Outback Bowl – Saturday January 1 – 1:00PM
 |
vs.
|
 |
Penn State (7-5) vs Florida (7-5)
Saturday, January 1, 2010 at 1:00 pm on ABC
Raymond James Stadium – Tampa, Florida
Click Here for FREE Expert Bowl Picks
Things weren’t very happy in Happy Valley this season. The Nittany Lions were a complete afterthought in the Big Ten race winning only 4 conference games. Not exactly the kind of season they were hoping for before big bad Nebraska come to town. It is hard to win in a tough conference if you don’t have good QB play and this year freshman Robert Bolden just wasn’t cutting it. Lucky for Penn State fans unheralded Matt McGloin stepped in and had some success. McGloin is not the athlete Bolden is but he was able to provide the spark the team needed. The two of them should have an interesting battle in the spring and it will be an interesting battle on New Year’s Day against a Florida team that is infinitely more talented than PSU. Even though they have the same record as Florida if the Gators play a good game Penn State is in big trouble. They seemed to have sunk quickly in a deep year in the Big Ten.
Looking back I guess it was somewhat of an omen how badly Florida struggled against Miami of Ohio in their opener. Here we are at the end of the season and they have 5 losses not including the biggest loss of all, coach Urban Meyer. I think they were wise to grab Will Muschamp as his successor but things are still pretty weird for the Gators right now. Inspite of their record they are a far better team than Penn State. All of their losses are to bowl teams and their defense was ranked 7th in the nation in yards allowed. The Gators struggles were primarily on offense which shouldn’t be shocking given they were without Tim Tebow for the first time in four years. No matter what they tried it didn’t seem to work and the offense never got on track. You have to believe that with a month to prepare they should have some success against a weaker than normal Lions defense.
Despite the name recognition of theses programs this bowl game clearly falls into the who cares variety so motivation could easily come to play. PSU has been out of the Big Ten race for so long that the last half of the season didn’t really matter and the only team more confounding this season that the Gators was Texas. Both teams hurt better’s pocketbooks as the assumption was they would eventually get better and never did.
Game Prediction: This is Urban Meyer’s last game and it doesn’t seem likely that he will just phone it in. With extra prep time and the pressure off I expect he will have a gameplan that will be more effective in taking advantage of the Gators speed and there is a real possibility that Florida blows them out. Which will really create a storm with Meyer riding off into the sunset.
Score Prediction:
Florida – 35
Penn State – 24
The spread -7 for Florida. Even though I am confident the Gators will win I would like to see that line drop a little bit before putting some coin on this one.
Team records:
- Penn State: 7-5 SU, 5-6 ATS
- Florida: 7-5 SU, 4-6-1 ATS
Penn State Nittany Lions most recently:
- When playing in January are 6-3
- When playing on grass are 6-4
- After outgaining opponent are 5-5
- When playing outside the conference are 8-2
Florida Gators most recently:
- When playing in January are 5-5
- When playing on grass are 5-5
- After being outgained are 6-4
- When playing outside the conference are 9-1
A few betting trends to consider:
- The total has gone OVER in 6 of Penn State’s last 7 games
- Penn State is 18-7 SU in its last 25 games
- Florida is 19-6 SU in its last 25 games
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.