Canes Romp in Opener 52-7

The final score of the Charleston Southern game is an interesting topic. Part of me says thats how badly we should have beaten them. A real Miami squad would always beat a cupcake by the normal 40+ point margin. So we shouldn't be too happy about that kind of result. These guys face tougher competition in practice.

However, we could have said this about many of the scheduled games we've played the past couple of years. Thanks to Coker, poor quarterbacking and general lack of talent, gimme games somehow turned into nail-biters and embarrassing losses. With Kirby or Kyle at the helm, I don't see how Miami could have scored 52 on a blind and deaf team.

So the 52 was a good sign in that regard. But it's still very dangerous to assume the offense is effective after a game like that. I'm not convinced that what I saw was enough to top the hated Gators on September 6. The defense looked good as well, but I can't promise a similar result when they face one of the best 2 or 3 offenses in college football.

Still, it was nice to see so many of our highly touted true freshmen playing. The one absent player that worried me was Arthur Brown. I'm a little concerned he will end up like Willie Williams. Not in the character sense, because Brown is an excellent individual. But because he was so good in high school, his only job was to kill the ballcarrier. Guys who are that good seem to have a lot of trouble making the transition to an organized, complex defense such as Bill Young's. To see him not play was a little disturbing, but I'm sure he'll pick it up at some point. Maybe he should even be redshirted to just learn the playbook and understand the system.

As for our chances next week, things look grim. I'm hoping Tropical Storm Hanna (now projected to graze Northeast Florida around Thursday night as of me writing this) slows down and if it must hit the area, to hit around the scheduled time for the game. If we could get this game postponed towards the end of the season, I would be thrilled. I'm not too confident about tossing in Robert Marve in his first start at UF like that. We did it to Kyle Wright at FSU and look what happened to him, he got shellshocked.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like we have a choice. Harris looked efficient, but efficient probably won't be enough to keep up with UF on the scoreboard. As much as I hate the Gators, and believe me my hatred runs deep, we were unlucky to face them this season. This team is just too young and has too many question marks to have a real shot at anything better than an 8-4 season.

However, it is a rivalry game. We've seen stranger things happen. Remember, that 2003 Gator squad wasn't that good either but it gave us a run for our money in the OB, when we had 6 first round picks on that team. So there's still a chance. I'm praying that the streak will live on, that we can rub it in the Gators face that they haven't beaten us in two decades. But I have prepared for the worst, knowing this day would come for 2 or 3 years now. A loss would hurt like hell, but I expect our boys to show some Cane pride and not let themselves get blown out of the water.

And if we win? Hell I wouldn't mind going 2-10 this season if that 2nd win was a UF victory. We all know this team can't win a title and titles are all that really count here in Coral Gables, so we'll have to settle for moral victories for now. A win at the Swamp would be one hell of a moral victory in my book.