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No one really says it.

No one wants to still admit it.

But you know it.

The loss by Florida to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game still hurts...and hurts badly.

And that's one of the key questions this Gator team is going to have to answer as it gets back to practice for its Sugar Bowl date with Cincinnati; can it put the loss in the SEC Championship Game behind them and focus in to get ready to play well on January 1?

We all saw what happened last year to Alabama in a similar situation; it had lost to Florida in the SEC title game and that team looked listless and disinterested as it lost in the Sugar Bowl to upstart Utah.

Will that happen to Florida this year with Cincinnati?

You don't get over losses like the one Florida had to Alabama this year quickly; those types of losses linger; you replay the game in your mind a hundred times and wonder what went wrong to derail a season where the stated goal was to win an SEC title and play for a national title in Pasadena.

It hits you in the face that you will win NO championships, and that reality hurts.

So now, as you face a Cincinnati team that is shooting for an undefeated season, this team must decide how it wants to end what has been in truth a very good year...either with a disinterested loss or a win that could vault them into the top three in the country at season's end with a 13-1 record?

The process to heal would seem to be a slow one, and this comes from no one other than senior quarterback Tim Tebow.

"It's gonna hurt; (the SEC game loss) it will probably hurt a while," Tebow said. "I think I guess we're over the point we're feeling sorry for ourselves and we're getting back to working and working hard and trying to get some extra and just getting better and getting ready for a good team in Cincinnati."

And as you start to prepare, you add distractions to the mix. Good teams can face distractions this time of year. You can lose coaches; Florida has lost two of them. You have talented juniors who could be jumping to the NFL; Florida has on paper many of them. You can see where it would be hard to focus on a game so far away with all this going on and it won't be easy.

And that's the challenge. The leaders of this team, a group of seniors that has won more games than other SEC group, must somehow tie this team together for one last game and one last shot at winning, to end their careers with a good taste in their mouths, as opposed to the stinging taste of defeat suffered in early December.

It will not be easy to do, but this season hasn't been easy from the start with the hype and expecation of being number one all year, to the flu bug, to Tebow's concussion, to the complaints about the offense, and so much more. This team has talked about how it has handled adversity and pressure all year and now we'll see how they handle getting ready to play a game more for pride than a championship.

The preparation starts now.