Florida Gators shrugging off nation’s hardest football schedule

DALLAS — Florida Gators coach Billy Napier had been at SEC media days for only a few minutes when he was confronted with an unavoidable topic around his program.

“I think there’s a narrative about the schedule,” Napier said.

That narrative: It’s the toughest in the country, the toughest in program history and, perhaps, as among the toughest any team has ever had.

There’s truth to it, if the preseason magazines and prognosticators are close to correct. Eleven of Florida’s 12 opponents are in major conferences (though UCF was not a Big 12 member when the game was scheduled). ESPN’s SP+ advanced metrics have nine of them in the top 25, including the Gators’ final seven foes.

FanDuel lists 16 teams with plus-240 odds or better to make the expanded 12-team playoff. Florida plays eight of them: Georgia, Texas, Mississippi, LSU, Florida State, Tennessee, Miami and Texas A&M.

The Gators spent a large part of the SEC’s preseason kickoff shrugging off questions about it at the Omni Dallas Hotel.

“I think that people look at the schedule, and they say it’s the hardest schedule in the country,” quarterback Graham Mertz said. “You’ve got to look at it as opportunity. I think, across the board, our team’s excited about that opportunity. You wouldn’t want it any other way.”

If we can ignore the one-game-at-a-time cliches, the Gators suggested a few reasons for dismissing the schedule concerns.

One is that preseason predictions are imperfect. Rankings are based in part on recent history and returning production, but the transfer portal has made rosters more fluid. FSU, UCF and Miami all have veteran transfer quarterbacks in their first year at a new school. There’s no guarantee they’ll thrive. Just because Florida’s final five opponents look like playoff contenders in July doesn’t mean they’ll actually be playoff contenders in November.

“I think some of these teams that we play aren’t the same teams that they had last year,” Napier said, “and we certainly are not the same team that we had last year. College football — more than any time in our game — has become one year at a time.”

When Napier does want to look back on last year, he finds another reason for optimism. The Gators beat Tennessee, played LSU and the Seminoles into the fourth quarter and probably should have beaten another top-12 team (Missouri).

“We competed against these teams in the past, right?” Napier said. “So this is nothing different.”

There is, however, one difference Florida has touted all offseason. The Gators are more experienced with 41,000 career snaps worth of teachable moments.

Mertz has a lot of them over his 43 starts. He joked about having the “old guy mind-set” on the team. A schedule with a bunch of big names doesn’t faze him. In addition to his time at Florida, the Wisconsin transfer played at Ohio State and Iowa and against Michigan, Notre Dame and Penn State.

“For me, I played this game for six years in college,” Mertz said. “I played pretty much every team in every conference. ... The game just comes down to execution.”

The most interesting wrinkle to the schedule is its Florida focus. The Gators end, as always, against FSU. But they open against Miami and also have their first regular-season game with UCF in 18 years.

“It’s a unique year,” Napier said. “I think ultimately when you think about all the (Power) four teams, each conference represented to some degree — two teams from the ACC and the Big 12 — it’s an incredible opportunity, and I think it’s going to be huge. Each one of those matchups is critical. We have a ton of respect for each one of those teams and coaches, and it’s part of the schedule that everybody likes to talk about.”

And one the Gators like to shrug off.

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