As the first game week of the season gets underway, much of the discussion will be centered around Florida’s game against Miami this week in Orlando.

ESPN analyst Paul Finebaum made his regular in-season appearance on the Birmingham-based WJOX 94.5 FM radio program “The Roundtable” on Monday morning to kick things off. Florida is widely viewed as a touchdown favorite, but Finebaum noted that a loss could be especially troubling.

“Especially in the wake of two or three months of bad news,” he said. “The first half of the year they were on a roll. They had a good recruiting class, maybe overhyped a little bit, but it was momentum building. But really ever since all the back and forth with Georgia, it’s almost as if bad karma struck the Gators. But they have had nothing but attrition, players in trouble, players bailing out. They did pick up the linebacker from Georgia, but it’s really been a calamity of bad news and really crippling because their schedule is so difficult. This is a game that pretty much everyone, except for delusional fans from the U, has as a win.”

Finebaum went on to say that he’d be surprised if Florida won the East.

“You go up and down the roster, I don’t see how they match up to Georgia, that’s really the issue,” he said.