Thoughts of the Day: April 6, 2026

(Photo by Chris Spears)

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning:

Spring football enters its final phase this week leading to the Orange and Blue Game on Saturday. This will be the first opportunity the public will have a chance to see how the Gators are adapting to Jon Sumrall and his coaching staff. Based on solid reporting from several sources including Zach Goodall of the Swamp247 site, here is a look at the offense that took the field in a scrimmage Saturday.

Sumrall has stated in interviews and press conferences that spring football will not guarantee a starting job when fall practice begins, but here is a position-by-position look at the offense that took the field on Saturday.

QB: Aaron Philo (6-1, 208, RSO); Tramell Jones Jr. (6-0, 199, RFR)

RB: Jadan Baugh (6-1, 228, JR); Duke Clark (6-2, 202, RFR); Evan Pryor (5-10, 190, RSR)

WR: Vernell Brown III (5-11, 177, SO); Eric Singleton Jr. (5-10, 182, SR); Bailey Stockton (5-10, 182, RJR); Kahliel Jackson (6-3, 220, GR); Micah Mays Jr. (6-1, 195, RJR); TJ Abrams (5-10, 194, RSO)

TE: Luke Harpring (6-3, 236, RSO); Lacota Dippre (6-3, 255, RJR); Evan Chieca (6-4, 257, RJR)

LT: Eagan Boyer (6-8, 300, RSO)

LG: Knijeah Harris (6-3, 317, SR)

C: Harrison Moore (6-4, 300, JR); Jason Zandamela (6-3, 304, RSO)

RG: TJ Shanahan Jr. (6-4, 311, RJR)

RT: Emeka Ugorji (6-4, 311, SO)

THE STATE OF THE SEC

A day after UCLA put a whomping on Dawn Staley and South Carolina for the NCAA women’s basketball championship, Michigan is heavily favored (7.5 or more points) to make it a clean sweep for the Big Ten by taking out UConn in the men’s NCAA championship game. UCLA’s national championship was the first for the Big Ten since Purdue in 1999. Should Michigan handle UConn, it will be the first championship for the Big Ten since Tom Izzo and Michigan State beat Florida in 2000.

Back in January, Indiana beat Miami to win the Big Ten’s third consecutive national championship.

The Big Ten’s recent dominance in football should be a major concern for Greg Sankey and the 16 schools that make up the Southeastern Conference. While it can be argued that the SEC is stronger from top to bottom than the Big Ten, nobody pays attention to how many 8-4 or 7-5 teams played in the Foghorn Leghorn or Chobani Greek Yogurt bowls. Public perception is formed by who’s at the top and for three straight years it’s been a Big Ten team. Making matters worse, no SEC team has even made it to the national championship game since Georgia annihilated TCU for the 2022 title.

Because there has been such a gap in basketball championships, it’s easy to write this off as merely a phase, but ESPN columnist Dan Wetzel warns that the Big Ten might be poised to dominate college basketball for years to come.

Writes Wetzel: “Now that every school can pay players. – either through direct revenue share or via name, image and likeness dollars – Big Ten schools are no longer disadvantaged in recruiting by everything from booster bag men to shoe company AAU connections.”

And let’s face it, the Big Ten is rolling in money these days starting with that massive media rights contract that involves Fox, CBS, NBC and the Big Ten Network. Although the SEC had more revenue for the 2024-25 fiscal year than the Big Ten – $1.03 billion to $928 million – the Big Ten is surging. It is estimated by some experts that we’re not far from a time when the Big Ten will be distributing more than $100 million per year to its 18 schools. Can the SEC, with its exclusive contract with ABC/Disney/ESPN/SEC Network keep up?

The demographics favor the Big Ten. Although the country is undergoing a significant population shift that sees the  states that make up the SEC growing rapidly, the Big Ten is coast-to-coast, stretching from metro New York City (Rutgers) to the left coast (UCLA, Southern Cal, Washington and Oregon). The combined population of the states that actually house a Big Ten school is approximately 138 million. The 11 states that make up the SEC have a combined population of approximately 107 million.

The living alumni base tilts significantly in the Big Ten’s favor. The five largest alumni bases in the country are Big Ten schools – Indiana, Penn State, Michigan, UCLA and Ohio State. Thirteen of the largest alumni bases are Big Ten schools. Only three SEC schools crack the top 25 – No. 6 Texas, No. 7 Texas A&M and No. 8 Florida.

So, how can the SEC at least stay on an eye-to-eye level with the Big Ten? It is possible, but it starts with putting winning products on the field that win championships in the most visible sports. The SEC will produce plenty of champions in the non-revenue sports, but the ones that matter most to the viewing public are football and men’s and women’s basketball. Winning championships will increase viewers and television ad revenues but Sankey and the SEC’s school presidents better bring in more corporate sponsorships.

If the SEC is to compete, it’s the only way.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Remember not all that long ago when we had this rather Pollyanna notion that college sports were the last bastion of amateur athletics? The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, tried to perpetuate the notion that because athletes were getting scholarships they shouldn’t get paid for the entertainment value they bring to campuses, communities, states and even the entire nation. Even though it got clobbered in court when it comes to paying athletes, the NCAA still tries to convince us that this amateur concept is what matters most.

Don’t believe it? Then watch tonight’s national championship game broadcast and more than once you’ll see the NCAA advertisement that goes something like this: 99 percent of all the college athletes will go pro in something other than sports. In other words, the elite athletes will get professional contracts but the bulk of the athletes are still amateurs.

That may be true down in Division II and Division III, but you probably were dropped on your head way too many times when you were an infant if you believe Division I players aren’t getting paid. They’ve always been paid only now it’s not under the table like it used to be. Now it’s legal.

The problem with today’s college sports isn’t so much that players are getting paid, it’s that there aren’t any guardrails in place. We hear that term “the wild, wild West” and it’s true. Athletes are for sale to the highest bidder which is why you have lawsuits like the one Trinidad Chambliss launched against the NCAA for a sixth year of eligibility. When the NCAA denied his request for a waiver, Chambliss went to court locally in Oxford and won. When the case moved to the Mississippi Supreme Court, Chambliss won again. The fight might continue in the courts, but odds are that Chambliss will be playing for Ole Miss in the fall, making more money as the Rebels starting quarterback than he would as a late round NFL backup … if that. Chambliss is listed at 6-1. Maybe in his cleats. Bare feet he’s maybe 5-10.

Mohammed Toure, a linebacker at Miami, will be back for an eighth season of college football in the fall. Somewhere in the Big Sky Conference there is a player who will be in his ninth year.

Eight years? Nine years?

Back in 1984 when Brigham Young won its only national championship in college football, the youngest player on its starting offensive line was 23 years old. Most were 25 or 26, married and with children. BYU gets a waiver for athletes who go on a 2-year Mormon mission. It’s strange that in 1992 the NCAA denied Florida defensive lineman Bill Gunter another year of eligibility because he spent a year working a local Christian mission that provided food and shelter for migrant farm workers.

Selective enforcement of rules has always been a staple of the NCAA. We could go on and on about the abuses and problems to which the NCAA has turned a blind eye, but we live in the here and now, and now prominent coaches are begging for something to be done. By and large, coaches aren’t against athletes being paid. They understand that at the Division I level, sports are a full time job. The kids should be paid. How much? That’s another story for another day, but they should be compensated for their time and work, particularly when considering many of the lingering injuries that shorten lifespans and affect long term quality of life.

It’s the transfer and eligibility rules that have turned so many players into hired guns, ready to bolt to the highest bidder. This also has changed recruiting. Instead of staking their livelihoods on young kids fresh out of high school, coaches are instead trying to cherry pick experienced players from the transfer portal.

On College Game Day Saturday, John Calipari said, “I look at all this. I don't care the kids are making money. We just got to do a better job of transfers. Yeah, if a coach leaves or gets fired, you can leave without penalty. You can leave one time. I mean, I may even say two times, but you can't leave four times. You're not going to graduate. You're not going to create anything. You're a mercenary. Now, they'd say, well, they should be able to make money. Go pro! Let's worry about 17, 18, and 19-year-old kids. Just one thing. If it were your son, and he practiced, and he was a gym rat, he was all conference. He's not a top 50 player, but he's a Division I player. Right now, that kid is not getting contract or scholarship offers because we're all waiting on older players. The game is better because it's older – 25, 26. I laugh and say the guy got two kids and his wife and he's on his second wife. It's being a pro. It's what being a pro basketball player is.”

Last week Donald Trump signed an executive order that caps college eligibility at five years and allows one free transfer, the second transfer requiring an athlete to sit a year. The order also makes an effort to reel in collectives that are offering outrageous sums of money to athletes and it requires money being spent to further women’s and Olympic level sports.

This is a good start which is why coaches and administrators have hailed its significance. The next step needs to be a college sports commissioner because the NCAA has proven it's incapable of governing.