Buckeyes land in Gator Bowl

In a year of uncertainty and unusually bad football for Ohio State they still proved to be a draw for bowl game big wigs. Ohio St. was selected by the Gator Bowl to play the Florida Gators on Jan. 2, 2012. The gator bowl passed on teams in the B1G that had better records and worse had beaten OSU. Dropping Northwestern, Purdue, and Penn St. down to lesser B1G tie in bowl games. Unfortunately they drew a team that is having an equally disappointing year in the 6-6 Florida Gators. Florida has been bad in just about every aspect of football this year from offense to defense to special teams…. BUT and it is a big but they have a new found reason to stick it to the Buckeyes this year. With the hiring of former UF coach Urban Meyer some current Gator players and to a lessor extent coaches and university leaders want to exact some revenge on Coach Meyer for what they feel is him quitting on them. It also doesn’t help that the game will be played about 70 miles from UF campus located in Gainesville to the bowl in Jacksonville.

To sum up my first thoughts OSU has received and accepted a bowl bid to play in the Gator Bowl. Which means if the NCAA does hand down a bowl ban now it wont be for this year. The 6-6 Buckeyes will play the 6-6 Gators in a virtual home game for Florida in what is no doubt the most disappointing year for both teams in quite some time. Florida has home field and motive to win. Ohio St. has pride and the responsibility to win this for Coach Meyer and to send Coach Fickell off with a win.

My early prediction (which will change once players get suspended for bad grades and bad behavior and injury info) is going to be Ohio State 9 Florida 6. Which will immediately make all voters to call it the game of the century and demand a repeat in next years BCS NCG.