Florida Football: 3 bold predictions vs. Miami in Week 0
By Dante Pryor
College football’s 150th anniversary season kicks off with a rivalry renewed. Florida football will take on Miami to open the season.
It’s somewhat crazy to think the three-way rivalry between Florida, Florida State and Miami doesn’t have some sort of Commander-in-Chief of trophy. It’s even more tragic that because of the way teams schedule that these teams don’t play one another every year for said hypothetical trophy.
However, we do get two of those teams to open our college football season when the Florida Gators take on the Miami Hurricanes at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Fla., on Aug. 24 to kick off this college football season.
It’s northern Florida versus southern Florida; the interior of the state versus the coast. The Gators versus the Canes is about recruiting, bragging rights and supremacy in the state of Florida.
The game is the first meeting between the two teams since 2013 and only their third meeting since 2005. It also pits Florida’s second-year head coach Dan Mullen against Miami’s first-year coach Manny Diaz who got called back from Temple after Mark Richt suddenly retired at the end of last season.
The Gators come in looking for a second consecutive 10-win season for the first time since the Tim Tebow era, while the Hurricanes look to rebound after a disappointing 7-6 record.
These coaches know one another very well also. Diaz was Mullen’s defensive coordinator when he (Mullen) was the head coach of the Mississippi State Bulldogs in 2015, so they should know how to scheme against each other.
It’s also the classic matchup between the offensive-minded Mullen and the defensive-minded Diaz. Rivalry games are always awesome to start the season, and this game promises not to disappoint.