Before the suspensions, I would have put $100 on Florida, and I think that I have made a grand total of 2 money sports bets in my life previously.
I think you are drastically underestimating the impact of losing 14 starters. Yeah yeah....the brand new talent......blah blah blah.
A) You are assuming that the Michigan talent was worlds ahead of Florida. It's better, but it's not THAT much better.
B) Both teams are going into an unknown environment. When going to a neutral site, I'll take the more experienced team.
C) Michigan was good last year, no doubt, but their success was a bit of a product of their schedule. They played exactly 5 games away from Michigan Stadium and lost three of them. The two they won (@ Rutgers and @ MSU) had a combined record of 5-19 (really only 4-18 since one of MSU's wins was against Rutgers....).
Again, this was before the latest Florida suspensions and before they named the RS FS starting QB. The first bout of suspensions was mostly freshmen. It would have hurt depth, but it wasn't going to have a huge affect on the outcome of the game. Now that more starters are suspended and the threat of future suspensions are coming, I agree that the team psyche could be shot and I no longer think that Florida has the edge it had.
So I'll stand by the original statement. I thought Florida was going to roll Michigan. Now? Who knows, but I still believe it wont be a blowout. We'll find out in a couple of days.
