Mergz, from the comments:
… And kudos to Georgia for scheduling such fascinating games. It is really interesting to see matchups against both the Big 12 and Pac Ten with the different styles the conferences play.
You hear that Foley? Charleston [Southern] and FIU and whoever else you can get to fall off the short bus doesn’t cut it.
The response from the Florida athletic department to sentiments like that? Talk to the hand.
… Unlike several other schools in the SEC, Florida doesn’t want to schedule any games against schools from BCS conferences that want a return trip – regardless of whether it’s a trip west or to a neighboring state.
“We’ll never say never, but it would have to be a unique situation for us to vary from our model that we have in place,” said Greg McGarity, UF’s senior associate athletic director for internal affairs.
The model that McGarity mentioned is this: play smaller Football Bowl Subdivision teams or Football Championship Subdivision teams in the early non-conference games and play a FCS school in the slot between the final SEC game and the Florida State game.
That means no games against schools such as Oklahoma or USC or Notre Dame on a home-and-home basis…
There may be a little crumb that – maybe – they’ll deign to consider – maybe.
“[Athletic director] Jeremy [Foley] would entertain ideas that may present themselves that might create a neutral-site game that would be unique matchup, Florida-Notre Dame, something like that, that wouldn’t require home-and-home,” McGarity said. “All those things are always on the table. … I think it really has to be unique [for UF to do it]. It’s got to be a school that the Gators very rarely, if ever, get to play that would really have a tremendous national presence. Thus far, we have not received any of those proposals.”
Now there’s a surprise. Keep waiting, Mergz.