Throughout the season the Orlando Sentinel provided great coverage of the Florida Tuskers’ inaugural season. Today they issued a write up of the only Tuskers’ loss, albeit a major loss. Excerpts below:

The Florida Tuskers enjoyed a memorable ride to the inaugural United Football League Championship Game.

The ending to the league’s historic first overtime game Friday is a memory they would rather forget.

Florida quarterback Brooks Bollinger was intercepted on the opening drive of overtime, leading to a 33-yard field goal by former Florida State kicker Graham Gano that gave the Las Vegas Locomotives a wild 20-17 win in the finale of the UFL’s debut season.

The Tuskers (6-1) failed in their bid to run the table and beat Las Vegas (5-2) for a third time this season in front of an announced crowd of 14,801 at Sam Boyd Stadium.

“It’s really difficult,” Bollinger said. “It’s hard to put into words how tough it is. We had such a good group of guys. That’s the way this game goes; it’ll hurt you sometimes.”

In UFL overtime rules, each team gets at least one possession. If the game remains tied, it goes to sudden death.

Florida coach Jim Haslett defended his decision to receive the overtime kickoff, instead of choosing to defer and wait to see if his team needed a field goal or touchdown to win.

“If they don’t score and you don’t score, the next possession wins,”

Haslett said. “So we don’t want to defer, give them possession, have neither team score, and then all of a sudden they get possession and it’s sudden death now.”

Bollinger’s pass intended for Marcus Maxwell on third-and-7 from Florida’s 12-yard line was intercepted by Isaiah Trufant, whose fumble on the return was recovered by Las Vegas safety Tony Parrish at the 14. Two plays later, Gano connected on the game-winning field goal.

“It was a shallow cross,” Maxwell said of his route on the interception. “Brooks started scrambling. I tried to get in his vision so he was able to see me. (Trufant) stepped in front and picked it off.”

For the rest: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/os-tuskers-ufl-title-game-1128-20091127,0,6670773.story