Bowl games can be unpredictable, especially in the age of the transfer portal and draft opt-outs. If a top team finishes shy of the College Football Playoff, you can expect that it will have at least one pro prospect choose not to participate in the game.
Florida is far from a top team, but it has already seen one opt-out for the Gasparilla Bowl against UCF in defensive end Zachary Carter, and more could be potentially coming. Regardless, Sportsline’s Matt Severance thinks the Gators will pull this one out, and it’s his second-most confident picks in his bowl confidence pool.
One of the top 2021-22 college football bowl confidence picks from Severance: He likes the Florida Gators to knock off the UCF Knights in the 2021 Gasparilla Bowl, which will be played on Dec. 23 at 7 p.m. ET. He’s assigning 41 confidence points to this selection.
“UCF might have won this game with QB Dillon Gabriel, but he’s in the transfer portal,” Severance told SportsLine. Gabriel was a preseason Heisman candidate after posting a 30:4 touchdown-to-interception ratio last year. He was injured early in the season, leaving true freshman Mikey Keene as the Knights’ signal-caller. The 18-year-old predictably struggled and finished seventh among nine qualified QBs in AAC passer rating.
Florida went 6-6 during the year and fired coach Dan Mullen with one game left in the season. RB coach, Greg Knox, then became the interim and led a spirited victory over another in-state rival, Florida State, in the Gators’ final regular-season game. While Florida has hired Billy Napier as its new head coach, Knox will coach the bowl game, so the Gators will have continuity with the coaching staff.
Florida was ranked as high as No. 10 this season, so the talent is there, and expect it to shine through vs. a UCF team that lost four of five games it played away from home.
The matchup between these two teams certainly won’t be as interesting as it would have been at any point in the last few years, but for a pair of in-state teams that haven’t played since 2006, it will be a good opportunity to get reacquainted before the two-for-one series that starts in 2024.
The Gators will hope that Severance’s prediction is right. They opened as favorites in this one, though the Raymond James Stadium crowd could potentially be fairly pro-UCF. UF will look to get above .500 on the season and continue to assert its claim as the top team in the state (though that isn’t saying a lot this year).
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