From zero to warp speed? Miami-Florida winner could rev up its program

A generation ago, the voters in the 2001 preseason Associated Press poll chose the Florida Gators as the No. 1 team in the country. It was a sensible choice, given that Steve Spurrier had built Florida into a perennial power. As it turned out, the Gators were 10-2 that year and finished fifth in the final poll, and Spurrier left for the NFL after the season. 

The national champion in 2001? The Miami Hurricanes, led by first-year coach Larry Coker.

Eighteen years later, two of the most formidable programs of the early 21st century are seeking to recapture the mojo that once rendered their home state the promised land for college football. For Florida, it’s been a decade since the Urban Meyer-Tim Tebow Gators reached their zenith. For Miami, it’s been so long since it swaggered onto the college football scene that most of its current players have only witnessed the glory years on YouTube and in "30 for 30" documentaries. 

On Saturday at the Camping World Kickoff in Orlando, Miami and Florida will serve as opening act of the 2019 football season. The Gators, under second-year coach Dan Mullen, are ranked eighth in this year’s preseason poll; the Hurricanes, under first-year coach (and Miami native) Manny Diaz, aren’t ranked at all. 

But with both programs firmly in the national spotlight in the season-opening netherworld known as Week Zero, this could be a crucial moment for the balance of power of major-college football in Florida. Last year, the three biggest programs in the state -- Miami, Florida State, and Florida -- went a combined 22-16. Ten of those wins came from the Gators, who appear to have a head start on the rebuilding jobs Diaz faces at Miami and Willie Taggart has at Florida State. (Though at the moment, mid-major program Central Florida is outplaying them all.) 

But there’s an opening for one of those three teams to take command of the state’s massive recruiting base. And that battle begins Saturday. 

It’s already clear that Diaz is going to do whatever he can to restore the swagger that made Miami beloved and loathed throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. It was Diaz, as Miami’s defensive coordinator, who helped devise the Turnover Chain, the best marketing tool for Miami football this century. No coach used the Harry Potter-esque contraption known as the Transfer Portal more effectively than Diaz did this offseason. Few coaches have taken advantage of social media as effectively as Diaz has. 

But he must back up all that off-field savvy with wins, and beating Mullen -- his former mentor at Mississippi State -- would be a huge way to kick off his head-coaching career. 

For Mullen, the stakes are even bigger. He turned a four-win team into a 10-win team in his first season, and, unlike Diaz -- who will start redshirt freshman Jarren Williams at QB -- he returns an experienced quarterback in Feleipe Franks. Yet Mullen has already lost several players from what once looked like an elite recruiting class but is starting to appear more and more ordinary. He’s had to defend his program after multiple players have been accused of violence against women. A loss to Miami would add more fuel to that dumpster fire of an offseason; it could also set the Gators on a dangerous path heading into the SEC schedule. And it could give Diaz the opening he needs to keep more top recruits in south Florida, rather than watching them flee to Florida or other SEC schools.

In a way, then, Diaz has far less to lose, even if Miami does lose on Saturday. But Diaz -- who was once a producer at ESPN before he got into coaching -- is also highly cognizant of how much narrative matters in this social-media driven world. And a victory over Florida, with the entire country watching, would evoke memories of those Miami glory days, when the Hurricanes seemed almost invincible and nearly every young recruit in the country wanted to play for them.

It’s only Week Zero, but it means a lot more than nothing.