UCF, FSU, Gators, Canes still have a long way to go to reach the mountaintop | Commentary

For some reason, this column seems more fitting for those college football fans in the college football wasteland known as Missouri, which is widely known as the “Show Me State.”

The “Show Me” mantra was popularized by no-nonsense Democratic Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver in the late 1800s when he famously said during a speech: “I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

And I’m here today to tell you I come from a football fanatical state where I have covered some of the greatest coaches of all-time – Bobby Bowden, Steve Spurrier, Jimmy Johnson and Don Shula – and preseason hype and hope doesn’t impress or convince me. I am from Florida. You’ve got to go out on the field and show me.

Granted, there is always giddiness and gaiety about the start of a new football season and the lofty hopes and dreams that always come before you play a single game, but I’m not so sure our state teams are ready to traverse the treacherous trail and reach the mountaintop just yet. Advice to fans: Pump the brakes and proceed with caution or you just might drive off the cliff..

• First and foremost, this goes for you, UCF. I understand that you are euphorically and historically entering the Big 12 this season with a feeling that the program has finally arrived in the bigtime. No argument there, but there’s a monumental difference between being in a bigtime conference and competing in a bigtime conference.

This inaugural season should be one in which UCF fans should just enjoy the journey without the enormous expectations that have enveloped the program since those back-to-back undefeated regular seasons in 2017-18. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, those undefeated seasons should be considered aberrations; not the basis for expectations.

Especially now that UCF is stepping up in competition against programs with more money, bigger budgets and better facilities.. Don’t forget, TCU was 11-2, 12-1, 13-0 and 11-2 in the four seasons prior to entering the BIg 12 a decade ago, but then finished 7-6 and 4-8 in its first two seasons in the league. The Big 12 is not the best conference in college football, but UCF coach Gus Malzahn calls it the deepest.

“Our first conference game is on the road at Kansas State, and that’s no treat, and then our first home conference game is Baylor,” Malzahn says. “Those are your last two conference champions, so that’s a huge challenge. The Big 12 is a deep conference. When you look at the schedule, there are no off weeks. You have to bring your ‘A’ game every week. That’s what stands out to me as one of the new kids on the block.”

• This goes for you, too, Florida State. It’s great that you have shown improvement every year under coach Mike Norvell, accentuated by a 10-3 record last year. However, there’s a difference between going 10-3 and winning the Cheez-It Bowl and going 12-1, unseating Clemson at the top of the ACC and advancing to the College Football Playoffs.

Don’t kid yourself, this is the expectation for the Seminoles this season with returning quarterback Jordan Travis being one of the preseason favorites to win the Heisman Trophy. It’s been since the Jimbo-Jameis days that the Seminoles were playoff contenders, but now suddenly they find themselves back on the national stage.

Are they ready for it? Can they handle the pressure? Can they handle the expectations? Will they be blinded by the bright lights of ?

“This year it’s great that the country’s talking positively about our program. They should. It’s Florida State,” FSU coach Mike Norvell says. “This is a program to be proud of and the players I get to coach, but the expectations, they don’t determine what you’re going to do. We have to do that.”

We’ll find out soon enough if they can do it. The Seminoles play LSU in the season-opener right here in Orlando and then they travel to Clemson in Week 4. If they win those games, they’ll be ranked among the top 5 teams in the country; if they lose them, FSU fans will begin grumbling once again.

After last season, Norvell signed a lucrative contract extension that nearly doubled his salary and will pay him an average of $8 million per year. As salaries increase, demands and requirements follow. Norvell’s Seminoles won 10 games last year and fans expect even more this season.

The elevator of expectations does not have a down button. The Seminoles reached the 10th floor last year, and there is no going back down to the seventh or eighth floor. Anything less than an ACC Championship will be considered a disappointment to Seminole Nation, which has endured Jimbo Fisher bailing on the program, the Willie Taggart disaster, COVID, athletic department debt since the Seminoles last won a championship nearly a decade ago.

• This goes for you, too, Gators and ‘Canes. Both of you hired new coaches last year and made massive investments in your programs, but had nothing to show for it on the field.

The Canes hired favorite son Mario Cristobal away from Oregon, gave him a massive 10-year, $80 million contract and a roster that included quarterback Tyler Van Dyke, the ACC’s freshman of the year the previous season. The result? A 5-7 record, much internal strife and the first losing regular season in 14 years.

As a result, Cristobal overhauled his roster, revamped his coaching staff and now enters Year 2 under much scrutiny from a spoiled Miami fan base that is still living in the 1990s. Even though the Canes haven’t won an ACC title since joining the league two decades ago, the fan base still perceives its program as elite.

“Whenever you start up at a program again, and it has a rebuilding aspect, you have to sometimes go through a season like (last year) and not make any excuse or sugar-coat it,” Cristobal says.

Florida Napier, like Miami’s Cristobal, took over a once-proud program that has not been able to regain its footing on a consistent basis since Urban Meyer burned out and bolted 14 years ago. Napier was given a seven-year contract worth $7.5 million a year and lavished with an army of support staff and a mega-million-dollar investment in salaries for his assistant coaches.

Despite having an ultra-athletic quarterback in Anthony Richardson who would go on to become the No. 4 pick in the NFL Draft, the Gators struggled to a 6-7 record in Napier’s first year and back-to-back losing records for the first time in 43 years.

As you would expect, some notoriously impatient Gator fans groused and grumbled. And it certainly doesn’t help that the prospects for this year don’t look much better. Athlon Sports predicts Florida to finish 5-7 (3-5 SEC) and miss a bowl. UF has the second-lowest win total line in the SEC from DraftKings, which projected the Gators to win just 5.5 games.

The Gators are picked to finish fifth in the SEC East (ahead of only Vanderbilt and Missouri) and had no players picked on the preseason All-SEC first or second teams.

“One of the things we’re not going to do with our team,” Napier says, “is we’re not going to allow outside opinions or a created narrative to define the reality of the 2023 season.”

We understand your philosophy, Mr. Napier, but here in Florida we prefer the Latin phrase res, non verba.

Deeds, not words.

Or, better yet, as that great college football analyst Willard Duncan Vandiver of Missouri said so succinctly back in the late 1800s:

Don’t talk about reaching the mountaintop.

Show me.

Email me at mbianchi@orlandosentinel.com. Hit me up on Twitter @BianchiWrites and listen to my Open Mike radio show every weekday from 6 to 9:30 a.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and HD 101.1-2