Florida and UCF meeting up is a rare delicacy. Our beloved Knights fought for years to get the sort of national respect needed to appear on the schedule of the former SEC titan. Even so, they found little time for their (lately more successful) neighbor to the South.
Luckily, depending on your viewpoint, the Gators are pretty terrible right now. That lack of any national title aspirations means the Boys from Old Florida have fallen to play in the Gasparilla Bowl against the Knights. This would-be rivalry gets a boost tonight when these two teams take each other on at 7 p.m.
The conventional thinking has it that Florida’s more-talented roster will tell during the bowl. Years of recruiting prowess and their status in a Power Five conference does give Florida a deeper range of recruits to choose from. However, UCF has been hungry for recognition from the bigger conferences ever since they started waving around National Championship banners and dealing in asterisks. Don’t be too startled if the Knights gut out a win by wanting it more.
Florida is coming off the high of beating hated rival FSU. UCF has won five of their last six games and has a better record. Still, the spread favors the Gators by a whole touchdown.
Expect a raucous crowd heading down the road to Tampa and filling out Raymond James Stadium. If you weren’t lucky enough to snag tickets, the game airs on ESPN.
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This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2021.