WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — It's not going to be easy as it looks right now for the Florida Gators. This is college football, after all, where utterly unpredictable kids are king.
Average up the last 20 years of AP polls and it's the No. 4 pre-season pick that most often wins the national championship. That puts Southern Cal in a prime spot right now.
 Pouya Dianat/Cox Newspapers Florida running back Percy Harvin scores a touchdown in the third quarter as the Gators managed a 49-10 drubbing of Georgia last season. For a larger, high resolution image, click HERE |
Last year's BCS wrapup tells the same story. The Oklahoma Sooners, No. 4 in the preseason poll, reached the championship game in Miami, where they were beaten by Florida, the No. 5 preseason pick. Meanwhile, Georgia, August's No. 1, wound up 13th.
So that's the setup. The Gators, most overwhelming No. 1 in the history of AP voting, are so far from recording their first undefeated season that it's not even a sensible topic to discuss at this point.
Tim Tebow or not, they are human. Charleston Southern or not, there actually will be serious rivals on the field every now and then with a legitimate chance to knock off the Gators during the regular season, not to mention the SEC title game and a possible BCS bonanza beyond.
Oh, and by the way, what's with scheduling a school the size of Palm Beach Atlantic as your opening opponent? Last year, Miami opened against Charleston Southern, too, and it was just as embarrassing.
What, Jeremy Foley couldn't get the Wofford Terriers to switch up a few dates and come to the Swamp? At the very least, give me Liberty, which edged Charleston Southern 42-0 last season, or give me death.
Back to our original point, though, about the Gators' artificial air of invincibility. You're still not buying it, are you?
Anything short of three national titles in the space of four seasons, a run that no one's achieved since the Nebraska dynasty of the mid-1990s, that still sounds like a shocking upset for Florida, huh?
All right, let's take this from a different angle.
Only two teams, Florida State in 1999 and USC in 2004, have ever gone wire-to-wire in the AP poll from pre-season No. 1 to unbeaten national champion. Both made it, with Heisman Trophy quarterbacks at the controls, Chris Weinke at FSU and Matt Leinart at USC, but there were some serious scraps along the way.
The Seminoles nearly stumbled in Week 2, holding off Georgia Tech 41-35. In October, FSU trailed Clemson 14-3 at halftime and avoided overtime only when a 42-yard field goal try by the Tigers fell short. November brought a 30-23 win at the Swamp in which Florida's Jesse Palmer was throwing into the end zone on the final play. That's more than enough close calls for one dominating team.
USC, likewise, barely made it out of September unbeaten in 2004 after trailing Stanford 28-17 at halftime on the road. It took a big Reggie Bush punt return to set up the Trojans' winning fourth-quarter score. In October, Cal ran up 424 yards in total offense to 205 for USC, but the Trojans survived 23-17. Never mind that Aaron Rodgers, now Green Bay's quarterback, had a first-and-goal for Cal in the final minutes but couldn't score. Last came a 29-24 December win over UCLA, the kind of cock-eyed rivalry that always makes the college game crackle.
Two great wire-to-wire championship teams. A total of six wild games that could have gone the other way, and remember, neither FSU nor USC had to play conference championship games back then the way that Florida will in 2009 if the Gators are going to go back-to-back as national champions.
No, it won't be as easy as it looks right now for the Gators, even with their softest schedule in years.
That's what makes college football so irresistible. Not even Steve Spurrier can outsmart it forever. Not even Joe Paterno, 82, can give it up. Not even Pete Carroll, with all his trophies, can keep himself from jumping and laughing on the sidelines when a big win is finally in the bag.
And ultimately, after all the dire warnings set forth in this column, not even a cynic like me can believe that Urban Meyer and the Gators won't win every game.
Dave George writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: dave(underscore)george(at)pbpost.com.
