A team coming off a 5-7 season, its worst in 30 years. A team whose many inexperienced players include a starting quarterback about to launch his first college pass. A team judged midpack in the Atlantic Coast Conference and off the radar in national polls.

A team built for tomorrow, dreaming of today. Of Saturday night, actually.

A 21-point underdog, facing Gators in their home Swamp.

Hurricanes, believing they can win.

Barack Obama popularized the phrase ``the audacity of hope.''

This University of Miami football team has it, and that is as good a starting place as any -- as good a sign as any -- for a program trying to prove the decline is over and the rise has begun.

The spark that made UM the hottest team in the country always was attitude. It was bravado, or, to critics, cockiness. It was Michael Irvin crowing, ``We're going to tell you we're going to beat you. Then beat you. Then tell you how we beat you.''

Canes football didn't invent swagger, but the art form was perfected here.

So this week a minor Gator named Louis Murphy -- Can't find him? Check Percy Harvin's shadow -- threw some mild smack by saying, 'I don't refer to [Miami] as `The U.' I refer to them as Miami. We're the real university, so I consider us 'The U.' ''

You get to say that when you are ranked No. 5 in the country and your opponent hasn't one player who has tasted such heights.

If you are the underdog opponent, you bow your head and abide that.

Unless you are these Hurricanes.

FOLLOWING TRADITION

Then you feel the ghosts of those five national-championship teams telling you not to take it. You feel the imprimatur of UM's past success and prestige and feel it on you like a perfectly tailored suit. You see that 'U' on your helmet and you feel stronger.

So you rise up and talk back. Emboldened by Miami's six-game series winning streak, you hark back to the days when the capital of football in this state was Coral Gables.

''We want to show them the University of Miami still rules the state of Florida,'' said center Xavier Shannon, the coach's son. ``We wanted the game at 8 o'clock. Let all the other games get out the way, and everybody else can see us play. I believe it's zero and six lately for Florida. We want to keep it that way. We plan on winning this game.''

Shannon calls Javarris James and Graig Cooper the best running back tandem in the country and said, ``That's what they have to worry about. We feel [our offensive line] can dominate anyone in the country, and that's what we plan on doing.''

Safety Anthony Reddick called the three-touchdown point spread ''insulting'' and said of Florida's offensive speed, ``Are they going to be able to match up with our defense?''

The Canes' attitude is bigger than they are right now, but that's OK. That is one of the best definitions of confidence, of belief. UM misplaced that attitude the last few years but seems to have found it. Now we get to see if it is all talk.

In sports, the scoreboard mirrors who you are perfectly, and the one at Florida Field will for Miami as midnight approaches Saturday. It will tell the Canes and their fans how far along the road to recovery the program is.

FIRST REAL TEST

All we know right now is that last week's 52-7 waltz past small-school Charleston Southern was no barometer of anything. Canes tight end Dedrick Epps was asked the biggest difference between this week's game and last week's, and he had the perfect answer, no words needed.

He laughed. A brief burst of chuckle that said, ``You're kidding, right?''

A similar query was put to quarterback Jacory Harris, who is so skinny he could slip through a fax machine, and (forgive his naivete) he answered, ``Charleston Southern helped us find out whether or not we can play with a team of Florida's caliber.''

Sorry, young freshman, but no it didn't. Playing Florida is how you find out if you can play with a team of Florida's caliber. All the better to do so in The Swamp, on ESPN's national stage, in prime time.

''A great opportunity for this university to see where we are as a program,'' UM coach Randy Shannon understated it. ``We're inexperienced but we feel like we have a team that's a lot better than last year.''

The Gators have a chance to win this game by a merciless blowout because they are that good.

The Hurricanes have a chance to fashion a stunning upset because the Hurricanes might be that good. Because they have enough talented players, like debuting quarterback Robert Marve, who are too young too know they are supposed to be quaking.

These rivals' most recent regular-season meeting was in 2002, when UM was the defending national champion, swaggered into The Swamp and schooled Florida 41-16. Florida coach Ron Zook said afterward, ``That's the level we've got to get to.''

Now the Hurricanes are aspiring to the level the Gators occupy -- and feeling ready to prove they already are there.

They have been dreaming it and hoping it and believing it and talking it, and now only one small task remains for the young Canes.

Doing it.

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