Former Florida AD Bill Carr was The Last Boy Scout

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning:

The Last Boy Scout passed away Saturday night.

Ray Graves, George Steinbrenner, Bill Carr - Photo UAA Archives

That’s what I call my late friend Bill Carr, Steve Spurrier’s roommate and center during their All-American playing days at the University of Florida, and the athletic director at UF from 1979-86. Like Spurrier, Carr was the son of a preacher. Whereas Spurrier spent 10 years playing in the NFL before pursuing a career in coaching, Carr lasted one year in the NFL, tried coaching and decided that wasn’t going to be his life’s calling.

Instead Carr went into athletic administration, serving first as an assistant to Florida AD Ray Graves before taking over as the assistant athletic director and eventually succeeding Graves. His seven years as the AD at Florida are probably best remembered two events: (1) Firing basketball coach John Lotz and bringing Norm Sloan back from North Carolina State to succeed him; and (2) the NCAA battle that resulted in the firing of Charley Pell in 1984 and subsequent removing of the interim tag from Galen Hall after the Gators finished the season 9-1-1.

A semi-regular at a Thursday lunch gathering hosted by Bill Feinberg, Carr lingered one day after nearly everyone had departed the deli around the corner from the Haile Plantation Publix and talked about his time as the Florida AD and second career in the intercollegiate coach/executive search field.

“I was 33 years old when I became the assistant athletic director, 36 when I was named to succeed Coach Graves,” Carr said. “Difficult times to say the least for the University of Florida, but also for me, personally. I liked John Lotz and I had to fire him. Liked Charley Pell and we had all the NCAA trouble ...” He paused at the mention of Charley Pell. “I really liked these people. One of the harsh realities of college sports when people you like …” He paused again. No need to say more.

I’m not sure Bill Carr ever disliked anyone, at least no one that I know. He had the same optimistic personality as his mom, who often sat in the pew in front of me at First Baptist Church when it was in downtown Gainesville. His mom always managed to find something good to say about everyone, even those who probably didn’t have a lot of good going on in their lives. Bill had that same outlook, which, I’m sure, had everything to do with the way he hung on to the concept of amateur athletics even when it became obvious the amateur model was on life support.

Bill saw something special in athletes playing a sport in exchange for a scholarship and a college education. He understood completely that only a very small percentage of college athletes ever get a chance to play a professional sport and that the average pro has a very short career.

“You come to school, you make friends for life and you learn all about life,” Carr said that day. “You play a sport that teaches you competition and bonds you with teammates, coaches and your school. It makes you a better person. Winning and losing prepares you for life because that’s the way things work in the real world – you experience success, you deal with failure. Nothing teaches you better how to handle the real world better than college sports.

“That’s why I don’t like the direction we’re heading in. It’s too much about the money, not nearly enough about what goes on when your playing days are over, a whole lot less about what that college education can do for you. We’re losing something special with NIL and free agency, which is what I call the transfer portal. It’s taking away loyalty. It’s taking away what has always made college sports special.”

When Willie C., as Steve Spurrier called him, said his good-byes that day and walked out, I looked over at Bill Feinberg and said, “There goes The Last Boy Scout.”

Looking at the spiral in which we find collegiate athletics I think we need a lot more Boy Scouts. We need Bill Carrs to remind us of that old saying by the Roman philosopher Seneca: “Money never made anyone rich.” That applies to life as much as it does college sports. Real riches are in things like faith, loyalty, trust, respect and integrity. Bill Carr had all those things. He died a truly wealthy man.

UF BASKETBALL: A much-needed week of rest for the Gators

First things first. The zebra crew of Joe Lindsey, Olandis Pool and Rob Rorke were beyond bad Saturday night when Texas A&M shot 20 second half free throws to Florida’s two while eking out a 67-66 win. As physical a game as the Aggies play, you can’t have officials swallowing their whistles at one end of the floor and blowing them frequently the other.

Now, despite Joe Lindsey once again showing why he’s as inconsistent as any zebra in the country, the Gators should have won the basketball game. The Gators were 5-9 from the foul line in the first half, 1-2 in the second. Two more free throws and it’s a Florida win. One more made three (Gators shot 3-13 in the second half, 10-29 for the game) and the Gators win. One more stop although UF was handicapped on that end by the zebras. Oh, and there was that out of bounds call on Will Richard. He wasn’t. Blow it up on your iPad. His heel never hit the line and it wasn’t too close to call.

With all that being said, it’s midseason and the Gators get a much-needed midweek bye. The next time the Gators lace up the Air Jordans in a game is next Saturday when Auburn comes to town. There are nine SEC games remaining, five at the O-Dome. The Gators will be favored to beat LSU and Missouri at home, plus they are home and home with Vandy. That should be three wins. Win four and they should make the NCAA Tournament field. Win five and they won’t have to sweat.

SEC basketball

Tuesday’s games: Ole Miss (18-4, 15-4 SEC) at South Carolina; No. 10 Kentucky (15-6, 5-4 SEC) at Vanderbilt (6-15, 5-4 SEC)

Wednesday’s games: LSU (12-9, 4-4 SEC) at No. 5 Tennessee (16-5, 6-2 SEC); No. 24 Alabama (16-6, 8-1 SEC) at No. 16 Auburn (18-4, 7-2 SEC); Texas A&M (13-8, 4-4 SEC) at Missouri (8-14, 0-9 SEC); Georgia (14-8, 4-5 SEC) at Mississippi State (14-8, 3-6 SEC)

SEC in NCAA Net Rankings: 5. Alabama; 6. Tennessee; 8. Auburn; 26. Kentucky; 38. South Carolina; 39. FLORIDA; 44. Mississippi State; 49. Texas A&M; 61. Ole Miss; 85. Georgia; 93. LSU; 130. Arkansas; 137. Missouri; 226. Vanderbilt

SEC in kenpom analytics: 5. Auburn; 6. Tennessee; 7. Alabama; 27. Kentucky; 33. FLORIDA; 40. Mississippi State; 43. South Carolina; 46. Texas A&M; 63. Ole Miss; 73. Georgia; 79. LSU; 116. Arkansas; 126. Missouri; 187. Vanderbilt

THE MOST ENTERTAINING (AND BEST) BASKETBALL PLAYER IN THE COUNTRY

If Iowa is playing and the Hawkeye women’s game doesn’t conflict with a Florida game that I’m writing about, my TV is tuned in to watch Caitlyn Clark, often described as “the female Pete Maravich.” After her 38-point game against Maryland Saturday, she has scored 3,462 points in her Iowa career, closing to within 66 points of becoming the all-time leading scorer in the history of women’s collegiate basketball.

Her stats this year: 32.4 points per game, 7.0 rebounds, 7.9 assists. She’s shooting 48.2 percent overall, 40.1 percent on 3-pointers.

Clark is absolutely fearless. She drives into the lane and scores against anyone. Watch her shoot a stepback three and you will become a believer. In transition when she pulls up to shoot a three, it seems automatic. As much as she scores, she’s not some unconscious gunner. She takes good shots and isn’t afraid to pass up a shot for a teammate who has a better one. She would be averaging 15 or so assists per game if teammates simply hit shots when she delivers the ball.

Iowa, which made it to the NCAA championship game last year where the Hawkeyes lost to LSU, is 21-2 and ranked third nationally. Unless you have the Big Ten Network, you won’t be able to see her Thursday game against Penn State, but her game next Sunday at Nebraska will be nationally televised on Fox at 1 p.m. That’s a nice prelude to the Super Bowl.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Sitting with Billy Donovan at the Nike Peach Jam in North Augusta, South Carolina about 15 years ago, I asked why the NBA held such intrigue for him. “It’s all about basketball all the time,” he answered. “You have a draft, you don’t have to recruit, you aren’t worried if your best player is going to pass all his classes, no rules about how much time you can spend practicing or dealing with your players.”

Several years later, still before there was such a thing as the transfer portal or NIL, Billy finally had it with the college game and left Florida for the NBA. Eight years later, he’s still in the NBA with absolutely zero intentions of ever coming back to college basketball. Trying to recruit top talent to Florida only to see kids who loved Billy, loved UF go somewhere else at the last minute (not that anyone cheated, wink wink!) was bad enough without the portal and NIL.

Jay Wright retired as Villanova’s basketball coach rather than deal with the portal, NIL and an NCAA that lacks anyone with a clue how to come up with solutions for the problems that threaten to bring collegiate sports to their knees.

Nick Saban never said he’s retiring because the NCAA keeps making things worse instead of making things better. He didn't have to. Perhaps he not only saw what the NCAA was trying to do to Jim Harbaugh but was clued in that NCAA enforcement was going to try to make examples of FSU, Florida and Tennessee for NIL violations.

Jeff Hafley was never going to have Nick Saban-like success at Boston College but he was a head coach at a power league school that gave the great Frank Leahy his coaching start and produced a Heisman Trophy winner in Doug Flutie. Last week he announced that he’s leaving a head coaching job in college for the defensive coordinator’s job with the NFL Green Bay Packers.

Do you see a trend here? Kirk Herbstreit does. After the Hafley announcement, Herbie tweeted: “CFB in its current state will be seeing more and more coaches heading to the NFL. Without boundaries and regulation that make sense coaches that get real opportunities in the NFL will be gone. This trend will continue until there is a new governing body and it creates a CBA with a players entity or union that would include issue like NIL-Transfer Portal-and eventually revenue sharing. The sport is spiraling out of control as we know and many of these coaches are not sticking around and waiting. Just a new reality for the sport.”

Circle those words “until there is a new governing body.” When someone as well connected and whose voice is as powerful as Kirk Herbstreit starts calling for an end to the NCAA, then you know we have reached a tipping point in college sports. That high school kids who have never taken a college snap or shot a free throw can command  six- and seven-figure NIL deals is a warning shot across the bow. The number of lawsuits the NCAA has to answer are more than warning shots. They are torpedoes in the water and they’re honing in on the SS NCAA.

Prolonging the agony won’t do anyone any good at all. Negotiating won’t solve anything. It’s time to start drawing up the divorce papers and at the same time find someone other than college presidents to come up with what’s next.