No, this is not about just the Florida Gators, but all of the Florida college’s football programs.
Florida Gators
Let’s start with Florida’s team of the last decade, the Gators. The Gators had some major changes in the off season with their coaches. Will Muschamp is taking his first head coaching job at the age of 39. He brings a structured plan of how he is going to run his team and also brought in a coaching staff of winners. Charlie Weis did not make his name as the head coach of Notre Dame, but did make his name for being a one of the best offensive coordinators ever. Weis was the offensive coordinator for Tom Brady and the Patriots when they won their back to back championships almost 10 years ago.
Weis has an arsenal of offensive weapons which include John Brantley at quarterback. Although last years offense wasn’t exactly designed to utilize Brantley’s skills effectively, he did break Tim Tebow’s high school records at the same high school Tebow attended.
Brantley has college’s fastest teammates to give the ball to in Chris Rainey and Will Demps. And he has excellent receivers in Clay Burton and Deonte Thompson.
Florida has one of the toughest schedules in all of college football. If they go undefeated, give them the BCS championship.
Florida State Seminoles
Still coaching in the shadow of Bobby Bowden, Jimbo Fisher is going to make a name for himself right now. Fisher lost last years starting quarterback Christian Ponder to the Minnesota Vikings in the NFL draft. EJ Manuel is the new quarterback and he looked good in an impressive 34-0 win against Louisiana-Monroe. The offense was very good, but I found the Seminole defense was very impressive. It was almost like they were inspired by former Seminole Alumni Deon Sanders Hall of Fame induction in August. They have a pretty tough schedule as well with the current number 1, Oklahoma in a couple of weeks and then finishing the season with their in-state rivals, the Florida Gators. That last game might be for a national championship if both teams run their schedules like I think they can.
Central Florida Knights
The Knights are coming off their Conference USA Championship and their first bowl game win in the history of the school. They have Jeff Godfrey returning as quarterback for his sophomore season. Godfrey provides Michael Vick-like skills as he is a double threat using his speed to take off with the ball when no receivers are open. Godfrey ran for three touchdowns this past Saturday in a 62-0 route of Charleston Southern.
Looking at Central Florida’s schedule, it appears they could run the tables and go undefeated as they do not have to play the Florida Gators during the regular season this year. Well they did lose more than one game last year, but last year the Knights were not playing football at the same level of even a bad Gators team. I believe Central Florida is not far from being listed next to the Gators and Seminoles for the top college football program in Florida. The Knights have produced excellent NFL players like Brandon Marshall and Mike Sims-Walker, so there is no doubt there is more to come. They will be exciting to watch this season.
South Florida Bulls
This will be short as I don’t care for South Florida as their coach did not want to play Central Florida as a rivalry game a few years ago because they claimed to be better than the Knight, the college that I graduated from. The Bulls did produce an upset this past weekend beating Notre Dame in the first week. The Bulls were ranked in the top 5 a couple of years ago when they said they didn’t want to play UCF and haven’t returned since.
Miami Hurricanes – “The U”
I have left them for last because they can’t do anything worth while with their NCAA violations that were found in the past couple of months. They have a new coach and will need some real good prospect coming in the next few years along with good conduct before they will be considered for a ranking.
That’s my summary. A little lengthy about the Gators, but I think they will be the hottest team this season.
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