Desert Storm

But Spurrier is different. He has never obeyed the coaches' credo—thou shall always he humble in victory—and has never shied from passing in the fourth quarter of a blowout. "Spurrier says this is the first bowl he's ever played in that's meant anything," says Neuheisel, who took his offensive staff to Gainesville last spring to study the Florida system. "He loves playoffs. And this is the Super Bowl of college football."

4 Does fate enter into this?

Nebraska has been on an incredible roll for three full seasons, winning its last 24 games, and 35 out of 36, in an era when scholarship reductions have left coaches everywhere bleating about parity. (Did you notice? Northwestern won the Big Ten.) Nebraska's winning streak stretched this fall through a gauntlet of "distractions"—college football's code word for alleged criminal behavior—that exceeds anything Miami or Oklahoma or Florida Stale has endured in recent years.

But Florida will be the toughest opponent that Nebraska has seen during its run (the possible exception being Colorado in '94, but that game was in Lincoln). Everything the Gators do—throw deep and wide, jam the line of scrimmage—fits the profile of what it would take to beat the Cornhuskers. Over the past five years Florida's program has elevated itself from an airborne novelty with a snotty coach to this year's perfection. This is what Spurrier has been building toward.

There is change in the air. Expect an epic game in the desert. Expect creators of the alliance to congratulate themselves for making it happen. Expect Nebraska to play like mad, as always, and to play well. Expect the Cornhuskers to lose, barely. It's Florida's time now.