It wasn’t until I heard someone say it on a podcast that I really realized something: if Florida loses the Cotton Bowl, it will close the season on a three-game losing streak. And it’s true. They’d have lost the rescheduled game against LSU, the SEC Championship Game, and the bowl.
In my mind, I was not connecting them all. The LSU game was rescheduled, it was more than a bit fluky, and quite like the December 2001 game against Tennessee, it almost certainly goes the other way if played on the original date. Fulmer’s Tennessee teams always got better as the year went along, which conferred a small advantage to UF for always playing UT in September.
LSU was completely lost at sea back in mid-October when it was supposed to play the Gators. They’d just lost to Missouri 45-41 in a game that shouldn’t have been that close. Mizzou outgained the Bayou Bengals by more than 100 yards, but MU losing the turnover battle 3-0 — gifting 17 points in the process — kept LSU in the game. Especially if Florida got Kyree Campbell back for that one, there’s a high likelihood that Florida wins on October 17.
Then, I’m mostly pleased with UF’s appearance in Atlanta. They were in the game until the end, got some of the best performances of the year from some defensive players like Brad Stewart, and came out looking pretty good all things considered. There were a lot of close plays that went against the Gators, but there were about as many that went against Bama too. The only thing I can still be mad about is Dan Mullen’s clock management at the ends of the halves.
Then there’s the bowl. I don’t know what to expect from that. A lot of programs around the country have opted out of bowls because of how grueling the year has been mentally. Teams started going into bubble-like conditions in July, and here we six months later. They haven’t been able to see their families in-person. They’ve been tested several times a week. Quite a few of them had to go into quarantine due to a positive test or contact tracing.
I’m sure the goals of the team still being in front of them to the end helped UF’s players stay mentally sharp as compared to, say, a Boston College team that was just trying to end up on the right side of .500 or Vandy and South Carolina teams limping to the finish without their head coaches. It would be disappointing to see the Gators no-show in Arlington, and I think enough players have enough pride — and NFL Draft implications — that the whole team won’t come out entirely flat.
But also I can’t be sure that everyone will come out of the tunnel looking like a million bucks. I can’t imagine what it was like for them to deal with all the COVID stuff on top of the normal stresses of football and classes. I feel for the seniors, who have to go out with this kind of season, and the true freshmen, who did not get the real college experience they expected when signing their letters of intent.
If UF does drop the finale, it’ll be the first three-game losing streak to end the year since 2015. Those Gators lost to FSU 27-2, were shown mercy by Bama by only having the SEC Championship Game end with a 29-15 score, and were hammered by Michigan 41-7 in the Citrus Bowl.
You can guess by those scores and the way I described them that I consider that three-game streak and the potential one this year to be categorically different. That was an impostor team that wouldn’t make it to Atlanta or the SEC’s best non-New Year’s 6 bowl in most seasons. This year’s squad was a good defensive secondary away from being a legit national title contender even with all its other faults going unaddressed.
The LSU loss is still an inexcusable lapse from a team that obviously in hindsight was looking past its opponent to the next week’s challenge. Perhaps it’s the sort of wakeup call that a coaching staff so convinced of its brilliance after the Georgia and Arkansas wins that it spent the next month in vanilla mode needed as a reminder for the future. Whenever they think they can coast past a team in their own neighborhood talent-wise, they’ll remember 2020 LSU and take things more seriously. If so, then there’s a legit silver lining to the way this year ended.
As it happens, I’m not conceding a loss to Oklahoma by any stretch. Their freshman quarterback has been up-and-down as a freshman quarterback will be, and his season isn’t an upward-pointing arrow that suggests he’ll be another Lincoln Riley Heisman candidate next year. The defense has looked better of late, but it’s also played some of the lesser Big 12 offenses of late too. If you haven’t been watching that conference closely, the days of everyone playing pinball are over. Defenses have improved and offenses have regressed.
It’d be preferable to stop the streak at two and get a win to finish out 2020. I am not going to lose any sleep in the offseason if they don’t, though. I’m considering all non-Playoff bowls to be exhibitions, even more so than in most years, and we really shouldn’t take much of anything from them.