December 19th 2009, 8:00 ET - ESPN

This year's St. Petersburg Bowl will finish an ESPN bowl opening day double header.  Rutgers Scarlet Knights and Central Florida Golden Knights will duel for the honor of their colors in the Tampa Bay Devil Ray's home field Tropicana Field.  UCF decisively won the inaugural St. Petersburg Bowl last year.

Rutgers played in the first football game ever while UCF first fielded a team thirty years ago.  UCF has only been an FBS team since 1996.

This will be the first meeting of these two teams on the grid iron.  How do these compare this year?

General

Rutgers has played more ranked teams but UCF has the best win when they knocked Houston out of the top 25.

Rutgers has the lead in the polls but at this point in the polls a 7 spot lead is not very meaningful.  The difference in each teams average is 5 ranking spots with a standard deviation over 8 for each.

 UCF's Ball

Both teams have faced similar opposition so these numbers should be representative of what we will see.  This offense and defense are very evenly matched giving a very good idea of what to expect.

Rutgers's Ball

Again, little difference here gives a very clear picture of what is ahead on this side of the ball.

Prediction

UCF looks like they win a close fought slow paced ground game but Rutgers gains an advantage if the game turns into a shoot out.

While both defenses will exploit a mistake by the offenses, neither offense is overly prone to error.

I like Rutgers 24-21.