The Florida Gators have gotten a fair amount of respect for poll voters. Both the AP Top 25 (15th) and AFCA Coaches Poll (17th) have UF in their respective preseason top 25s. <\/p>\n
Friday, Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com took shots are predicting how the 2025 season will shake out when they revealed their preseason College Football Playoff and bowl projections.<\/a> It\u2019s doubtful Gator Nation will like how they see things going. Neither has Florida making the College Football Playoff, and these are the bowl games and matchups they have for Billy Napier\u2019s<\/a><\/strong> team:<\/p>\n AutoZone Liberty Bowl<\/strong>: Friday, Jan. 2<\/strong> Duke\u2019s Mayo Bowl: Friday, Jan. 2<\/strong> Per Google, the Liberty Bowl and Duke\u2019s Mayo Bowl do not have a specific numerical \u201cpick order\u201d for SEC teams in the traditional sense. \u201cInstead, [they are] part of a pool of six SEC bowl games [ReliaQuest, Gator, Music City, Texas, Liberty, and Duke\u2019s Mayo\/Las Vegas] that make selections after the College Football Playoff and Citrus Bowl have chosen their teams. The SEC, in consultation with the bowls and the member institutions, assigns teams to these bowls based on factors such as preferences, travel considerations, potential matchups, and avoiding repetitive destinations.\u201d<\/p>\n Below, are the CFP teams as picked by Bonagura and Schlabach. Each has four UF opponents projected to the CFP.<\/p>\n No. 1 Texas (plays UF) Playoff teams<\/strong> for Mark Schlabach<\/p>\n No. 1 Texas (plays UF) ***<\/p>\n Florida was 8-5 last season, and returns several key players, notably quarterback\u00a0DJ Lagway<\/a><\/strong>, All-American center\u00a0Jake Slaughter<\/a><\/strong>, running back\u00a0Jadan Baugh<\/a><\/strong>, EDGE\u00a0Tyreak Sapp<\/a><\/strong>, end\u00a0Caleb Banks<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and placekicker\u00a0Trey Smack<\/a><\/strong>. Meanwhile, the Gators added key pieces via the transfer portal and recruiting. Lagway has been limited in preseason camp by a calf injury, but the hope in Gainesville is he will be at 100 percent in the near future.<\/p>\n \u201cWe absolutely have aspirations to be a playoff team,\u201d Napier said two weeks ago. \u201cThat\u2019s the intention of coming here is to win championships. Now, what do we know about that? It\u2019s about the work we do. It\u2019s about today. Okay. It\u2019s not about yesterday or tomorrow. It\u2019s about today. A good today leads to a good week, leads to a good month, leads to a good season, and you look up and count them up at the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Florida Gators have gotten a fair amount of respect for poll voters. Both the AP Top 25…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":150262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1382,1318,1317,1315,1316,1718,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-150261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-florida-gators","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-regwall","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115037987569936016","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium (Memphis, Tennessee)
4:30 p.m., ESPN
Bonagura:<\/strong>\u00a0Kansas vs. Florida<\/p>\n
Bank of America Stadium (Charlotte, North Carolina)
8 p.m., ESPN
Schlabach:\u00a0<\/strong>Duke vs. Florida<\/p>\n
<\/strong>No. 2 Penn State
<\/strong>No. 3 Ohio State
<\/strong>No. 4 Clemson
<\/strong>No. 5 Georgia (plays UF)
<\/strong>No. 6 Notre Dame
<\/strong> No. 7 Alabama
<\/strong>No. 8 Oregon
No. 9 LSU (plays UF)
<\/strong>No. 10 Arizona State
<\/strong>No. 11 Miami (plays UF)
<\/strong>No. 12 Boise State <\/p>\n
<\/strong>No. 2 Clemson
<\/strong>No. 3 Penn State
<\/strong>No. 4 Georgia (plays UF)
No. 5 Ohio State
<\/strong>No. 6 Alabama
<\/strong>No. 7 Notre Dame
<\/strong>No. 8 Oregon
No. 9 Miami (plays UF)
<\/strong>No. 10 LSU (plays UF)
<\/strong>No. 11 Arizona State
<\/strong>No. 12 Boise State <\/p>\n