Billy Napier can't comment on Rashada, says he's "comfortable"

A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:

At the Southeastern Conference spring meetings in Destin Tuesday, Billy Napier was immediately confronted by a media wanting to know the status of the Jaden Rashada lawsuit. Napier politely said he can’t get into any discussions about ongoing legal matters, which is true.

"I think it's important for everybody to understand that I can't comment due to the litigation, but I do have confidence in our legal team,” Napier said. “I am comfortable with my actions and I'm thankful for the university's support. We're gonna keep it at that and kind of let the process take its course."

Here is what you need to know about this lawsuit: It is never going to hear a judge’s gavel in a court room. It will be settled out of court, not because Billy Napier did anything wrong but because it is a nuisance that needs to go away. The longer it isn’t resolved, the more it sheds the Florida Gators and Billy Napier in a negative light.

Any claim the Rashadas have for monetary compensation have to do with the defunct Gator Collective and Hugh Hathcock, the alleged big money booster whose ego is at the heart of a ridiculous $13.85 million NIL offer to a high school kid who had never thrown a pass in a collegiate game. Two things to know: (1) Billy Napier’s name is not on any contract with the Rashadas; and (2) there was a termination clause in the contract.

So why settle this thing out of court? Why not challenge the Rashadas? Why not go to court where everything will be exposed? The key word here is exposed. While Billy Napier didn’t sign a contract that would pay Jaden Rashada an outrageous amount of money, his name is in the headlines so which is easier? Pay some money and make the Rashadas sign an iron clad NDA or go to court where there will be media scrutiny and days if not weeks of stories that can be interpreted as negative.  

If the Rashadas aren’t willing to negotiate a reasonable amount of go away money, then call their bluff. This is a two-way street. Florida and Billy Napier do have the right to fight back, but is it worth it to fight?

Rather than fight back, consider this a painful lesson in the new what’s in it for me college athlete. This might be the first lawsuit of its type, but bet the farm that it won’t be the last. We’re living in very strange times.

UF BASEBALL: Liam Peterson will start against Nebraska Friday

Kevin O’Sullivan has elected to go with freshman righthander Liam Peterson Friday afternoon (3 p.m., ESPN+) against Big Ten champion Nebraska (39-20) in the first round of the NCAA Stillwater Regional. Peterson’s overall numbers – 2-4 with a 5.83 ERA – are a bit deceptive. In his last four outings, Peterson has thrown 16-1/3 innings, allowing 13 hits and striking out 17 with a 2.20 earned run average.

Peterson went four innings against Tennessee back on May 3, shutting down the nation’s most explosive offense in four innings, holding the Vols to a single hit while striking out seven. He threw an inning of relief against South Florida, then went six innings against Kentucky where he gave up one run, five hits and struck out six. The next week at Georgia, Peterson went 5-1/3 innings, giving up five hits and three runs while striking out four.

Nebraska is expected to pitch righty Brett Sears, 9-0 with a 2.00 ERA and 97 strikeouts in 99 innings.

Catcher Jocelyn Erickson is returning to a familiar place at the Women's College World Series (Photo by Chris Spears)

UF SOFTBALL: Familiar faces in Okie City

When the No. 4 seeded Gators (51-13) take on No. 5 Oklahoma State (44-10) Thursday night (9:30 p.m., ESPN) on opening night of the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City, it might feel like a reunion of sorts, starting with the two head coaches. It is the 12th trip to the WCWS for Walton, who won the national championship in back-to-back years (2014-15). One of the UF assistants for the two national championship teams was Kenny Gajewski, a teammate of Walton’s when Oklahoma won the NCAA baseball championship in 1994. Gajewski is now the head coach at Oklahoma State, which is making its fourth trip to the WCWS.

Two years ago the Gators and Oklahoma State met in Oklahoma City in an elimination game won by the Cowgirls, 2-0. The two teams played in Gainesville back on February 19. In that game, Keagan Rothrock allowed only two hits in six innings, a leadoff single in the third and a 3-run homer later in the inning as Oklahoma State prevailed, 3-0. The pitcher for Oklahoma State that night was Lexi Kilfoyl, who spent the 2020-22 seasons at Alabama before transferring to Oklahoma State.

Kilfoyl is 42-8 since arriving in Stillwater, 26-3 in 2024 with a 1.06 ERA. She had a 2-1 extra innings win over the Gators in Gainesville in 2022, a home run by Skylar Wallace the only damage. A night later, the Florida bats erupted and Kilfoyl was knocked out of the circle after 1/3 of an inning.

The Gators are in the same bracket with No. 1 seed Texas and No. 8 seed Stanford. Over in the other bracket is No. 2 seed Oklahoma, whose pitching coach is Jenn Rocha, Walton’s pitching coach at Wichita State from 2003-05 and UF from 2005-18. Rocha pitched collegiately at Oklahoma for Patty Gasso, who has won seven national championships at OU including the last three. Gasso gave Tim Walton his start as a softball assistant coach back in 1999.

When the Sooners won the 2023 national championship, Jocelyn Erickson started 32 games at DH or first base while hitting .337 with seven homers and 25 RBI. Erickson transferred to Florida because she wanted to catch. At UF this season, she is the Southeastern Conference Player of the Year, hitting .383 with 13 homers and 80 RBI, which tied the school record and ranks second in the nation. For Erickson to have a chance to play against her former teammates, the Gators will have to make it to the WCWS championship series.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Perhaps it is fitting that Bill Walton died the same year the Pacific-12 Conference went belly up. Walton never missed an opportunity to tout the Pac-12 as the “conference of champions” and why not? Just the eight schools that made up the conference back when Walton was a 3-time All-American for UCLA combined for nearly 600 national championships in everything from football to water polo.

Arizona, Stanford and UCLA will begin play in the Women’s College World Series tomorrow. When the baseball regionals start on Friday, Arizona, Oregon and Oregon State are the last Pac-12 schools standing. No league in the country has won more softball (24) and baseball (22) national championships.

When the College World Series ends in late June, it will close the curtain on a great conference that has excelled in nearly every sport. Next year, UCLA, Southern California, Oregon and Washington will be members of the Big Ten, while Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah will be in the Big 12. Stanford and California are joining the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Washington State and Oregon State weren’t invited to join a new conference. They hold the rights to the Pac-12 name and they will get the league’s share of the College Football Playoff and NCAA Basketball Tournament revenue for the next two years, but the league will disappear completely unless Oregon State and Washington State can get a minimum of six new schools to join to form a new league.

There is speculation that some or all of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) will elect to merge with Oregon State and Washington State maybe as Pac-12 Part Deux or as something like the Pacific West Conference.

However it plays out, it will not be the same. It’s easy to point fingers at UCLA and Southern Cal which were the first two schools to bolt the Pac-12. They saw the handwriting on the wall with commissioner Larry Scott then giving way to the equally if not more inept George Kliavkoff. That started the exodus and it destroyed one of the most historically significant conferences in the history of college sports.

Scott and Kliavkoff were horrible administrators and they certainly bear their share of the blame for the demise of the league, but let’s face it, it was the presidents of the Pac-12 who hired them and stuck with them even when they saw things falling apart.

I’m no fan of Scott and Kliavkoff, but I’m even less a fan of the university presidents who were clueless when it came to saving the Pac-12. This did not have to happen, but it did because Pac-12 sports were run by academics masquerading as business people.

If you want to know the truth, most of the conference realignment could be avoided if business people ran the show. Things will only grow worse until the academics who run the top conferences conclude that it’s time to treat sports as a business and abandon this silly amateur model that is an albatross hanging around the neck of college sports.

It is not too late to salvage collegiate athletics, but the clock is ticking and if something isn’t done in a hurry, we will long for days like today when it only seems chaotic. Real chaos hasn’t set in yet, but it’s not that far off.

There is this silly idea that the conferences are basically through with realignment. Silly because we really don’t have a clue how much revenue is going to be generated by the College Football Playoff in its expanded model. Everybody is going to want their slice of the pie and that means schools like Florida State and Clemson are going to pursue every possible avenue to beat a contract they willingly signed that keeps them in the Atlantic Coast Conference. It is in court now, but if some judge says somebody needs to play another somebody done me wrong song and allows FSU and Clemson to leave, we will see another earthquake of realignment.

So how to solve the problem? Divorce from the NCAA is a good place to begin but it’s not that simple. You can’t leave one chaotic situation for another, which is what will happen if there isn’t another well thought out organization ready and waiting, complete with rules and infrastructure. I also believe that the new organization has to be as free as possible from inept academics such as former NCAA president Mark Emmert.  

College sports need structure. They need rules that can be enforced. They need a new way of doing things, otherwise we’re going to have a fullscale revolution on our hands in which the athletes do the unthinkable and go on strike. It could happen if something isn’t done soon.

One last thought. Membership in Division I should be restricted to those schools that (a) don’t take any state money; (b) to schools that can replace state money with corporate money; and (c) are willing to allow the athletic department to operate in affiliation with the university and not as part of the university. Lease the facilities, operate in good faith with the university, maintain the team name, but make the athletic department an independent entity. Otherwise, Title IX with all its new restrictions will sink us back to where we are right now.