Road to the National Championship
I have a friend from my law school days at Florida who is as obsessed about Gator football as I am. This friend, also a Bull Gator, differs from me in one crucial respect – he is a cock-eyed optimist of the first rate. While I firmly believe that the Gators are going to somehow find a way to lose every game no matter the opponent, my friend HalleyGator believes that Florida can always find a road to the National Championship no matter how improbable.
HalleyGator sends out an email series with the title of this post on a weekly basis once the Gators have had their first defeat (and we always have at least one). Last year, though I thought him crazy, he was on the case the moment we lost to Auburn and successfully and accurately mapped our route to Glendale. His final installment of last year’s series went something like this –Road to the National Championship (Final) –
Despite our 2 losses, HalleyGator thinks the Florida Gators still have a shot to play for the BCS Title in New Orleans. How? Well read on as we present the first installment of HalleyGator’s Road to the National Championship:
“Fly to Phoenix, take route 60 to Glendale!”
OK, Gator fans, it is now safe to hate Nick Saban again. But for three hours on Saturday, he was our best friend. Thanks to the Tide... THE SEC EAST is ours for the taking!!
Recap of this week's LOSERS that helped UF's cause:
South Florida LOST
Tennessee LOST
Cal LOST
South Carolina LOST
Kentucky LOST
Cincinnati LOST
Auburn LOST
One on hand, it would have been nice for South Carolina to be highly ranked when we beat them... but I honestly believe that we need to get as HIGH in the polls as FAST as possible.
For that reason, I was rooting selfishly for Auburn, but it will definitely help us to play a VERY highly ranked LSU team in Atlanta. But can we beat them with Early Doucet back? Maybe we should root for Saban's Tide to win the West?
OK, here are NEXT WEEK's big games:
*Boston College @ Va Tech (Thursday Night)
*Southern Cal @ Oregon
(*All 4 of these teams are ahead of us... so TWO will lose for SURE this week!)
Ohio State @ Penn State
South Florida @ UCONN
West Virginia @ Rutgers
CAL @ Arizona State
Kansas @ Texas A&M
(The beauty of CAL now having two losses is that we can root for USC to BEAT Oregon and then root for CAL to beat USC AND ASU! The CAL Bears should now be our Favorite Team, because they can eliminate the entire PAC 10.)
And, of course: GO GATORS - BEAT GEORGIA!!!
With just a few breaks... we could EASILY be up to #6 in the BCS by the end of next weekend... which would still give us 5 weeks to get up to #2!
(I think we want Virginia Tech to BEAT Boston College and get rid of another undefeated team. And then we want FSU to beat Va. Tech AND BC in the next few weeks! As much as I hate to say it, we will be Nole fans on those days.)
See, it’s all pretty clear when HalleyGator lays it out.
I think.
Mentioned in Austin Murphy's book 
3 comments:
Awesome. Your buddy lays out on paper the half-hearted calculations we all do in our heads. Maybe Orson is right, a playoff of the sort 'm suggesting would mean an end to this sort of crazy roller coaster ride where we root for our most bitter rivals to move teams out of the way.
Ok let's not get carried away.
I like this guys thinking.
From this point on the Gators control their own destiny. IMO we could have compiled some "style points" had we not let Kentucky get that "gimme" TD right when the game was ending, but at least we climbed back into the top 10 in the AP poll and are at #11 in the BCS right now.
One word to describe this season so far: UNPREDICTABLE. The way the polls change from week to week and at the rate upsets have occurred there's really no cut-and-dried favorite to win the National Championship this year. In spite of two losses the Gators still have a legitimate shot at the NC, but that would mean (1) winning out the remainder of our schedule and (2) compiling enough BCS points to allow the system to send us to NOLA for that game. Should we win the SEC again, which we also have a decent shot at, we'd wind up going to the Sugar Bowl which would also be fine with me.
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