The votes are in: School's hottest athletes unveiled



And your 2006-07 UF Male and Female Hottest Athletes of the Year are ... drum roll please ... Phil Trautwein and Kisya Killingsworth!

Just kidding. Before I unveil the winners, here are a few tidbits about the E-mail-based voting process. For starters, rumor has it that some UF female athletes considered me a libido-driven misogynist for initiating this contest. Some chirping birds said the women's golfers are upset with being considered pretty and that the gymnasts are appalled at being described as -- gasp! -- flexible.

I could not agree more. Today is the day we begin referring to NFL players as gun safety advocates, NBA referees as a personable bunch and MLB sluggers as creatine haters. But why stop here? Butterbean isn't overweight. He's just pleasantly plump.

Paris Hilton isn't promiscuous. She's just unselfish. And Florida isn't sunny. Chuck Norris is just borrowing the clouds as his sofa pillows.

I also received scathing feedback for Cole Figueroa's inclusion into my top-10 list of hot UF male athletes.

Apparently I really riled up the baseball guys who could not decide whether assistant coach Ross Jones or infielder Jon Townsend would make a better impression in a Speedo. As for the voting, you might want to know that ...

* Swimmer Coral Lopez voted for herself, but ...

* Sprinter Alexis Booker tried voting for herself twice.

* Quarterback Tim Tebow received just one vote, as many as Gina Petrakos, the goalie for UF's club water polo team, received.

But without further ado, the winners.

The 2006-07 UF Male Hottest Athlete of the Year is Kyle Deery. That's right -- swimmer Kyle Deery. Not Tebow or even Al Horford and Chris Leak , who finished second and third, respectively.

That's pretty impressive for someone not on my top-10 list. Which made us wonder about the authenticity of Deery's E-mailed votes. But after taking advantage of the Patriot Act to track down ISPs of the incoming E-mails, we determined that Deery's second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh cousins voted, so everything was in order.

But why Deery? Is he really People Top-25 material? Judge for yourself on Facebook. All I know is that Deery, a sucker for punk/rap (no, this doesn't make any sense), seems to suffer from a biting complex, as some of the friends on his wall complain about.

And the 2006-07 UF Female Hottest Athlete of the Year is volleyball middle blocker Kari Klinkenborg. No surprises here. A couple of months ago, Sports Illustrated on Campus gave her props as one of the hottest collegiate athletes in the country. And with beauty comes brains as well.

Though not currently a member of Facebook, Klinkenborg was recently listed as single after having a relationship with former UF linebacker Todd McCullough. Guess she couldn't stand being the only one in the relationship with athletic ability.

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