Florida Gators: Top SEC Quarterback Room

A few thoughts to jump start your Thursday morning:

A year ago this time, Billy Napier was being skewered for (a) losing Jaden Rashada in a nasty NIL divorce and (b) signing Wisconsin transfer Graham Mertz. It turns out Mertz was far better than advertised and by Rashada heading out to Arizona State, it cleared the way for DJ Lagway, the top high school QB in the country and the Gatorade National Player of the year. As some might say, God does work in mysterious ways.

For insurance, Napier went to the portal to bring in former Colorado State starter Clay Millen and Yale redshirt freshman Aidan Warner. Instead of the questionable quarterback room of 2023, Napier now has one of the better rooms in the Southeastern Conference.

Florida is one of six SEC schools to return a healthy incumbent but only a couple of schools will have the potential 1-2 threat in Mertz and Lagway backed up by a former Division I starter.

Here is a look at the pre-spring practice QB room at all 16 SEC schools.

Alabama: New coach Kalen DeBoer inherits Jalen Milroe who will be in the Heisman conversation. The backups are Ty Simpson and redshirt freshman Dylan Lonergan. Bama lost stud recruit Julian Sayin to Ohio State with the coaching change. Look for help in the portal.

Arkansas: KJ Jefferson transferred to UCF, leaving behind former North Carolina transfer Jacolby Criswell. Boise State transfer Taylen Green is the likely starter. Situation bleak.

Auburn: Payton Thorne returns and third teamer Holden Geriner. Auburn signed 4-star Walker White and whiffed in the portal trying to land Liberty QB Kaidon Salter. Hugh Freeze has a help wanted sign out.

Georgia: Carson Beck will be on everybody’s Heisman short list. He would have gone first round if he had declared for the NFL. The backup is Gunner Stockton. They were left in the lurch by Dylan Raiola, who did a last minute switcheroo to Nebraska. They’re shopping the portal for a backup.

Kentucky: Brock Vandagriff was once a 5-star who signed with Georgia. Now he’s THE guy at Kentucky, which could lose its OC to the NFL. Mark Stoops induced former UK backup Beau Allen, who was at Georgia Southern, to transfer back to UK. The Cats signed 4-star Cutter Boley. Chaos if the OC bolts.

LSU: All-Interplanetary Heisman winner Jayden Daniels is gone as is the OC, leaving behind Garrett Nussmeier, who can fling it but who can’t run a lick. They didn’t sign a HS QB but they did land former Vandy QB AJ Swann in the portal. A step backward.

Mississippi State: Will Rogers left for Washington, leaving new coach Jeff Lebby with former Vandy QB Mike Wright. The hedge against Wright is former Baylor QB Blake Shapen, brought in via the portal. The Bulldogs signed 3-star Michael Van Buren. Patience will be required.

Missouri: Brady O’Connor is the returning starter who will hear some preseason Heisman hype. Backup Sam Horn decided to return but former Miami transfer Jake Garcia transferred to East Carolina. Eli Drinkwitz got Southern U transfer Harold Blood in the portal and 4-star Aidan Glover out of high school. Excellent starter, solid backup.

Oklahoma: Dillon Gabriel left for Oregon, leaving the job to former 5-star Jackson Arnold. The Sooners signed 4-star Michael Hawkins and brought in former Texas/Nebraska/Florida Atlantic QB Casey Thompson as the experienced backup. Arnold better be good.

Ole Miss: A lot of folks rate Jackson Dart with Carson Beck as the best QB in the SEC. The backup is former 5-star and LSU transfer Walker Howard. Lane Kiffin also signed 3-star Anthony Maddox. Dart and Howard are a fine 1-2. Looking for portal help.

South Carolina: Spencer Rattler and all the backups are gone. Shane Beamer brought in three stud running backs in Rocket Sanders, Oscar Adway and Jawarn Howell, which makes the import of former Oregon/Auburn QB Robby Ashford seem as if the Gamecocks are going to run the option. Ashford can’t throw a lick. The signee is 3-star Dante Reno. Help wanted sign is out.

Tennessee: Everybody is banking on former 5-star Nico Iamaleava, who started and got a win in the Citrus Bowl. He better stay healthy. The backup is 4-star signee Jake Merklinger. Looking for portal help.

Texas: Steve Sarkisian might be asking the Jim Harbaugh question, “Who’s got it better than us?” Maybe nobody in the SEC. Quinn Ewers is back as is redshirt freshman Arch Manning, a former 5-star. The Longhorns also signed 4-star Trey Owens.

Texas A&M: Connor Weigman returns but can he stay healthy? Jaylen Henderson got hurt in the bowl game. Then there is Marcel Reed, who finished the bowl game after Henderson got hurt. The Aggies signed 4-star Miles O’Neill. A healthy QB would be a pleasant beginning.

Vanderbilt: The bad news is all the quarterbacks left. The good news is all the quarterbacks left. The new QB will be either Utah transfer Nate Johnson, New Mexico State transfer Diego Pavia or 3-star signees Jackson Muschamp (yes, Will’s his dad) or Jeremy St. Hilaire. It’s going to be a long, long year.

THREE OF THE FOUR CFP HEAD COACHES ARE GONERS

With Jim Harbaugh leaving Michigan for the Los Angeles Chargers job, it means three of the four teams that made the 2023 College Football Playoff will have a new head coach in 2024. Nick Saban retired at Alabama, replaced by Kalen DeBoer, who led Washington to the championship game only to bolt for the perceived greener pastures of Tuscaloosa. The only coach who will be back in 2024 is Texas coach Steve Sarkisian. If you’re looking for a coach not named Kirby Smart as the one most likely to get his team to the 2024 national championship game, then Sark should be your guy.

Can you think of a time when college football was going through a more chaotic time than this one? We have a transfer portal that is totally out of control thanks to the NCAA granting unlimited free agency to players who can transfer to a new school every year without fear of sitting out. We have NIL which has unleashed boosters with more money than brains to make outlandish monetary offers to high school kids who have never played a single snap. We have a clueless NCAA which has tried unsuccessfully to lobby a do-nothing Congress to step in and regulate. That same NCAA is headed by a former politician who once played JV basketball at Harvard and who is as relevant leading the NCAA as a pimple on an elephant’s butt, proposing a rich get richer scheme that if implemented will sink a large number of the athletic programs that haven’t mega contracts with TV networks. After more than 100 years of producing champions in just about every sport, we no longer have a Pac-12. We have an ACC being threatened by Florida State, which doesn’t seem to understand that neither the SEC nor the Big Ten want anything to do with the Seminoles. That same ACC has added California, Stanford and SMU to its ranks.

The only thing that is going to save all of college sports is for football to secede from the NCAA. Football pays the freight for all the other sports, so the salvation of college sports has to begin with all or most of the schools that make up Division I extracting football from the clutches of the NCAA. And, the sooner the better.

On paper this should be simple enough proposition that Fred and Doris Ziffel could figure it out, but unfortunately, it will require the approval of the presidents of the Division I institutions. They are supposed to be among the best and brightest among us, but how many of them actually understand that collegiate sports are a multi-billion dollar business that should be run by business people?

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Now that Jim Harbaugh has done what we expected all along and departed for the Los Angeles Chargers, who has the most pressure: Harbaugh’s successor at Michigan, the NCAA or Ryan Day at Ohio State?

Harbaugh’s successor (likely former Oklahoma O-lineman and Michigan OC Sherrone Moore) will not only face the inevitable comparisons to the coach who beat Ohio State three straight years and won a national championship in his final season, but the possibility of severe NCAA sanctions. Harbaugh is a legend, a Michigan man who won a Big Ten championship as a quarterback and who won a national championship as a coach, so whoever succeeds will have to deal with the every day message board criticism that starts with “Well, Coach Harbaugh would have done it like this.” If that isn’t bad enough, what happens if the NCAA drops the hammer, not over the Level II recruiting violations or alleged lying to the NCAA by Harbaugh, but several years of sign stealing? And then there is Ohio State. Harbaugh beat the Buckeyes three straight years. It will only take one loss to the Buckeyes for someone to start a “Fire Coach X” website.

Then there is the NCAA. The NCAA can walk away and wash its hands of the Level II recruiting violations. They aren’t worth pursuing and since Harbaugh says he didn’t lie to the investigators, the lying part is unprovable. The sign stealing? Whole different story there. The recruiting violations are Romper Room. Sign stealing that went on for years? If the NCAA lets that go, then it sends the message that you can cheat your way to the top. As with Cheeseburger-Gate as the recruiting violations have been dubbed, Harbaugh says he had no knowledge that paid staffers were traveling throughout the Big Ten to get video of sideline signals and signs. In this case, it shouldn’t matter to the NCA whether or not Harbaugh is still around. Michigan can argue until it’s blue in the face that it’s hard to find a Division I school that doesn’t at least make an attempt to steal signs or signals, nobody has gone to the lengths Michigan did to gain an edge. For that, there has to be punishment.

Finally, we have Ryan Day, the highly successful coach at Ohio State and former grad assistant for Urban Meyer at Florida (2005). Day has a 56-8 career record that includes two Big Ten championships, but since making the College Football Playoff in 2020, Ohio State has gone 0-3 against Harbaugh and Michigan. Harbaugh is gone now, Day has loaded up in the transfer portal and the Buckeyes had a high school recruiting class ranked third. With Harbaugh gone, it would seem the Buckeyes’ only challengers in the Big Ten will be Oregon, who they play on the road October 12, and Penn State, a November 2 roadie. Those games are formidable, but Day and the Buckeyes will be expected to win them both, win the Big Ten Championship Game and get one of the six automatic bids to the expanded, 12-team College Football Playoff. Noooooo problem.

From my perspective, I rank 1. The NCAA; 2. Ryan Day and 3. Harbaugh’s successor. The NCAA already has enough problems but if it walks away from the sign stealing at Michigan, it might as well call in a bugler to blow taps, because it will be funeral time in Indianapolis for the entire organization. There will be a lot of pressure on Ryan Day, but let’s get real here. When is the coach at Ohio State not expected to beat Michigan and win the Big Ten? Just because Harbaugh is gone, what really changes in Columbus? Finally, there is whoever takes over at Michigan. There is every good chance the NCAA will light up the Wolverines over the sign stealing, but that will only create another “us against the world” scenario. It worked well in 2023. Who’s to say it can’t work again?