OTHER PICKS
Texas A&M 55, Nevada 26Missouri 42, UConn 11Miss. St. 41, Northwestern State 10Arkansas 35, Texas Tech 28Florida State 24, Boston College 19Wake Forest 17, Army 14North Carolina 28, Illinois 13Duke 23, Northwestern 22Virginia 49, William & Mary 14Virginia Tech 30, Purdue 27Miami 31, Nebraska 24N.C. State 42, Ole Dominion 21MTSU 45, Charlotte 18Ohio State 49, No. Illinois 6Southern Cal 34, Stanford 23TCU 52, SMU 17
Florida is among the biggest pressure-cooker jobs in college football.
Steve Spurrier guided the Gators to six Southeastern Conference championships and one national title to set a high bar throughout the 1990s, and then Urban Meyer came along a few years later and won national titles in 2006 and ’08. The three-year stint of Ron Zook and the four-year stint of Will Muschamp were not-so-successful regimes that ended with interim coaches for bowl games.
First-year Florida coach Jim McElwain has an offensive background like Spurrier and Meyer, so he’s got that going for him, but his first pressure-cooker contest takes place Saturday night at Kentucky. The Gators have defeated the Wildcats 28 consecutive times, which includes seven combined victories from Zook and Muschamp.
“It’s pretty amazing,” McElwain said Wednesday on the SEC teleconference, “but I do know that each year is a different team and a different set of players out there. I was on the bad end of one of those streaks back at Montana State to where the rival had us about 15 years in a row, and there was always a big deal about that.