Alligator Alley

That's a much tougher question than the one that was asked to Palmer. Assuming both teams are pretty healthy ... I'd have to think long and hard about not taking Florida to win that one. This staff proved in the LSU game and the Ohio State game last year it can do work with a little extra time.

Every season is different, and every team. But I just go back to the last time the majority opinion was that an SEC team couldn't handle all the speed and play-making ability of Oregon. We know how that one came out.

I wrote before and I'll repeat it, because none of the sports writers and personalities expected UF to do much this year, and because they are winning ugly, their competition will be played up each week until UF beats them, at which point they will be downplayed. Big egos hate to be wrong, and most of these personalities like entertaining, offensive oriented football. UF is winning with smothering defense and special teams, with just enough offense to get by. It's not a wonder that they aren't anyone's darlings right now.

Florida deserves their ranking. And I tend to think that a UF-Oregon match-up would come out much like the last Oregon-SEC match-up for all the marbles. They'd find out UF can run side to side pretty good, and that we hit real hard.

When UF meets LSU or Bama in the SECCG, this will all be settled. UF doesn't have the eye-popping individual play makers that some other teams have. There is no Clowney, etc. They simply play extremely well as a team, and are better than most across all positions, rather than being dominant at a couple.

Exactly. It annoys me when the talking heads claim that Oregon (or any other team in a crap conference) should be ranked higher than the Gators based off how they look a.k.a. an 'eye test'.

A perfect example of how much that logic fails is West Virginia. Jesse Palmer was all over WVU's jock saying that their offense was unstoppable and that UF had too many flaws to be a top 5 team, all based off of 'the eye test' and we all know how that brilliant reasoning worked out for the former Gator. WVU showed their collective a$$es and the Gators just keep winning.

The Eye Test should have died in 2006 when our Gators whooped OSU 41-14 playing "ugly football" (honk if you sacked Troy Smith), but sadly it still remains trying desperately to give relevancy to all BIG 10 teams and FSU's title aspirations.

#JUSTWIN

Here is the thing with me and Oregon:

1. They haven't played or beat anybody. They beat a 5-1 Arizona State team last week, guess who ASU lost to? Mizzou without James Franklin at QB.

2. Oregon lost Darron Thomas and LaMichael James. They're a lot like WVU, a high powered offense that struggles against good defenses.

3. Oregon has a lot of speed on offense, mostly at RB. Their RB's get on the perimeter and make big plays. In the SEC you're not able to run the edges like you do in the other leagues because of the speed at defense end and linebacker. They have guys that are essentially a combo like Demps/Rainey when it comes to speed, good against average defense but when you go against the elite they get shut down.

4. Oregon doesn't have the depth on defense to match up to an elite SEC team, look no further than how their defense does when they get a lead.

5. If Oregon played Florida, we would shut down their run game, and get pressure on Mariota. Their defense doesn't scare me and they honestly haven't played anybody. We would ball control and own TOP like we have all season, and their offense would be sitting on the bench.

People like to knock our offense, but lets not forget that it rolled up 550 yards on Tennessee, it's easy to say that your offense is great when you haven't played anybody, and that is what Oregon has done.

LSU rolled up 41 on Washington and we held them to 6 points.

Take Tennessee as an example

35 points against NC State
44 points against Georgia
31 points against Miss State

20 points against Florida
13 points against Alabama

Take Texas A&M

48 points against SMU
70 points against South Carolina State
58 points against Arkansas
30 points against Ole Miss
59 points against La Tech

17 points against Florida
19 points against LSU

A lot of times these high powered offensive teams that don't play any good defensive teams usually end up getting their butt handed to them

How was WVU done the past couple weeks?