This paragraph from Mike Bianchi’s latest paean to Coach Boom…
Florida’s offense ranked 103rd in the nation, but still UF was miraculously in the running to play in the national championship game until the final weekend of the regular season when Notre Dame beat Southern Cal.
… got me to thinking. What if Notre Dame had screwed the pooch and lost to Southern Cal and then Georgia had found a way to score at the end of the SECCG to beat Alabama? Would we have seen a Cocktail Party rematch for the national title? And if so, how many talking heads would have exploded over it?
Just as a refresher, here’s what last season’s Week 14 standings looked like. Hard for me to see how Georgia would have finished lower than second with an SEC title, so the question is whether any other one-loss school would have jumped Florida (or, I suppose, whether the Irish would have stayed ahead of the Gators). After all the talk about Florida’s resume, it would have been tough to deny UF, but maybe there would have been enough negative reaction to a rematch repeat to screw the Gators’ chances.
What do you think the reaction to such a rematch would have been like?
Get The Picture 
I didn’t like the 2011 rematch and I don’t like the thought of a rematch with Florida…or anyone else that we might have already played. Bama had their shot in 11 and lost and were given a blessing. Win your division or shut up and go to Orlando.
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Agreed then with your take and agree now.
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After having a month to get healthy, I can just imagin the stat line Jarvis would have had against UF.
18 tackles, 5 TFL, 4 sacks, 2 FF, 1 INT, and a mug full of Alligator tears
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I think the same thing I did at the time: People would have gamed the voting to make sure Oregon got in over Florida.
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Which would have been a travesty (not for leaving out Florida but for putting Oregon in). Stanford was a one loss conference champion that had beaten Oregon and lost in OT due to a suspect call against ND. They’re the team that should have made it had ND lost and been left out.
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Don’t see how a 2-loss Stanford team jumps a one-loss Florida.
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I misremembered and thought Stanford only had one loss.
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Stanford had 2 losses. Oregon was the only hope to keep Florida out, though they did suffer from the same problem. I guess Kansas State was an option, but the Big 12 was pretty dreadful.
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FU’s record wasn’t commensurate with playing with a hope of winning against our SECCG team vs the loss they obtained from our mid-year team. It’s that friggin’ simple. Louisville demonstrated that outcome.
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UF had wins over three teams ranked in the top ten in Week 14. How many other programs had that on their resume?
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Florida had the best resume. I agree. And based on resume, they should have gone into the title game with your scenario. I just don’t think it would play out that way.
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Well, I wouldn’t have shed any tears if that had happened. 😉
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I would have created a state-wide holiday just to laugh at Florida had they been jumped by a team that lost to the one elite team they played all year.
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It would have been delightful to watch the Gators moan about getting leapfrogged and then watch them get throttled by Louisville.
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I was actually thinking exactly the same thing you described in your post at the time, Senator. In 2011 there had been a rematch of 2 teams from the SEC West. In 2012, had the scenario of losses you described in your post occurred, UGA and FU would have been in a rematch in the BCSNCG for the title. My recollection is that I suggested so in a post on this blog, too.
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Senator, I didn’t address whether we should have played each other again, but rather the outcome of any such game.
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I will be so glad when we can begin the 2013 Season so you guys can get out of the past and on with the future. Cojones ..How’s your health?
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As long as the brain and fingers work “OK”, everything will be fun. That includes blogging as well. 🙂
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Oregon would have gone over Florida due to the Bama-LSU backlash. As stated above, the rematch was pathetic the first time and that was with the two best teams in the nation playing twice. Florida wasn’t Bama-good last year. It would have been Oregon-UGA with people bitching about Stanford being left out even though they beat Oregon and won the Pac 12.
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The very fact that a “backlash” would prevent the two best teams from playing peeves me to no end…but you’re right-that’s what would have happened. The MNCG should be about matching the two best teams, not placating people’s emotions or balancing things geographically. There is a real need to get the human emotion/bias out of the formula. There’s got to be a way.
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The reaction? I would have died three days after the matchup was announced due to an ulcer consuming my entire body, thanks for asking.
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I live in Florida and have some good friends that are Gators ( I know, I know) and I actually thought the rematch was going to happen. I pointed this scenario out to them that we would play the Gators twice in the same season at a neutral site in Florida no less. Had we won it would have went from two in a row to twice in the same year kiss my ass, the worm HAS turned. Had we lost and then they were the national chumps at our expense it would have been a devastating kick to the crotch.
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Because Oregon didn’t win their conference, because bama went after not winning its division the year before and because UF fumbled at the goal line against us when they were set to tie it up, I think it would have played out as a rematch. There just wouldn’t have been any ready made arguments for there not to have been a rematch. Also UF had just soundly beaten a pretty high ranked FSU team. The will muschamp – uga connections would have made it interesting to the media types too. Finally, the media loves florida. I feel confident it would have played out as a rematch.
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Had they not fumbledonthegoalline…the Gators still needed two to tie. No way they make that two points in my mind. I say UGA would have taken them much easier in a rematch…Florida was playing about as good as they possibly could, and Georgia grew leaps and bounds between the WLOCP and ATL. (Florida was getting worse week to week and Georgia was getting better.)… UGA would have been NChamps and the bitching from the West Coast would have been icing on the cake!
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Shhh. Don’t tell Bianchi his emperor has no clothes.
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Beating Bama and UF twice last year would have been simply awesome. It’s that simple. WE cannot beat UF enough.
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Ultimately, the problem is this…
“but still UF was miraculously in the running to play in the national championship game until the final weekend of the regular season when Notre Dame beat Southern Cal.”
I could just as easily say:
“but still UF was miraculously in the running to play in the SEC Championship Game until the final weekend of the conference regular season when Georgia beat Auburn.”
(ND wasn’t losing to Southern Cal.)
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Correct fix to Bianchi’s thinking.
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Is it me or is Bianchi overstating the lack of talent Boom inherited from Corch?
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It’s not you. It’s a constant theme of his.
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So Urbs just quit recruiting? I seem to remember a few top five classes in there. Methinks the cupboard was not as bare as he supposed.
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Irwin whose “recruiting is in a different galaxy” magically learned how to recruit
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1634045-urban-meyers-recruiting-is-the-type-that-brings-national-championships
He knew nothing about it at Florida
“1
Meyer signed the top recruiting class in the country in 2007 and again in 2010
3.3
Meyer’s six Florida recruiting classes (2005-10) averaged a 3.3 ranking in the SEC. That includes the top class in the conference in 2006, ’07 and ’10.
4
Nearly half of Meyer’s 138 Florida signees were ranked as four-star prospects by Scout.com: 64, or 46.4 percent.
5
31 of the future Gators were five-star prospects, or 22.5 percent…
8
Meyer’s six Florida classes averaged a No. 8 ranking in the nation.”
http://ohiostate.scout.com/2/1136761.html
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On the D side the personnel Meyer left behind was good otherwise the Gators couldn’t have won 11 games last season with the O that they had.
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“Do they comprehend that if Nick Saban for some reason left Alabama that Muschamp might be the leading candidate to replace his former boss?”
Which just goes to show that Bianchi knows “you’ve got to scrape the shit right off your shoes” to avoid being exiled to 37F next season
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I would love to see Boom try to follow Saban..It wouldn’t take long for Bill Curry’s little excursion into Tusckerville to look like a cakewalk. Following Saban is going to be like following The Bear….one had better be perfectly competent and Boom would probably lose to Auburn his first year.
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“Boom would probably lose to Auburn his first year.”
Kristi says, “Shut up. It’ll be a trap. Cecil Hurt and Finebaum do not scrape the shit right off their shoes.” 🙂
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I don’t think they could have had a rematch, unless just as a thumb in the eye for all the whining about Bama-LSU. If the Gators got jumped they would probably feel like we did when LSU jumped us and we took out our fury on Hawaii. Maybe Louisville felt like they got jumped?
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To answer your question literally (“what do you think the reaction to such a rematch would have been like?”), I actually think the media would have eaten it up. An ancient, storied rivalry; a close, hard-fought regular season game; Muschamp the former Dawg; Murray the Florida product; SEC v SEC all over again–this time from the East–these guys really do rule the roost; the story lines would have been a sportswriter’s wet dream. Ticket prices to the damn thing would have set some sort of MNC game record. I would personally have loved the Hell out of it and would gladly have spent the 3 or 4 grand probably needed for a ticket– cause if the Dawgs had beaten Bama, they’d have gone into a UF nat’l title game sky high and I truly believe would have put as big a noogy on them as Louisville did. That would have made those long, horrible Spurrier years all worth it.
BUT I don’t think it woulda happened. It woulda been UGA vs. either Oregon or Notre Dame. Even if the Domers had lost to So Cal, enough of the voters would have stuck with them that they might actually have wound up #2. And you can’t underestimate the “I’m sick of the SEC” thing in the rest of the country–I live in part of the “rest of the country,” and people who aren’t Notre Dame fans wish ND and the SEC would just go away and leave them alone!
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Are you kidding me?! We’re talking UGA and Mark Richt’s incessant ability to lose control over everything not in his control. Our “lucky” last minute wins vs. both Gators and Tide means the latter two would have played for the BCS MNC. We would have gone to the Sugar Bowl as SEC Chumps (no typo there).
#ESPNhatesUGA
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