What if Florida played in a 16-game showdown between SEC and Big Ten?

SALT LAKE CITY, UT – AUGUST 31: Taylor Spierto #30 of the Florida Gators carries the American Flag as they run onto the field before the start of their game against the Utah Utes at Rice Eccles Stadium August 31, 2023 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Photo by Chris Gardner/Getty Images)

The past several years have seen an unprecedented number of changes in the college football landscape, with the Football Bowl Subdivision’s top conferences expanding to levels that border on super-conferences.

The most recent shift coming into the 2024 season has created a pair of behemoths — the Southeastern Conference now with 16 teams and the Big Ten with 18  — that include a majority of the nation’s top programs.

With this in mind, The Athletic’s Scott Dochterman and Seth Emerson responded to a mailbag question that pondered the outcome of a basketball-like SEC-Big Ten challenge series.

In such a scenario, the two leagues would line up the matchups based on intraconference ranking, with 16 teams playing against their respectively-ranked opponent — which means the bottom two ranked teams in the Big Ten would be omitted. All apologies to the Indiana Hoosiers and Purdue Boilermakers.

The Florida Gators are ranked No. 12 among their SEC peers, which matches them up with the Minnesota Golden Gophers for this thought exercise. Based on the authors’ outline for the series, the two teams would face off in Ames, Iowa.

“The closest power-conference campus to Dinkytown is Iowa State, which is also the site of [autotag]Billy Napier[/autotag]’s biggest win as Louisiana’s coach.”

Dochterman’s take

“In three games against the Gophers while at Wisconsin, Florida quarterback [autotag]Graham Mertz[/autotag] never threw a touchdown and suffered a concussion in the only meeting the Badgers won. That unfortunate trend extends to this matchup for the…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/florida-played-16-game-showdown-163142298.html

Author : Gators Wire

Publish date : 2024-08-14 16:31:42

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