CARLTON REESE: Oh Noooooo! It’s The Audition Bowl! Everything About This Game Says ‘Interim.'

By CARLTON REESE

GatorBait Columnist

I have to admit my dread when I heard the first bowl prediction that the Gators might go up against Central Florida in Tampa. My hope was that this scenario would not come to fruition.

Two Florida teams going up against each other in Tampa? Even though it's a sellout, do they not want to sell hotel rooms or fill the restaurants with out-of-town fans? For fans of the Gators and Knights, it would seem such a bowl game would merely be a day trip for those that even cared about the game in the first place.

Bowl games present a bit of a dilemma for a program like Florida’s. Unless it is a playoff game or a New Year’s Day game, the significance dwindles to little more than a vacation exhibition to pass the time. For the best players, the game is not worth the risk when NFL dollars await over the horizon – even last year’s Cotton Bowl proved unworthy of Florida’s best weapons and we saw only a facsimile of the Gator team that squashed opposing defenses during the season. But I love college football and will watch any game at any time, and if it’s the Gators playing then all the better.

The problem here is UCF. What would be a great game for the regular season, an early season matchup where both teams can gauge the levels of their programs and where the urgency of victory touches fans, coaches and players alike, is suddenly lost when it is part of college football’s “silly season.”

It comes down to this: the Gasparilla Bowl means everything to UCF, if only because it is the Florida Gators on the other sideline. Put Old Dominion or Fresno State on the other side and the Knights couldn’t care less; instead, playing Florida makes this the Super Bowl – a program-defining moment that can be used as bragging rights for all time. Remember, this is the program that has “National Champions” permanently etched on its stadium because it went undefeated one year and figured it would crown itself since nobody else would.

For Florida, there is nothing to gain. What was a bad season can only get worse. No one cares if Florida beats UCF – the only goal is to avoid the embarrassment of losing. Victory in this game brings not a celebration, but a sigh of relief that a certain amount of shame was somehow avoided.

The Gasparilla Bowl presents an enormous challenge for Greg Knox, the interim coach who found a way to bring the Gators back to life and beat Florida State. But that was the Seminoles – if one cannot get emotionally charged to play that game under any dire circumstances then one need not ever step on the playing field. The emotion of playing FSU was the perfect prime to the pump in pulling off a victory that may have seemed unlikely. Against UCF, no such prime exists – all the emotion likely resides directly in the face of the Florida Gators. Perhaps another pre-game scuffle will energize Florida’s players?

For UCF, playing the Florida Gators means all hands on deck. For UF, it means playing a bowl game without two of its best defenders, Zachary Carter and Mohamoud Diabate. Carter is saving himself for the NFL and Diabate is entering the transfer portal. Wide receiver Jacob Copeland and quarterback Emory Jones are also entering the transfer portal, but so far both are planning on participating in the Gasparilla Bowl. Where will their hearts be?

For the Gators, the best hope for maximum effort and emotion in this game will be in acting as a sort of audition. For players like Diabate, Jones and Copeland, the audition is for other programs interested in their services; for everyone else, the audition is for new coach Billy Napier who will certainly use this game as part of his player evaluation process. But is this enough to charge up a team to win a bowl game against an opponent that has nothing to lose?

Most remember the 2015 Birmingham Bowl, in which an interim-coached Gators team played an American Conference opponent that hardly ignited passions. Florida came away with a victory, relying on running back Adam Lane and quarterback Treon Harris. If those two guys could pull out a victory (key interceptions by Brian Poole and Vernon Hargreaves notwithstanding) certainly Dameon Pierce and Emory Jones can do the same, right?

Dameon Pierce A-chuggin'. Will they turn him loose? (Chris Spears photo)

Ah, Dameon Pierce, Gator fans turn their lonely eyes to you. Could this finally be the game we see the ball handed off to Pierce 20 times? We’ve been waiting and dreaming of the possibilities and the dozen times he cradled the rock against FSU may have been just an appetizer.

So, if we’re looking for something to stoke our excitement level, perhaps the emergence of Pierce as a feature back could do it. Perhaps seeing Jones roll out of the pocket instead of sitting there finding open defenders will breathe some life into the fanbase for this one.

Central Florida will give its best with everything it has in order to beat Florida; the Gators will be in uniform, but beyond that I wouldn’t expect too much emotion. An interim coaching staff has little to nothing at stake and players have little or nothing to prove against an outmanned opponent, so what is left to play for? Well, pride in that jersey for one.

I cringe writing the cliché, but this time it really matters. Players must play for the pride of their school, the program into which they’ve poured their sweat and blood. The logo on that orange helmet means something, and if it doesn’t to any player then that player needs to be sitting this one out.

A Florida Gators team that shows up emotionally charged and ready to play is not going to lose this game. But what are the odds? I, for one, will be tuned in to find out.