Emerald Bowl: Florida St. vs UCLA @ San Francisco, CA

UCLA -3
Florida St and UCLA, two institutions with a lot of tradition and brand names when it comes to collegiate sports, are the case to study for this evening. The FSU brand is one that carries a lot of weight on the football field. When it comes to analyzing the Seminoles and the point spread it can cause some confusion. FSU is a 6-6 football team where their best win of the year was most likely against Western Michigan. Their other wins were against Miami, Troy, Rice, Duke and Virginia. Granted the first three, and Western Michigan, are all bowl teams, but please don’t try to convince anyone that those were quality wins. Despite all their struggles this year, FSU was a favorite in all games but two, against Miami and against Florida. Note: They covered both lines. One of the reasons FSU was favored so often is that their schedule was relatively weak. The other reason is that people don’t like to bet against the FSU brand. People still believe they are good. As far as talent goes, the people are not completely wrong. But not being wrong doesn’t make you right.

UCLA on the other hand does not carry the same magnitude on the gridiron as FSU and in The Dean’s opinion it causes people to overlook facts. Here are some facts about UCLA this year. They ended the year with three straight wins over 3 bowl teams, Oregon St, Arizona St and USC. They suffered through a 4 game losing streak in the middle of the season where three of the four games were on the road, 3 of the 4 teams are bowl teams and 2 of the losses were to teams that spent a majority of the year in the Top 10 and were pre-season favorites to play for the championship, Notre Dame and Cal. There is no doubt, no doubt at all, that UCLA played a better schedule, is a better team and has many more accomplishments this year than FSU.

With the bowl game layoff you can expect both offenses to be rusty and neither offense was all that great to begin with. That brings to the fore the defenses. The turf in San Francisco will be wet and the game could turn on some early plays. FSU has athletes that can make plays, but their struggles at QB are too overwhelming to overlook. Couple that with the Seminoles struggles all year and The Dean has to go with UCLA tonight laying the points. The Bruins have not received stellar play from their QB spot either this year, and perhaps I am buying into the FSU brand a bit, so I am having trouble going big and will play this game at 2-stars.

REVIEW: UCLA 27 – Florida St. 44

FSU protected that brand pretty well.