The 2022 college football season is just two days away from starting, and the Florida Gators’ season begins in just over a week. Naturally, various media outlets have weighed in on the nation’s most-talked-about conference, and CBS Sports is the latest to put out a preseason projected order of finish list for the SEC.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, the experts at CBS Sports project Alabama to win the SEC West and Georgia to win the SEC East with the Tide coming out on top as conference champions. The expectation is another two-team appearance from the SEC in this year’s College Football Playoff.
While the top of each conference seems fairly clear-cut, the experts didn’t quite agree on where Florida should land. Two of them, David Cobb and Chip Patterson, have Florida finishing second. Barrett Sallee, Shehan Jeyarajah and Jerry Palm all have UF finishing third, and Dennis Dodd and Tom Fornelli have the Gators coming in fourth. That means the Sept. 10 and 24 game against Kentucky and Tennessee could decide Florida’s standing in the conference when all is said and done.
Cobb and Jeyarajah view the Gators as perhaps the most underrated team in the conference. They wrote a joint opinion in support of Florida and it boiled down to Dan Mullen‘s final season being a waste of talent and developmental time. Under a new and motivated head coach, Florida should be able to unlock plenty of untapped potential in some of these players.
Expectations for the Gators seem rooted in last season’s 6-7 record, but that performance was hardly indicative of the possibilities given the team’s roster. Relative to everyone else in the SEC East except Georgia, Florida still has the most complete team. Motivation seemed lacking in 2021 as Dan Mullen’s tenure limped to completion, and the team completely imploded down the stretch. That should not be an issue this season with a new coach in Billy Napier and defensive coordinator in Patrick Toney, both of whom have proven track records of success.
If Florida can get out to a hot start early, there’s the potential to run away with the second-place spot in the SEC East and at least fight for a spot in the conference championship against Georgia. That requires victories over the Volunteers and Wildcats first, though, so one thing at a time.
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