Which bowl game does USA TODAY Sports have Florida playing heading into Week 5?
Florida recently fell outside of the top 25 in both the Coaches and AP polls, but that doesn’t mean the Gators’ season has come to a premature end. while the path to a New Year’s Six bowl game seems murky, experts are still expecting UF to reach bowl eligibility by the season’s end.
Erick Smith at USA TODAY Sports takes a shot at projecting all the bowl games each week, and he has Florida playing UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl on Dec. 17. It’s not the first time UF has been pegged to head out west for their bowl game. ESPN has included the Las Vegas Bowl a few times, and this is the third time Smith has picked Florida for the game.
The Las Vegas Bowl has tie-ins with the SEC and Pac-12, which means that Florida would be the de facto away team in Nevada. Gators fans travel well, but a second-straight appearance in a minor bowl game may have the fans a bit more apathetic than usual.
Regardless of which game the Gators make, they’ll be playing a lot harder than they did last year. Dan Mullen had already been fired when Florida played in the Gasparilla Bowl against UCF last season, and the team was in a bit of a lame-duck state. Napier will look to finish off his first season as Florida’s head coach with a win that he can build on next year. Whether that’s in Las Vegas or some other bowl location remains to be seen, though.
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