Thoughts of the Day: August 8, 2022

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning:

WITH SO LITTLE ROOM FOR ERROR, DISCIPLINE IS A MUST

Although he hasn’t complained publicly about the overall level of talent he has inherited at the University of Florida, Billy Napier knows it will take one or two more recruiting classes to get the talent level anywhere close to what they have at Alabama and Georgia. He has maybe 44 players who are at or close to SEC ready. You can win with 44 but the margin for error is very, very small.

Napier can’t and won’t cut corners by taking chances on the recruiting trail so until he can build the roster up to the 55-60 SEC-ready players it is going to take to compete with Alabama and Georgia, his priority will have to be good coaching, emphasis on strength and conditioning and the last piece of the puzzle – discipline.

Running back Nay’Quan Wright appreciates the emphasis Napier and staff have put on discipline. He knows that discipline and accountability were in short supply last year when a perfectly good season went south. Instead of a fourth straight New Year’s Six bowl season, the Gators cratered to 6-7 in large part because the team found ways to shoot itself in the foot. The Gators committed far too many offsides and false starts. Late hits. Personal fouls. Holding penalties.

“One thing that I’ll highlight is we focus more on the little things, you know what I mean?” Wright said Friday. “That’s where we let things slip away last year. Little things kind of got away from us and in the end it turned to big things. So, this year, coach is focused on the little things. One of them is discipline. We all have to wear the same gear to practice. Everybody has to have white cleats, white socks. It’s kind of like who cares about cleats? But that’s just the little things you focus on that’s building up to this and having everybody on the same page.”

The color of the cleats and socks won’t help anyone play better but having a team disciplined enough to care about the little things should translate into a team that can eliminate stupid, silly mistakes that cost ball games. So, white socks and white cleats may have nothing to do with winning, but yet they have everything to do with winning.

And that is why Napier makes it a point to emphasize the details.

“It all matters,” Napier said last Tuesday. “I think the key is that you provide structure and routine, that you define expectations for the players. And there are some detailed things we ask them to do, and they do matter, but the most important part of those little detailed things that we ask them to do is they have to make a decision to do it, if that makes sense.”

A year ago the Gators committed 104 penalties of which 69.2 percent would fall under the category of undisciplined. When Nick de la Torre of On3 Sports went through every penalty the Gators committed last season he found there were 29 false starts, 19 holding penalties, 6 delays of game, 13 offsides and five unsportsmanlike conduct penalties.

The poster child for last year’s lack of discipline is the Kentucky game. The Gators were flagged 15 times for 115 yards. Among the penalties were eight false starts, an offsides and two holding calls. The Gators lost the game 20-13 despite holding the Wildcats to one offensive touchdown. That was a winnable game. There were others.

Discipline was in short supply, which has everything to do with why Billy Napier is now Florida’s football coach.

“Coach Napier came in and [preached] discipline,” tight end Dante Zanders said Saturday. “He showed us the other day before we went out to practice all of the penalties that we had last season. He was just showing us that it wasn’t big penalties that hurt us: It was just all the undisciplined penalties – offsides, holding things like that we can learn not to do. He handed out a piece of paper and it had all the highlights of all the penalties we had and the lost yardage that we had, which ones were undisciplined and which ones were holding, offsides, stuff like that. It was shocking and embarrassing.”

There is no question that a talent gap exists between the Gators and the teams at the top of the SEC, but there is enough talent to win games this season if the Gators can avoid injuries and have the discipline to avoid the stupid penalties. The Gators may or may not avoid debilitating injuries. That’s totally out of their control. Penalties, particularly the stupid kind that have their root in a lack of discipline, can be avoided. The Gators can control that aspect of the game and if they are successful, win some games and buy some time until Napier can recruit a roster with the kind of depth capable of challenging the top teams in the SEC on a yearly basis.

SEC football/basketball

Alabama: Freshman wide receiver Aaron Anderson is sidelined with a knee injury. Louisville transfer wide receiver Tyrell Harrell is not quite 100 percent but practicing … Offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien said Sunday that he’s had opportunities to return to the NFL but he’s committed to coaching for Nick Saban.

Arkansas: The defense is stressing turnovers this fall. The Razorbacks forced three fumbles and 13 interceptions last year.

Auburn: The attorney for quarterback TJ Finley says his arrest was all a misunderstanding. Finley was charged with trying to elude police for what would have been a moped citation.

Kentucky: The entire football team took a day off from practice to help unload boxes of donations for relief efforts in Kentucky’s flood-ravaged southeast corridor.

LSU: Edge rusher BJ Oljulari was awarded LSU’s iconic No. 18 jersey.

Missouri: New Mizzou basketball coach Dennis Gates threw out the first pitch at a St. Louis Cardinals game.

Ole Miss: TCU transfer running back Zach Evans, a former 5-star recruit, believes he and SMU transfer Ulysses Bentley will make the Ole Miss running game “the best in the country.”

South Carolina: You can avoid the rush for season tickets to South Carolina games. They’re available at your neighborhood Costco. Seriously.

Tennessee: One of the early standouts at Tennessee’s fall camp is freshman linebacker Kalib Perry. In Perry’s spare time, he builds computers for friends and teammates.

Texas A&M: There has been an internal staff shakeup. James Coley has been moved from tight ends to wide receivers, Dameyune Craig from wide receivers to quarterbacks and Darrell Dickey from quarterbacks to tight ends.

Vanderbilt: HBC Clark Lea says his second edition of the Commodores is “way more comfortable with what the expectations are and the manner of which we practice” than last year’s team.

And our orphans in the Big 12:

Texas: HBC Steve Sarkisian says Alabama transfer wide receiver Argiye Hall “has a lot of potential … he’s making progress.”

Oklahoma: Oklahoma expects to be bigger, faster and stronger this year now that Jerry Schmidt has been brought in to head strength and conditioning. Schmidt, who worked at Florida under Steve Spurrier, was the longtime Sooners strength coach under Bob Stoops.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: In Nashville over the weekend, there was a Personnel and Recruiting Symposium that drew staff members from college football programs all over the country to discuss things like cheating, official and unofficial visits, home visits, scholarship offers, national letters of intent and the transfer portal. It was all designed to address a mounting number of issues that are faced by college football, none of which the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, seems likely or capable of handling anytime before the next turn of the century. The NCAA’s solution to problems is to create a larger mountain of rules and regulations, which, of course, creates more bureaucracy in Indianapolis and more compliance people at the individual school level.

I’m of the opinion that the NCAA is way too much like the federal government in that it never really solves anything, it just adds to the problems. As one good friend told me over the weekend, “Overall, the NCAA is clueless, especially when it comes to football. When it comes to football, the NCAA is about as useful as boobs on a boar hog. All they do is create a never-ending cycle of problems that could be solved by some common sense.”

Common sense. That’s a real concept. It’s something in short supply in Indianapolis. With that in mind, here are seven common sense suggestions for the NCAA. These suggestions won’t solve all of the problems facing college football or even all the questions that were discussed in Nashville, but they might be a fairly decent place to start.

1. Eliminate the NCAA completely when it comes to college football. The NCAA does a dandy job of running tournaments and events, not such a good job when it comes to regulations and enforcement. So, for all the schools for which football is the cash cow, secede, start a new football-only organization with a simplified rule book, a commissioner and strict enforcement of the rules and harsh penalties for cheaters. Eventually, move the other sports out of NCAA jurisdiction, but let it be football only in the beginning.

2. To bring some common sense back to recruiting, no scholarship offers prior to September 1 of a player’s junior year. Other than camp, no unofficial visits until the junior year and no official visits until the spring of a player’s junior year. No scholarship offers to any kid who doesn’t have at least a 2.5 GPA in high school in core courses (English, history, mathematics, sciences). Put a cap on the number of scholarship offers. That would go a long way to preventing schools making dummy offers to kids they know they aren’t going to sign for the purpose of trying to prevent a kid from committing to a rival school. That happens. A lot.

3. Early signing in December ONLY for kids who are academically qualified to enroll early. Everyone else has to wait until the first Wednesday in December. No limit on the number of signed NLI each February but the number of scholarships cannot ever exceed the legal limit set by the new college football organization.

4. For a transfer to be eligible immediately, he has two windows of opportunity: December 1-15 and April 15-May 15. A kid can transfer any time he wants, but to avoid sitting out one year, he can only transfer during those two times.

5. A kid who declares for the NFL Draft (limited to those who are three years removed from high school) and isn’t drafted can return to school if he (a) has a 2.5 or better GPA and (b) is within two semesters of graduation.

6. Football is a dangerous and brutal sport. The injuries linger for years and in some cases for a lifetime. Once a kid has used up his eligibility, he gets health care for a minimum of 10 years, longer if the injuries involve concussions or spinal cords.

7. For any kid who has used up his eligibility but still hasn’t graduated, tuition guaranteed until he completes his college degree.

8. For any kid who has graduated with a 3.0 or better, graduate school tuition for a master’s degree.