Cupcakes serve Florida’s purpose

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One of the things that’s really frustrating about this particular college football season is that #1-ranked Florida — which, as a defending national champion with most of its key players returning, would be an overwhelming favorite under any circumstances — has such a ridiculously easy schedule that it’s actually quite difficult to envision them losing, never mind losing twice, as would be necessary to definitively remove them from the national title picture. It almost feels as if the season is a glorified battle for the #2 spot, with everyone else in the country fighting for the opportunity to play in the Tim Tebow Invitational in Pasadena at season’s end.

To review: three of Florida’s nonconference opponents are glorified high school teams — and those are all home games. The other opponent, Florida State, just lost to unranked Miami and almost lost to 1-AA Jacksonville State, and has to play the Gators at the Swamp. Meanwhile, the three SEC West teams Florida doesn’t play during the regular season are, by the luck of the draw, Alabama, Ole Miss and Auburn. That means almost 50% of their conference schedule consists of Mississippi State, Arkansas, Vanderbilt and Kentucky. (It’s a WAR!!!) Moreover, eight of their twelve games (or thirteen, if they reach the SEC title game) are at home; only three are true road games. Their only tough road game, at least on paper, is at LSU — and Florida has a bye before that game, whereas LSU will be coming off a visit to Georgia the previous week. Yet that LSU game, and the SEC title game, are very probably the only games all season in which Florida won’t be double-digit favorites.

This has caused a lot of anger against the Gators for scheduling such ridiculous nonconference cupcakes. But in a blog comment this morning, Jazz said that anger is misdirected:

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