Gator Football Schedule Embarrassing

Aside from their annual game against Florida State, the University of Florida football team has consistently avoided non-conference challenges on the gridiron. In 1992, early in the Steve Spurrier era, the Gators played an early-season game against Syracuse (at Syracuse) and were thoroughly creamed. Since then, their only truly challenging opponents outside of the Southeastern Conference have been Florida State and a small numbers of engagements against the Miami Hurricanes.

Florida is opening its schedule against Charleston Southern. Yes, I said Charleston Southern. Is there a Charleston Northern, too? I really don't think that Charleston is all that big a city to begin with! To illustrate the discrepancy between this school and the UF team, I heard that the Gators are favored by 73 points. Which means that they have to score a touchdown every six minutes in order to live up to expectations. And that's without Charleston Southern scoring any points! Anything less will be considered as a failure.

With Tim Tebow vying for another Heisman Trophy this year, what good will a game like this do? Most likely, he'll rack up some impressive statistics in the first half and then backup quarterback John Brantley will replace him. But Tebow could stay in the the whole game, set all kinds of records, and nobody would be fooled.

Meanwhile, the University of Tennessee will continue its admirable tradition of playing meaningful non-conference games early in the season by playing UCLA the following week. Although this game is at Knoxville, Tennessee has in the past played many of its early season against tough opponents on the road, too. The Gators, I understand, haven't played a non-conference regular season game outside of Florida since that 1992 debacle in Syracuse (I watched it; it was really BAD).

The University of Florida's fans and the local press may like to ridicule Tennessee and the Gators may get a kick out of running up the score on them late in the fourth quarter to look good on paper. But were it not for schools like Tennessee with their boldness in playing quality out-of-conference opponents, the SEC as a whole would have less stature in the national polls, making it more difficult for anyone in the conference, including UF, to make it to the National Championship game.

The Gator basketball team has been shunned for the last two seasons by the NCAA Tournament selection committee because of their ultra-wimpy non-conference schedule. This year they finally learned their lesson and have beefed up their schedule with some tough early opponents. Sooner or later, the football team will have to follow suit unless they want to suffer the same fate as the hoops squad.