Pat Dooley’s High Five (June 16th)

Last week on the High Five I gave you the five games Florida cannot lose if the Gators want to have a successful season.

But those are not the games that you are mentally circling in your calendar.

We can’t always know how a season is going to turn out and what games will end up deciding what kind of season this will be in 2022.

But we have a pretty good idea.

So, these are the games that will define Florida’s football season on this week’s High Five (you’ll notice I did not include Utah and I have reasons I will share later):

1. Kentucky

The Wildcats are coming off a 10-win season and have shown that they are in Florida’s league over the last five years. They have won two of those games and could have won two of the others (and probably should have).

2. Georgia

As always. Georgia would be a big game if the Bulldogs sent its scout team to Jacksonville. How big it is will depend on where the Gators are at this point in the season. But most seasons are defined by how you do against Georgia.

3. At Tennessee

The Vols should come in 4-0 to a game that will have the Rocky Toppers in a frenzy. This is Florida’s first road test and we’ll find out what to expect from this team playing away from the Swamp.

4. LSU

Billy Napier needs to establish a lot of things in his first year. One of them is to show that LSU no longer owns Florida. The Tigers have won nine of the last dozen games against Florida, four of them in Gainesville.

5. At Texas A&M

Somehow, Florida will have visited College Station three times since the Aggies joined the league to Georgia’s zero-point-zero. We know what happened the last time during the COVID year and it’s still a bitter memory.