A Clear Path for the Florida Gators to the Playoff and Beyond

No eye test is necessary. No favors needed whatsoever. Florida’s path to the College Football Playoff is uncomplicated. Win and you’re in. Lose and it’s a third straight New Years Six bowl game.

Seems simple doesn’t it? Actually, it’s going to take stars and planets aligning and for SEC commissioner Greg Sankey to pull some rabbits out of his hat to make some scheduling magic. None of this really changes the fact that Florida just has to win out to make the playoff, but the pathway could evoke memories of the old Beatles tune “The Long and Winding Road.”

For Florida to get to the playoff, the Gators have to get past three speed bumps along the road that takes them to Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game – Kentucky in Gainesville on November 28, Tennessee in Knoxville on December 5 and LSU in Gainesville on December 12.

It’s the LSU game that complicates matters.

Go back to October 17 when Florida’s game with LSU was postponed due to an outbreak of Covid-19 that forced football operations to shut down at UF for two weeks. Already in place was Sankey’s built-in makeup date on December 12. Since there were also virus issues at Vanderbilt, Sankey did an impromptu rearrangement of schedules, among the changes Missouri at Florida on October 31, eliminating the scheduled bye week ahead of the Georgia game. To even things up so that Georgia, then ranked fifth nationally, didn’t have a decisive advantage over the Gators, Sankey eliminated Georgia’s October 31 bye week by rescheduling the Bulldogs game at Kentucky for that date.

Then came November 14. An outbreak of the virus forced postponement of Alabama at LSU, creating a dilemma for Sankey since his built-in makeup date of December 12 was already occupied by LSU-Florida. This is where things get complicated. Presumably, Sankey has a plan in place although he hasn’t announced it yet. Maybe that will come this weekend after the Kentucky-Florida and Auburn-Alabama games but right now there is no announcement.

One option that is available to Sankey is to cancel the LSU game for both the Gators and Alabama, giving both teams a bye week prior to the SEC Championship Game on December 19. As much sense as that might make it would still require more schedule shuffling to accommodate LSU. It’s one thing to give Florida and Alabama a week of rest prior to the championship game. It’s something altogether different to lop off two games for last year’s national champ LSU without offering some way to compensate.

In the past week Sankey has made it perfectly clear he wants everyone in the league to play ten games but that can’t be done unless there are more scheduling accommodations. On Wednesday, WJOX in Birmingham, which quite often comes up with scoops from the SEC offices, reported that Sankey has a plan for a schedule shuffling that would work like this:

December 5: Alabama at LSU December 12: LSU at Florida December 12: Alabama at Arkansas

On the surface that seems like a simple solution, but it’s problematic because it doesn’t account for Texas A&M and Ole Miss. The Aggies, ranked fifth in the first College Football Playoff Poll, have a head-to-head win over the Gators and a blowout loss to Alabama. They are thought to be a wild card possibility for the playoff so they will need to play ten games. Texas A&M’s November 14 road trip to Tennessee was postponed due to the virus as was a home game with Ole Miss one week later. When the roadie to Knoxville was postponed, it was immediately rescheduled for December 12, but then came the postponement of the Ole Miss game. Since Sankey indicated that non-championship games could be played on December 19 it was automatically assumed Ole Miss-Texas A&M would move to that date.

There’s just one problem and again it involves LSU. If the WJOX report is true and Alabama at LSU is played on December 5, when will Ole Miss at LSU be played since Ole Miss-Texas A&M seems tentatively scheduled for December 19?

Sankey has his work cut out for him to figure out how all this is going to work out, ensure all 14 teams in the SEC play ten games and keep everyone happy. No matter how he shuffles the deck, however, it doesn’t change one basic fact: Although the Gators currently rank sixth in the College Football Playoff – one spot behind Texas A&M – they are in complete control of their own destiny and require no help to get into the playoff. That’s not the case for Texas A&M. The Aggies need Alabama to lose twice to make the SEC Championship Game and donkeys are likely to fly first before that happens. To make it as a wild card, the Aggies would need Alabama to win the SEC Championship Game, for Notre Dame or Clemson to win the ACC title game decisively, and for the playoff committee to consider a wild card A&M more worthy of a conference champion from the Big 12 or Pac-12.

Florida actually has two paths to the playoff, one that guarantees the playoff, the other that has potential stumbling blocks. In the first, the Gators win their final three regular season games and then whack Alabama in Atlanta. As SEC champs, they’re in. In the second scenario, Florida loses one of its three regular season games but beats Alabama. In that scenario it’s likely the Gators would make the playoff since the SEC has been such a dominant force with 10 national championships and four runners-up since 2006. It’s hard to imagine the SEC champ would be left out but there is a precedent that could see two-loss Florida left out while one-loss Alabama got in as a wild card. Go back to 2016 when Penn State won the head-to-head matchup with Ohio State and then the Big Ten Championship Game. When the final four teams for the playoff were announced, Ohio State got in as a wild card and Penn State was on the outside looking in.

We like to think the playoff committee wouldn’t say no to the SEC champ, even one with two losses, but history says it could happen. If it happened in the Big Ten and a blueblood like Penn State could be overlooked for a bluer blood Ohio State, then it could happen in the SEC where Alabama is the all-time standard of championship excellence.

So the simple solution for Dan Mullen and the Gators is to go 4-0. That makes it a no-brainer for the selection committee and it probably ensures that Florida quarterback Kyle Trask wins the Heisman Trophy.

First, there is the matter of going 4-0. The Gators are 25-point favorites this weekend against Kentucky. They will be favored by at least two touchdowns to knock off Tennessee and LSU. Florida should finish the regular season on a 3-0 run to get to Atlanta. Although it’s hard to imagine Florida being favored in an SEC Championship Game matchup with Alabama, the Gators might be the one team in all of college football capable of matching the Crimson Tide touchdown for touchdown as these are the two most explosive offenses in the nation. When you can do what Alabama and Florida have done in schedules solely SEC, then you have the makings of a league championship game like none we’ve ever seen.

Alabama averages 49.4 points and 548.6 yards per game behind a dynamic offense led by quarterback Mac Jones (2,426 passing yards; 12.1 per attempt; 18 TDPs), running back Najee Harris (797 rushing yards, 16 touchdowns) and wide receiver Devonta Smith (65-903, 10 touchdowns).

Florida can counter with an offense that averages 44.7 points and 522.3 yards per game behind Trask (2,554 passing yards; 10.4 per attempt; national leading 31 TDPs), tight end Kyle Pitts (24-414, 7 TDs) and wide receiver Kadarius Toney (42-503 receiving, 7 TDs; 13-83 rushing, 1 TD).

The certainty of this expected shootout is the winner makes the playoff with the very distinct possibility the winning quarterback – Trask or Jones – wins the Heisman Trophy. Almost every straw poll of potential Heisman voters has Trask the top candidate with Jones following closely on his heels. If he were to win, Trask would be the fourth Florida quarterback to win the big trophy. If Jones won he would be Alabama’s third Heisman winner since 2009.

Earning a Heisman Trophy for the game-winning quarterback would be frosting on a rather delicious cake and a statement about just how good these teams have been. While Trask and Jones would be deserving and would revel in their selection as the Heisman winner, both would forfeit personal glory for a chance to win the national championship.

There is added incentive for Dan Mullen to close out the regular season and knock off Alabama, too. In his final season as Florida’s offensive coordinator in 2008, Mullen was the play caller for a two-touchdown fourth quarter as the Gators knocked off unbeaten Alabama and Nick Saban, 31-20, in one of the truly classic SEC Championship Games of all time. As the head coach at Mississippi State, Mullen never made it to Atlanta and was 0-9 against Saban. He never could lure the kind of talent to Mississippi State that Saban does annually to Alabama. At Florida, he’s recruited far better talent to build a 2020 roster that offers Mullen the best shot he’s had at besting Saban since that 2008 team that went on to win the national championship.

This is the year that Mullen circled on his calendar when he took the Florida job in 2017 after the most successful run of any head coach in Mississippi State history. It has taken this long for him to build a true SEC roster, one that can compete with and beat anyone in the league and that includes Alabama. He’s 27-6 since returning to Gainesville as Florida’s head coach and has two New Years Six bowl wins under his belt. Very few predicted the kind of success this early in Mullen’s Florida tenure, therefore most pundits would say that simply making it to Atlanta is the next progression in the Mullen plan to restore Florida to the glory years of the Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer eras. After long years (2010-17) in what seems to be a desert, Florida is beginning to look like a football oasis once again.

All along it was Mullen’s goal to make it to Atlanta in year three but just getting there won’t satisfy him. Neither will hoisting the SEC Championship Trophy above his head on December 19 even if that will go down as quite the accomplishment. Just winning the SEC won’t be enough.

Mullen is here to win a national championship and put the Florida Gators on solid footing to be in the national championship picture every single year. While the future looks extremely bright, if you know Mullen then you know that he’s got his eye on the here and now. In Mullen-think why not now? Why not the Florida Gators in 2020? Win four games and Mullen takes the Gators to the playoff. Win two more and the Gators are national champs for the first time since 2008 and for the fourth time in school history.

It is not a preposterous idea. It can be done. The answer is in the immortal words of the late, great Al Davis. “Just win, Baby.” Winning solves everything.