My biggest knock on Pete Carroll over the years has been his inability to get his team mentally prepared for playing lower-quality teams throughout an entire season.
It seems every year USC is a favorite to win the national title and every year it loses to a team it shouldn’t, and I blame the coach for not having his players ready to go in a game it should win easily.
It’s easy to get your team ready for rivalry games and other big-time matchups, but making sure your team doesn’t get caught looking ahead in a trap game takes great leadership from the coaches.
Urban Meyer has been able to keep his team from suffering too many letdowns over the years. Only the loss to Mississippi last season was a game that Florida shouldn’t have lost.
He could face his biggest challenge as a motivator in the weeks leading up to the Sugar Bowl, which is basically a consolation game for the Gators.
They wanted to win the Southeastern Conference Championship Game, not just get there, despite what they said before the season.
They wanted to win that game because it meant a return trip to the BCS National Championship Game.
Now, despite only losing one game all year, UF has to settle for a trip to New Orleans.
Just look at last season for how difficult it is to get a team that was thinking national title to be up for playing in another bowl game. Alabama suffered its first loss to UF and went to New Orleans to take on a Utah team that wasn’t as good as UA but had a lot more to prove.
The Utes dominated the Crimson Tide 31-17 in the Sugar Bowl to finish the season undefeated.
And Cincinnati is a team that has a lot to prove. It is in a BCS conference and still did not get any consideration for the BCS title game despite finishing undefeated like Texas and Alabama.
A win over the Gators would strengthen the Bearcats’ argument that they should have played for the national title.
Florida will likely have to do most of its gameplanning for Brian Kelly’s high-scoring offense without defensive coordinator Charlie Strong, who will likely be preparing to take over as Louisville’s head coach, which will require him to be on the road recruiting.
Strong has been the leading force in motivating one of the nation’s best defenses all season, with his unit’s one hiccup coming in the biggest game of the year.
His replacement is likely to be a combination of Dan McCarney and Chuck Heater. Both are excellent coaches, but it is hard to tell how either will do in getting the defenses to rebound after the embarrassing performance against the Crimson Tide.
Let’s face it — none of the players want to be playing in the Sugar Bowl when they could have been attempting to establish themselves as the greatest team in college football history.
Obviously they are going to want to win the game, but how badly is the question.
Meyer’s job is not just going to be fixing the flaws that cost his team the SEC Championship but also getting his team hyped up for a game no one really wants to play, and that might be one of the toughest challenges of his career.
