The Alligator Army Weekly Open Thread, Vol. LXXVI

I don’t need to tell you what week it is.

Don’t need to tell you the Florida Gators face Florida State. Don’t need to tell you the Gators can cap a fully successful 2018 regular season by taking down the Seminoles in Tallahassee — and, in so doing, also end some significant streaks for FSU. Don’t need to tell you that the reverse — Florida falling to maybe the worst FSU team in the last 40 years — would be a truly embarrassing and frustrating moment for the Gators and for Gator Nation, and would cement five full calendar years of FSU dominance in the only two sports that most Seminoles fans recognize outside of the sport in which Florida has lapped a great but ringless FSU program and the other sports that become convenient argument fodder at moments when they can be used to make Florida State look superior to Florida.

(It’s weird how some Florida State fans will use FSU being a school for women and Florida a school for men prior to coeducational higher learning as an explanation for Florida having its series edge on the Seminoles in football, but not extend that to wondering why Florida’s women’s programs have historically largely been well ahead of Florida State’s. I suppose that would require those fans to think critically about more than just football, though!)

Most things go unsaid in this rivalry.

But I will say this: All Florida needs to do to shut up the legions of Florida State fans who have turned the Seminoles being slightly to significantly better at football in all but one of their games against Florida this decade into a referendum on life, the universe, and everything is to win this game on this Saturday.

If Florida beats Florida State, so many streaks end. If Florida beats Florida State, Florida will be once again positioned to be the best Power Five program in the Sunshine State. If Florida beats Florida State, the Gators are very likely to end up in a prominent bowl well ahead of the schedule for success anyone projected under Dan Mullen.

If is a big short word.

But what comes after this if could be wonderful. And so I know what you and I will be thinking about all week.