It was not a good weekend for college football in Florida, but then, not many of them are.
Florida State lost. Again. This time to Notre Dame. That comes as no surprise, really, because FSU always loses. The wheels have come off and there’s no way to put them back on.
“Extremely disappointing,” Noles Coach Mike Norvell said afterwards according to the school’s website. “I do not question our players’ effort. I thought they played hard.”
Have you ever noticed that, when a team is playing poorly, the losing coach almost always says his players “played hard”?
Florida’s Billy Napier, his team staggering to the finish crushed by what might be the toughest schedule in the country and a ton of injuries, took a different approach after watching the Gators get annihilated by Texas.
Everybody wants to know what’s wrong with Florida and how it can be fixed, but Napier was not ready to go there. “I’m not ready to do that,” he said at a press conference posted on the team’s website. And since he has been given a vote of confidence by Florida Athletic Director Scott Stricklin, he probably doesn’t have to.
Then there’s Central Florida, just down the road from Gainesville and a team which has been yo-yoing up and down this season as it adjusts to big boy football. The Knights are coming off a beat down by Arizona State.
UCF Coach Gus Malzahn, speaking at a press conference on his school’s website, said that “Obviously, this was another disappointing loss. Our guys fought hard, but we didn’t play good enough to win,” he added. Maybe, if Malzahn wasn’t shuffling quarterbacks in and out the way some people shuffle cards, the Knights might have more continuity. And maybe that would help them eliminate the critical mistakes that are costing them games.
And finally there is Miami, the shining star of Florida’s Gold Coast and the only team in the state that can strike fear into its opponents. The Canes have the highest scoring offense in the country, the best passing game and are also first in total offense.
But against a pedestrian Georgia Tech team they should have whipped easily, the Canes slipped and fell, for the first time this year. Unlike the others, though, there was no crying. Winners don’t cry, even when they lose
Speaking at a post game press conference carried by the Miami website, Canes Coach Mario Cristobal took a different approach.
“The reality of it is you have to own it,” Cristobal commented. “You have to own every bit of it. All of us, in this profession, when you take one on the chin like that you have to be a grown man, you’ve got to own it.”
Miami has a bye this week before it finishes up with two very winnable games that could leave it 11-1 and a hot contender for the playoffs and, dare we say it, the national championship.
Florida continues to struggle for bowl eligibility with a murderous stretch run against nationally ranked LSU and Ole Miss before finally getting a breather against FSU.
And the Seminoles? They have two weeks to get ready for Charleston Southern before playing Florida. Charleston Southern. There’s no way FSU can lose that game, is there?