Will Muschamp is feeling his oats, politicking for his Florida Gators on the national stage and poking a little bit at Nick Saban just because he can.
This is significant, maybe even more so than the Gators’ 11-1 record and upcoming Sugar Bowl assignment.
Muschamp’s only been at this job for two seasons, remember, and his offense still isn’t quite up to speed, but there’s enough good stuff here already here to place Florida above everybody but Notre Dame and the eventual SEC champion in the final regular-season BCS rankings.
Believe it or not, and that last-second win against Louisiana-Lafayette truly stretches believability, the Gators are so close to championship form that it won’t take much more to get them there in 2013.
Put Glades Day legend Kelvin Taylor atop the pile of monster recruits Muschamp is counting on to punch up his scoring. Put a camera on Muschamp, for that matter, and listen to what he’s selling, and without a hint of hesitation.
“We have a really tough football team,” he said while leaving the field at the conclusion of Saturday’s 37-26 win over Florida State. “We should be playing for the national championship.”
Of course, the Notre Dame-USC game was yet to be played when he said that. Florida’s late run at a spot in the Jan. 7 BCS title game still had life and Muschamp didn’t want Oregon or anybody else leapfrogging him.
Even now, however, there is legitimate reason to measure the Gators against the two teams that will play for the national championship.
Florida beat LSU more soundly than Alabama did, and the Crimson Tide didn’t beat Texas A&M at all. Notre Dame’s signature win, meanwhile, came against an Oklahoma team that Florida likely will get in the Sugar Bowl as a consolation prize, and likely will be favored to handle.
In the end, what was supposed to be just an OK team by past Florida standards wound up KO’ing several highly-ranked teams.
No longer does Alabama appear to be four touchdowns better than the Gators, which was the case last year in Muschamp’s fifth game as Florida coach. That conclusion reopens the SEC for discussion in 2013, and history has repeatedly shown that whoever is in the SEC discussion is in position to shout everybody else down.
The other day Saban was mumbling about how inequitable it is for whoever loses this week’s SEC championship game, be it Alabama or Georgia, to fall completely out of the BCS bowl picture.
Muschamp is a Saban disciple, having coached for him and learned from him at LSU and with the Miami Dolphins. That’s probably the only reason that he didn’t call his former boss out on this particular whine.
Just last year Alabama lost to LSU and missed a trip to Atlanta, yet Saban had no complaint with getting a rematch with LSU for the national championship, and he surely didn’t waste any energy feeling sorry for Georgia, which lost the SEC title game and dropped all the way down to the Outback Bowl.
If Florida is catching a break as a non-division winner on its way to a BCS bowl, the break that Alabama caught last year was even bigger.
Here, though, is where it gets fun, where Muschamp channels his inner Steve Spurrier.
“Well, I can switch and go to Atlanta if he (Saban) doesn’t want to go to Atlanta and play the Dawgs,” Muschamp said Monday. “Be careful what you ask for, Nick.”
Putting it on a first-name basis is a particularly nice touch. It closes the psychological gap between Saban, the coach with three national championships, and Muschamp, the coach with the 18-7 career record.
As for the gap on the field, Florida needed to get past Georgia to prove anything about that and the Gators didn’t get it done.
Bottom line, Muschamp looked to be a far greater distance from crowing about his program’s national credentials just one year ago, back when it took a win over Furman just to become bowl eligible. Last year, as a matter of fact, Coach Boom was going the opposite way, calling his players soft.
The difference in tone is deafening, and judging by the notion that head coaches are completely honest with themselves if not always with others, the difference is real.
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