier to hire tom herman and don brown

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@chris_hobbzilla Lane kiffin has been this way for a decade, if that’s the excuse the whole admin should be fired.

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

With NIL having the ability to flip a roster over night it would make sense for UF to pull all NIL funding and give one year extensions to the current staff, run a zero win 2026 season and come out with a big name coach and a ton of NIL for 2027.

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@F3Cabbage @BOGBackup1 Yeah have to go 3/3 and get the fans to stop showing up so they can shrink the swamp before his job is complete

[Charlie O @CharlieOverturf]

@F3Cabbage @BOGBackup1 Still have a few other sports that have to finish going down before Stricklin can retire.