
Michigan.
I admit it, I hate this team. Despise them, even.
You want to talk about entitlement culture? It’s alive and well in Ann Arbor.
Michigan, much like Ohio State, has skated by in the Big 10 conference for years. Consistently, they’ve garnered undeserved pre-season accolades. Since 2004, they’ve finished their season with two straight losses, but like a bad apple bobbing to the top, find themselves ranked in the Top 25 — sometimes in the Top 5! — each and every year thereafter.
If there’s one thing I absolutely can’t stand about college football, it’s top rankings for weak legacy teams who also play weak schedules. Getting blown out of their 2006 Rose Bowl appearance by USC should have been evidence enough for voters that Michigan can’t hang, will not hang, and hasn’t hung with top-flight competition for years. Despite that, they were still a pre-season Top 5 team in ‘07. Their defensive unit was even lauded as a strength; there were positive murmurs about the large number of returning starters, never mind that none of them were any good.
It was a year ago that Michigan fans made the same argument which Georgia fans and their head coach, Mark Richt, used unsuccessfully tonight in a bid to make it to the BCS title game; that despite failing to win a conference title, they deserved a chance to knock off #1 Ohio State for all the marbles.
Michigan fans ranted and raved that their 1-loss team was better than ours. Florida? Our Gators were written off as a weak, undeserving team despite winning the SEC and possessing a better winning percentage. I’m sure we all remember Ohio State fans trash-talking the Gators after the BCS Selection Committee went with Florida, but don’t forget that shorter period in which Michigan fans were doing the same thing. They were convinced that their team was the only one in the country capable of beating the Bucks… despite the fact they had just lost to them one game prior! The nerve!
Fortunately, voters didn’t buy it then and they didn’t buy the southern flavor in 2007, either. LSU will play Ohio State, and may God have mercy on the Buckeyes in that game. Georgia draws the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors in the Sugar Bowl.
And now, we get Michigan.
I consider it a fine opportunity for some payback.
It’s the second meeting ever for the two programs. The last didn’t go so well for our Zookian Gators; it ended up being a 38-30 loss to Michigan in 2002. Incidentally, that’s the last year that Michigan finished their season with a win, and the last bowl victory as well.
I don’t miss Zook. I think it’s great for him and the Illini that they get a chance to play in the Rose Bowl. I like the coaching staff we’ve got now. I like ‘em a lot better.
This sets up very well for the Gators; it’s a mismatch in every category I can think of. Tim Tebow, ideally coming into the game as college football’s only active player to win the Heisman Trophy, should be able to easily carve up Michigan’s porous secondary for gobs of passing yards. Similarly, Florida should be able to run the ball on the Wolvies all day long, whether it’s the Baby Rhino attack or relentless Percycution.
You know Michigan fans have to be dreading this. Remember what Oregon did to them when they ran the spread? What Appalachian State did?
This is their worst nightmare. An acid-trip, purple-drank cocktail hallucination. A football portrait painted by Salvador Dali.
This could be a game in which the Gators don’t punt.
And we get ‘em in Orlando.
Obviously, despite all the things going for Florida, the game carries with it the potentially devastating penalty of endless humiliation should the Good Guys lose. Yeah, it’d be embarassing to drop our pants to these guys in our home state. Luckily, Urban Meyer is not one to let his squad walk in with inflated heads; they’ll be ready to play, hungry, aggressive, and they’ll give Michigan far more respect than I am right now.
We will not lose.
I think of this game and I literally salivate.
We’ll have lots of opportunities to break this game down over the next 30 days and change; but my knee-jerk, way-too-early score prediction?
Florida 49, Michigan 23