Yeah, the game’s tomorrow, not today. But I need to scratch my itch to write.

Fourteen months after the football team won the national championship in Tempe, another UF team travels to Arizona with its own ambitions. Granted, the young Gators will not hoist a crystal trophy if they win. But they could go from being banned from their practice facility to playing in Madison Square Garden. They’re also fighting for respect, and beating a solid Pac-10 team on the road is a good first step.

Both teams are the top two seeds in the same bracket, and somebody’s going to walk away disappointed. On a slightly different vein, let’s look at both teams from various dimensions.

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I unintentionally began a discussion about the Florida - Miami series.  In a previous post I meant to explain why there was so much bitterness on the Miami side while a great deal of ambivalence for most Gator fans.  The exception being from Gator fans that live in South Florida and are exposed to infinitely more Hurricane talk and bravado than anywhere else in the state or country.  Since myself, Henry Gomez and Mergz (the latter two being bloggers on a sister blog Sagarian Saugacity) live in the South Florida area we would all love to see a renewal of the annual series.  But from an impartial perspective I wanted to address the issue.  (Going on the record that I would personally be ecstatic at the prospect of renewal and have long begrudged the UF administration for not adding the game years ago.)
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A popular topic these days is the PAC-10 being ranked as having the toughest SOS in several of the computer rankings (Sagarin, Massey, Cooley).  Looking ahead, Blutarsky of “Get the Picture” has taken a look at next years out of conference schedules for 2007.  For SEC fans it doesn’t look good.  After seeing this I clearly expect the PAC-10 to once again have the strongest SOS next year.  The extra conference game the PAC-10 teams play not only ensures that losses and wins are kept within the conference but also keeps them from scheduling extra weaker games.  It makes perfect sense to me.

PAC-10/SEC showdown, 2007 strength of schedule style

There has been a lot of talk and speculation regarding the Gator’s schedule of late so I decided to set out to dispell some of the myths floating around the internet.

Myth - UF doesn’t have to apologize for its schedule, we play one of the toughest schedules in the country every year.
Truth - I really don’t think it would be appropriate for Western Carolina to apologize for our non-conference schedule but someone should.  The difficult games on UF’s schedule are not those selected by the UF Athletic Department but mandated by our conference alignment and standard schedule rotations of the SEC.  What do you want to bet that if Foley and Meyer were in charge that the Gators would have played Miss State, Arkansas and Ole Miss in the West rather than Auburn, Alabama, and LSU???  The only reason Foley doesn’t have to apologize to Gator fans is because of the inherent hypocrisy of college football.  On one hand we eschew a playoff because of the “tradition” of the game but on the other hand we approach scheduling and budgeting as a big business putting the monetary ‘bottom line’ ahead of the integrity of the sport.  How many great games are not scheduled because coaches are afraid of losing?   “Omigosh *trembling* . . . we can’t play THAT team *lips quivering* . . . we might LOSE!!!  Is there a nearby high school team available instead???”
 
Myth - Because Western Carolina and Vandy were scheduled later in the year they garnered more attention than they should have.
Truth - While there is a degree of truth in this statement, no one has forgotten that Arkansas played a pathetic Out Of Conference (OOC) schedule outside of their season opener against USC despite when the games took place.  And Auburn didn’t overcome their terrible non-conference schedule in 2004 just because they ended the year with wins over Georgia and Alabama.  Had FSU been one of the great teams they were in the late 90s the schedule controversy would have been greatly diminished (just as Ohio State was credited for playing Texas rather than ripped for the rest of their schedule).  Unfortunately FSU is not very good right now. 

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So who’s the one to blame here, Urban Meyer or Jeremy Foley?  Remember back to the discussions surrounding the additional game which was to be adopted by the NCAA?  At the time the fan consensus was that Florida should renew the series with Miami.  Then Jeremy Foley went on record saying that he would prefer an intermittent series with Miami with other years opened up to play great intersectional rivalries against top programs from around the country like Ohio State, Nebraska, USC, etc. 

When looking at the Gators future schedule we see Miami is on Florida’s schedule for 2008 and 2013.  And the great intersectional teams scheduled for the other years?  Intimidating programs like Florida Atlantic, Florida International, Troy, Appalachian State, Furman and Central Florida. (more…)