For Florida Football to be "successful," it has to do something no one has since 2000

The topic of the difficulty of the schedule for Florida Football has been beaten to death, resurrected like the Undertaker, beaten back down, but refuses to quit like Ric Flair refused to end his career.

But while we here at Hail Florida Hail have taken the stance that the difficulty of the schedule doesn't absolve Billy Napier of expectations, we would be remiss if we didn't point out that if Florida did make the playoffs in 2024, it would require pulling off something no team has done since the turn of the century.

Florida Football: Just Win Baby

Florida has eight teams ranked in the preseason AP poll on its schedule. Five of those are in a row at the end of the season when they face Georgia, Texas, LSU, Ole Miss, and FSU.

According to Andrew Weatherman on X, it is just the eighth time since 2000 that a team has had to play at least five teams in a row who were ranked in the preseason AP top 25. The more daunting task is that none of the previous seven squads emerged from that stretch with a winning record.

If Florida can go 3-2 during their final stretch, then they will probably finish the season as a whole at 9-3. Given the schedule, that probably gets them into the expanded college football playoffs, even though historically 10-2 is the mark to hit to be ranked 11th in the final CFP poll.

Does it seem crazy that we are talking about the playoffs (PLAYOFFS?!?!) when Napier needs to prove he can win a game?

100%.

Is it unfair to expect Napier to accomplish something literally no one else has accomplished since at least the year 2000?

Probably.

But anything short of making the expanded playoffs in 2024 means that Napier doesn't have Florida where it was expected to be three years into his tenure when he was hired.

And it will be hard to define the 2024 season as a success if Florida isn't at least in the hunt heading into November.