Thoughts of the Day: August 3, 2022

A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:

“Changes in latitudes, chances in attitudes, nothing remains quite the same” – Jimmy Buffett

The attitudes are changing. Seven months after implementing Billy Napier’s version of “The Process,” the basics of which can be traced to two different stints on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama, football is less a me thing and more of a we thing for the Florida Gators.

Defensive line coach Sean Spencer noticed the changes in latitudes and attitudes during spring practice when Justus Boone, a redshirt freshman, offered a lesson in accountability.

“One of the great things I saw in the end of spring was Justus Boone got on one of the players before I did,” Spencer said Tuesday morning at what amounts to Florida’s media day. “He turned around and said, ‘That’s not what we do. We expect more.’ And when you start to get that, you start to get them talking like that, man, it can be special.”

Special. Spencer isn’t necessarily talking about wins and losses here because too many things can happen in the weeks ahead that can affect outcomes. Things like fluke plays – see “The Heave to Cleve” that turned a surefire loss to Tennessee into as improbable a win the Gators have had in years – or injuries to key personnel can derail even the most promising of seasons. When the hearts and minds are in the right place, however, and a team is totally bought in to the way things have to be done, it is special and wins will eventually take care of themselves.

Associate head coach Mark Hocke, who is Florida’s strength and conditioning coordinator, tends to echo Napier’s core value that better people make better football players. Better people go to class. Better people are committed to getting a college degree because they know and understand that eventually, all good things including football must come to an end. Better people are committed to being better friends and teammates to everyone on the roster.

And, like Justus Boone showed on that spring day, better people are accountable and they hold their teammates accountable.

It wasn’t always like this. Before Napier and his staff arrived on the Florida scene, the Gators had morphed into a dysfunctional basket case. Discipline, in short supply dating back to the pandemic season of 2020, evaporated in 2021. Winnable games like Alabama and Kentucky were lost, setting the stage for a meltdown of epic proportions, so much so that it was better to bite the bullet on a $12 million buyout than continue to allow Dan Mullen to coach the Gators. We may never know what went wrong, but the Gators went from a team that went to three consecutive New Year’s Six Bowl games to one that got its doors blown off by 23 points to a South Carolina team with perhaps half the talent as UF.

So, along comes Napier and his version of “The Process.” Life didn’t exactly change overnight because he still had to convince the team he inherited that it would be worth it to eliminate the barriers of selfishness and replace them with a total team-first makeover attitude.

Seven months into the gig, apparently it’s working, perhaps better than anyone expected.

“I think it all starts with believing, right?” Hocke said. “Belief is so important and we believe that belief is developed through preparation. Coach Napier is a firm believer in the work, right? And that's why I love him and I think that's why his process works. The work is what we believe in. You can't train gladiators pillow fighting.”

The work means enough self-discipline to turn yourself into a better person, which, in turn, will make you a better teammate, friend and football player. The work means embracing the physical pain, the emotional stress and the violence. Lest, we forget, football is a violent game played by young men who are modern day gladiators. They have to want the violence and all the effort it takes to have a chance to take out all the pent up energy and frustration on a field while thousands upon thousands watch in person and millions watch on television.

The only time we see the team is on any given Saturday in the fall when the Gators take the field, whether it’s at The Swamp where 90,000 fans will endure blast furnace heat and humidity that could be cut with a chainsaw for four hours or in some other venue in the SEC. What we don’t see is all the hard work and preparation that got the Gators to that point. We don’t see the hours in the weight room, the mat drills where trash cans fill up with vomit at 6 a.m. in February, the summer afternoons on the practice field where teams bond in weather best suited for heat stroke.

“They come here to play football,” Hocke said. “They don't always come here to do the conditioning, running, the sprints, the heavy lifting, waking up really early. They don't have a problem waking up and playing in front of 90,000 on Saturday night, but what about at 6 a.m. on Monday morning after the weekend? That’s a little bit different waking up for that, but it’s doing what you don't necessarily love to do like you love it. And that's what I can say about this team. They're learning to love it and the second you learn to love the hard work is the second you got a chance to separate because at the end of the day, you can't play in the SEC unless you've been blessed ability-wise.”

Doing things you hate to do like you love it is an old Mike Tyson adage. For Tyson it was all about one-on-one combat in a boxing ring. He only had to be accountable to himself. For the Gators, it’s about 85 scholarship players and another 30-40 walk-ons electing to be accountable to each other and in the process of accountability bonding together as a team. Even the hard work that it takes to win football games begins between the ears.

Changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes. Nothing remains quite the same. Change the mind to think the right way and the body will follow. When more than 100 kids adapt that kind of attitude, a team forges an identity. If it’s the right identity, it’s entirely possible that winning will follow.

“At the end of the day growth comes at the point of resistance, skills come from struggle,” Hocke said. “That's the purpose of what we do. That's the purpose of training.”

A couple of good quotes from the press conference Gervon Dexter: “Coach Napier is a big guy on everybody looking the same, everybody doing the same. Just all the little things as far as jumping offsides or extra activity after the plays and just big on stuff like that. He came in letting us know that's not going to happen, or consequences. Like I said, that's been his big thing. It's just the small stuff that come people may know that can cause you to lose a game, he's been really impacting on that.”

O-line coach Rob Sale: “Hey, name a player that you think does it the right way. And Michael Tarquin's the first one that comes into mind. Man, you're just talking about a guy that approaches everything the right way. It doesn't matter if it's film study, prehab, rehab, how you take the field and practice, it's everything's 110 percent. I'm very pleased with Michael. Obviously we're expecting big things from him this year, but he's going to answer the bell. He's a stud when it comes to his attitude and his daily approach how he does everything. Sometimes just kind of crack jokes with him a little bit to see the other side, because he's so straightlaced. But, hey, I'll take 20 of Michael Tarquins every day all day.”

The daily dumb, AKA George Kliavkoff speaks A day without something dumb muttered by Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff seems like a Florida summer afternoon without humidity. Here is his latest gem:

“It’s clear that UCLA and USC made a decision for short-term financial gain at the expense of their student-athletes, Kliavkoff told The Athletic. “It’s 100 percent clear to me. It’s really unfortunate and I think they are already regretting it, given the pushback that they’ve gotten from almost every corner of their communities. I think they will regret it more as time goes on.”

Let’s see. The UCLA athletic department is more than $110 million in the red. Boosters have known all about the mountain of debt but haven’t exactly ponied up the cash to even make a dent in it. Along comes the Big Ten, which UCLA will join in 2024. By then the Big Ten will have a new media rights deal that nearly every financial expert agrees will pay out $100 million a year. Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren has already said UCLA and USC will get a full payment starting in year one.

A degree in advanced mathematics isn’t required to see that UCLA will have its debt wiped out in no time. Sure, maybe they’ll miss some of those old Pac-12 rivalries, but weighed against being debt-free those old rivalries can take a hike.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Vin Scully passed away. The former radio voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, a job he held for 67 years, was 94. He began his broadcasting career in 1950. In 1953, he became the youngest man (age 25) to ever call a World Series game between the Dodgers and the New York Yankees.

Scully wasn’t your traditional broadcaster. Rather than bore you with mundane details to pass the time away or allow dead time between pitches, Scully made his broadcast seem like he was carrying on a conversation with the radio audience. He had this natural elegance and smooth delivery that made fans feel as if they were sitting beside Scully behind home plate. He would describe the fans, talk about the beautiful purple hues as the sun set behind the San Gabriel Mountains, discuss the menu in the concession stands and while he was about it, described the game. Perfectly. Listen to Scully for nine innings and you knew exactly what was going on both on the field and in the stadium.

Scully’s passing is just another radio icon of a bygone era that has departed. I grew up listening to Otis Boggs call Florida football games. I still remember Otis calling a Hagoode Clark punt “a high, lazy spiral.” What made it lazy? I still want to know. Late night on Saturdays, I tuned in my radio to WWL in New Orleans to catch John Ferguson calling LSU games – “It never rains in Death Valley” he told us. John Ward’s signature line was, “It’s football time in Tennessee.” I never heard anyone call a basketball game better than Kentucky’s Cawood Ledford although North Carolina’s Woody Durham came close.