By: Jeff Doke

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” “An Essay On Man”, Alexander Pope, 1732.

There’s a fun little recurring character in the “SEC Shorts” video series named Hope. She premiered before the 2021 Georgia championship season and spent most of the season hyping up the Dawgs’ national championship aspirations.

While it eventually turned out that those hopes were well-founded, Hope left at the end of the season for Texas A&M. While that seemed like the most likely fanbase in need of some hopefulness, there were several other destinations she could have landed – Tennessee, Kentucky, or Missouri for example.

Florida, however, was firmly not on that list.

Hope hasn’t dared to set foot in Gainesville for a while now. The Gators have not had bonafied National Championship aspirations since Urban Meyer’s alleged “cardiac incident.”

While Muschamp, McElwain, and Mullen managed to have more wins than losses in their alliterative runs in the swamp, Florida now finds Billy Napier at the helm.

O Hope, where art thou?

Not in Gainesville, that’s for sure. Although the 2024 Gators go into the WLOCP with a surprising 4-2 record (3 more wins at this point than I predicted in the preseason), the high point of the season may have already passed them by.

Consecutive matchups against UGA, Texas, LSU, and Ole Miss await the Gators in the month of November.

Granted their regular season wraps up against the even-bigger-dumpster-fire that is the 2024 FSU Seminoles, but it looks like once again the 2024 Florida gators Bowl Game t-shirts are gonna be plain white Fruit Of The Looms, straight out of the cellophane wrapper.

The future isn’t looking much brighter. The 2025 Gators recruiting class sits at 33rd in the nation, 15th in the SEC.

The 2026 class is better, clocking in at 11th nationally and 7th in the conference, but if Billy Napier somehow manages to avoid the axe this postseason, expect some of those commits to bail and those rankings to take a tumble.

For the moment, let’s look at the here and now. In this, the greatest of all border war matchup in CFB, it is well known that the records do not matter.

Upsets aplenty when these two teams mix it up on the banks of the St. John’s; Florida costing the Dawgs a shot at the National Championship in 2002, UGA knocking off #1 Florida in 1985, and the “unsportsmanlike conduct on the entire team” game all come to mind…but what about 2024?

Let’s be honest. This is a weird season. Army & Navy are both undefeated. Alabama has two losses. Vanderbilt made an appearance in the Top 25, for crying out loud. Would a Napier defeat of Kirby be too far out of the question?

To be blunt, yes.

The Dawgs are on the hunt after the Alabama loss. The defeat of top-ranked Texas shows that they are still an elite program. Above everything else, Kirby Smart’s hatred of all things blue & orange is well documented. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d be selling off a few semi-vital organs on the black market just to put more down on the Dawgs to walk away from EverBank Stadium with the W.

Yes, hope springs eternal, but if you’re looking for Hope in Florida this weekend, I’d try Mons Venus in Tampa, maybe the pickleball courts in The Villages.

Not Jacksonville, though. Hope doesn’t live there for the Gators.