Thoughts of the Day: August 2, 2022

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning:

COLLEGE FOOTBALL IS ABOUT TO BEGIN AGAIN BOYS AND GIRLS The Gators will hold what amounts to their own version of media days today. Some players and assistant coaches will be meeting media from around the state and then, sometime around noon, Billy Napier will offer his state of the program address after which it can be said fall camp has officially begun.

Napier isn’t going to offer a whole lot more than he did at SEC Media Days a couple of weeks ago. He’ll be thoughtful, thorough and on script. He carries note cards with him everywhere and he makes it a point to stay within the parameters that are on those cards. Some may think of it as a robotic or canned performance, but if nothing else, it is consistent. Billy Napier knows what he wants to say and he’s not going to go off the rails.

Here are six questions I hope Napier will address today:

1. We know Anthony Richardson is the clear No. 1 quarterback but what progress did you see over the summer from Jack Miller III and Jalen Kitna? How comfortable are you that Miller and Kitna can run the offense?

2. There are experienced players for four of the five offensive line positions. The question mark is at right tackle. Is there confidence that Michael Tarquin can hold his own against SEC defensive linemen? How much thought has been given to sliding O’Cyrus Torrence out to right tackle? Or to Josh Braun moving outside since he has lost 20 pounds and is bound to be quicker?

3. Who, other than Gervon Dexter, has impressed you on the defensive line? Do you feel comfortable that the Gators have the size and physicality in the trenches to stop the run?

4. When you were coaching at Alabama, you were in charge of the wide receivers. Do you think Florida’s wide receivers are a good enough unit to keep opponents from going eight in the box to stuff the run while taking their chances one-on-one on the outside? Is Ricky Pearsall a field stretcher? Can Justin Shorter be the breakout guy who lives up to his former 5-star potential?

5. Who are three or four players whose work ethic since spring practice ended has stood out?

6. Are you seeing real team chemistry starting to develop?

Kelly Rae can also recruit

It didn’t take long for Kelly Rae Finley to prove she knew how to coach. Taking over as the interim when Cam Newbauer was fired during the summer, Kelly Rae directed the Gators to a 21-11 record that included five wins over ranked teams and an NCAA Tournament berth. She was so impressive that Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin ripped the interim title off and named her Florida’s head women’s basketball coach.

Since then, Kelly Rae has proven that she’s going to be here for the long haul by bringing in a tremendous recruiting class of two high school signees and four transfers. The latest transfer is Aliyah Matharu, who averaged 12 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.8 steals and 1.4 assists last season at Texas while hitting 77 3-pointers. Matharu was the No. 28 high school player in the country when she signed with Mississippi State. She averaged 7.1 points per game for Mississippi State as a true freshman in 2019-20 and 10.2 points and 3.5 rebounds per game as a sophomore in 2020-21. Due to the COVID year (2019-20), Matharu has two seasons of eligibility remaining.

Here is the full recruiting class for UF:

Frieda Buhner (6-3, FR, Onsabruck, Germany); Myka Perry (6-1, FR, Norman, OK); Leilani Correa (6-0, SR, Manchester, NJ, St. John’s transfer, averaged 17.5 points per game); KK Deans (5-8, SR, Greensboro, NC, West Virginia transfer, averaged 14.5 points per game); Ra Shaya Kyle (6-6, JR, Marion, IN, Purdue transfer, averaged 11.5 points, 5.7 rebounds per game); Aliyah Matharu (5-7, SR, Washington, DC, Texas transfer, averaged 12 points, 3.4 rebounds per game)

The rest of the UF roster:

Taliyah Wyche (6-3, SO); Tatyana Wyche (6-2, SO); Zippy Broughton (5-7, GR); Alberte Rimdal (5-9, SO); Jordyn Merritt (6-3, JR); Nina Rickards (5-9, SR); Jeriah Warren (6-0, SO); Faith Dut (6-4, SR)

Jenny Rowland can also recruit

The Gators might wind up with the most stacked roster in NCAA gymnastics history next season because Jenny Rowland has been setting the world on fire with her recruiting, starting with getting Trinity Thomas and Nya Reed to come back for their COVID year of eligibility. Thomas is the NCAA gymnast of the year and the winner of the Honda Award for gymnastics after a season in which she posted 12 perfect 10s and one of the three highest all-around scores ever at the NCAA Gymnastics Championships. Reed is an All-American who posted a pair of 10s last year. She and Thomas are a lethal 1-2 punch on floor at the end of a meet.

Meanwhile, Rowland has brought in a pair of transfers from Georgia: Victoria Nguyen and Rachel Baumann. Nguyen is a former member of the US Senior National team while Baumann, the younger sister of former Gator All-American Alyssa Baumann, posted a 10 on floor last year and had Georgia’s highest scores during the season on vault, balance beam and floor. Those two will be joining a recruiting class that includes freshman Kayla DiCello, another former member of the US Senior National team, and vault specialist Lori Brubach. DiCello won gold on floor and a silver medal with the US National team at the recently concluded Pan American Games in Rio. DiCello and UF freshman All-American Leanne Wong will be competing in the US Gymnastics Championships in Tampa in three weeks. Wong won the vault, balance beam and all-around golds at the recently concluded US Classic. Wong is a former silver medalist in the all-around and bronze medalist in floor at the World Championships.

Among the returning Gators are: Thomas (20 career 10s, 2022 NCAA all-around, bars and floor champ, 2020 and 2022 SEC Gymnast of the Year); Reed (All-American two 10s); Sloane Blakely (All-American, perfect 10, former US Senior National team member); Savannah Schoenherr (All-American); Riley McCusker (former US Senior National team member); Morgan Hurd (former all-around gold at the World Championships); Ellie Lazzari (All-American and 2021 SEC balance beam champ); Wong (All-American, two perfect 10s, 2022 SEC balance beam champ).

There is also the possibility that All-American Leah Clapper (one perfect 10) will be returning for her COVID year.

Sproat, Tejada didn’t sign

Florida’s baseball team got a serious boost on Monday when the Major League Baseball Draft signing deadline passed and neither Brandon Sproat or Yoel Tejada Jr. signed. Sproat, drafted by the New York Mets in the third round, became Florida’s ace last season after Hunter Barco went down with season-ending Tommy John surgery. He throws consistently in the high 90s and has been clocked regularly at 99. Tejada, drafted in the 19th round by the Pittsburgh Pirates, is a two-way player who plays outfield/first base plus pitches, where he’s been clocked at 97.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Writing for Saturday Down South, Matt Hayes points out the absolute hypocrisy of the Three Stooges, also known as the commissioners of the ill-fated “Alliance” that shot down expanding the College Football Playoff to 12 teams. A year after the Stooges lit up Sankey verbally then banded together to destroy expanding the playoff, using among other excuses that a 12-team playoff might be too stressful on the players, Kevin Warren (Big Ten), Little Jimmy Phillips (ACC) and George (of the Jungle) Kliavkoff (Pac-12) are clamoring for not a 12-team playoff, but 16 teams.

Hayes writes, “Now the Alliance wants 16 teams. Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff, whose conference was left to die on the vine by the Big Ten, says that it could happen before the contract expires after the 2025 season.”

Not if Greg Sankey has anything to do with it … and he does. But, that doesn’t stop Kliavkoff from going with the “If I throw enough stuff against the wall maybe some of it will stick” theory of wishful, out-loud thinking. Kliavkoff is hoping that the promise to expand the playoff to 16 teams will help him keep the Pac-12 from disintegrating completely. Meanwhile, Oregon, Washington, California and Stanford are begging the Big Ten to take them in and Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah are smart enough to realize that the Big 12 has more potential than a Pac-12 led by Kliavkoff. Kliavkoff is in a 30-day negotiating window with ESPN, which gave a lowball offer that would mean the Pac-12 is distributing $24 million a year.

Phillips needs a 16-team playoff because the possibility of adding $200-250 million a year in revenue to his league might appease its disgruntled members, who are rather dissatisfied with a longterm ESPN agreement that will keep the ACC in the poorhouse until 2036, that is, if the league still exists by then. The ACC won’t hit the $40 million per school payout until 2025, about the same time the SEC will be retooling its agreement with ESPN to include Texas and Oklahoma.

Hayes writes, “The SEC has a new, exclusive media rights deal with ESPN beginning in 2024 that will – after it’s adjusted to add Texas and Oklahoma – guarantee each school nearly $100 million annually.” Imagine this: Miami and FSU trying to compete financially with Florida. Two chances that is going to happen – no way and no how.

Warren wants 16 teams because he thinks that with the additions of UCLA and Southern Cal to the Big Ten to go with Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin, he might get five or six teams in. Warren was the darling of last week’s media days because some in the national media are awestruck because the Big Ten added the two California schools, but while he may have proven he’s far more powerful than buddies Curley and Moe in the Alliance, he still can’t hold a candle to Sankey.

Sankey does hold all the cards here. He’s already thrown out the notion that the SEC is more than willing to go it alone. Hayes writes, “If they [Sankey and the SEC presidents] don’t get what they want, they can walk away and hold their own Playoff.”

Could the SEC do it? Hayes seems to think so: “Which Playoff will demand more revenue and generate more ratings, you ask? The one whose conference has produced 12 of the last 16 national champions.”

This is the part that a lot of folks in the national media are missing. You can have a college football playoff without the Big Ten, ACC or Pac-12. We’ve done it before and the playoff didn’t suffer. You can’t have a playoff without the SEC. Period. If Sankey wants SEC only, that’s what it will be. Whatever Sankey wants he’s going to get and there isn’t one damn thing the Three Stooges and their lackes at the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 can do about it.