Thoughts of the Day: August 9, 2022

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning:

GATORS UNRANKED BUT THAT’S NOT A BAD THING AT ALL

The USA Today Coaches preseason top 25 poll came out Monday with the usual suspects in the first four positions. The Florida Gators were nowhere to be found in the top 25. You shouldn’t be the least bit surprised. Coming off a 6-7 record, the third losing season since 2013 and on their fourth football coach since 2011, the Gators aren’t exactly the picture of consistency. This program that was once the beast of the Southeastern Conference hasn’t won a Southeastern Conference or national championship since 2008. In the years since those last glory days, Alabama and Georgia are the top two programs in the SEC and they, along with Auburn and LSU, have won national championships.

Think about that for a second. Since Florida’s last national championship, the SEC has claimed nine national championships, six by Alabama, one each by Georgia, LSU and Auburn. At best, Florida is the fifth best program in the SEC. That’s sobering.

So no one should be the slightest bit upset that the first poll is out and the Gators aren’t in the top 25. If you add the votes, the Gators are 37th. Maybe you’re embarrassed by that. You shouldn’t be. If anything, be thankful that Billy Napier won’t start his first season as Florida’s coach burdened by unrealistic expectations. Napier has taken over a team that lost games it should have won last year, one whose coach essentially mailed it in sometime before November. Napier hasn’t fired the players who are still around from last year’s debacle, but he has fired all the assistants and totally gutted the program to start all over again. In January, the Gators were at ground zero. Now it’s August and there are signs of life that lend speculation that UF could be the surprise program of the SEC in the fall. Phil Steele thinks so. Steele says the Gators will be his second most improved football team this fall. Does that mean going from six wins to eight? Does he think nine wins are possible?

Maybe, but to improve a lot of things will have to go right. On the schedule are three preseason top ten teams – 3. Georgia; 7. Texas A&M; 8. Utah – and one other ranked team (Kentucky, No. 21), plus two other teams on the schedule (Tennessee and LSU) received more votes than the Gators. If you go just by scheduling, then the coaches think there are six teams on the schedule that the Gators could lose to.

That also means Napier has a minimum of six bulletin board opportunities to use the disrespect card. Don’t think for a nanosecond he won’t use them.

For now, however, don’t be the slightest bit upset at what you see as disrespect for the Florida football program. This isn’t a bad place to start and know this: winning cures disrespect. The Gators play six of their first seven games at home and that includes the first two against Utah and Kentucky. Win those two and there is no doubt the Gators will be ranked in the top 25. Win six of those first seven or even go 7-0 and they might be teetering on the verge of the top 10.

Of course, you have to win and that’s key to everything. If Billy Napier wins football games, the rankings will take care of themselves. Until then, he’ll make sure there is a gigantic chip on the Gators’ shoulders.

USA Today top 25 preseason poll: 1. Alabama; 2. Ohio State; 3. Georgia; 4. Clemson; 5. Notre Dame; 6. Michigan; 7. Texas A&M; 8. Utah; 9. Oklahoma. 10. Baylor; 11. Oklahoma State; 12. Oregon; 13. North Carolina State; 14. Michigan State; 15. Southern Cal; 16. Pittsburgh; 17. Miami; 18. Texas; 19. Wake Forest; 20. Wisconsin; 21. Kentucky; 22. Cincinnati; 23. Arkansas; 24. Ole Miss; 25. Houston

Amari Burney on the emphasis on tackling

Linebacker Amari Burney, who is taking advantage of his COVID year to play one last season for the Gators talks about the emphasis on tackling and putting players on the ground. Missed tackles was the bane of the defensive existence the last two years under former coordinator Todd Grantham:

“We don’t want to get anybody hurt in practice but we’ve made a big emphasis on tackling. We do it every day in the middle of practice. We do Gator roll tackling. We do profile tackling, stripping the ball out, just trying to create turnovers. I would say we have put a very big emphasis on tackling … Gator roll tackling is when someone is running away from you and have have to gator roll them to the ground.”

Also this: “You have to put your head on the ball and you have to drive through, wrap them up and bring your hips. It’s a very different tackle than being part of the backfield.”

SEC football/basketball

Alabama: Alabama received 54 of the 66 possible first place votes in the USA Today Coaches top 25 poll.

Arkansas: Wide receiver Matt Landers, who will be a sixth year super senior and at his third program this fall, is tearing it up in fall camp for the Razorbacks. Previously, Landers played at Georgia and Toledo. He caught 20 passes for 514 yards and five TDs last year at Toledo.

Auburn: Auburn lost to the Israeli National Team, 95-86, despite 19 points from Wendell Green and 18 points and 11 rebounds from Johni Broome.

Georgia: It’s a three-man battle between Kamari Lassiter, Nyland Green and Daylen Everette for the starting corner job opposite Kelee Ringo.

Kentucky: Defensive back Joel Williams, a 4-star recruit in 2020, has entered the transfer portal. Williams played in seven games in 2020, nine in 2021.

LSU: LSU’s streak of appearing in the top 25 of every preseason poll since 2000 has come to an end. Based on the points awarded in the USA Today Coaches poll, LSU is the 30th best team to start the year.

Ole Miss: Mississippi State transfer wide receiver Malik Heath on one of the main reasons he left Starkville: “I ain’t have to hear the cowbells. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I came. I don’t like the cowbells. The cowbells are too loud.” There you go. Cowbells. They were probably holding Health back from real stardom.

South Carolina: Explaining why he thinks South Carolina has been recruiting so well, HBC Shane Beamer said Monday, “Prospects and their families are smart. They can figure out who’s telling them a bunch of stuff they want to hear and who’s just being honest with them and truthful.”

Tennessee: D-line coach Rodney Garner calls Dominic Bailey the most improved guy in the position room. Bailey had one assisted tackle in 2021.

Our SEC orphans in the Big 12: Oklahoma: Longtime Oklahoma assistant and former OU quarterback Cale Gundy resigned for reading out loud a racially objectionable word multiple times that was on a player’s iPad. Gundy picked up the iPad during a film session, then read what the player was looking at rather than paying attention to the film. HBC Brent Venables said, “Coach Gundy resigned from the program because he knows what he did was wrong. He chose to read aloud to his players not once, but multiple times, a racially charged word that is objectionable to everyone.”

Texas: Defensive lineman Keondre Coburn, whose production dipped considerably from 2020 to 2021, is one of the early standouts in the Texas camp.

Finebaum on the situation at Auburn

While on the “McElroy and Cubelic In the Morning” radio show on WJOX in Birmingham Monday morning, Paul Finebaum unloaded on the unprecedented campaign to oust Auburn football coach Bryan Harsin last season. Harsin was a surprise choice when Auburn AD Allen Greene hired him from Boise State, but that was met with plenty of anger by the fan base and even one well-known writer in Birmingham. Here are excerpts of what Finebaum had to say:

“I think Bryan Harsin has been a true profile in courage of what you should be as a football coach. Yes, ultimately he has to win, we know that but we know you’re right, and Greg, I’m going to take it a step further. You mentioned Al.com. I’m going to mention the writer’s name. His name is Joseph Goodman, and he carried on a vicious, unsubstantiated campaign against Bryan Harsin over the COVID shot. I am not here to make medical decisions or political decisions. That’s not what I do, but that was his choice and you could choose to respect it or not but it doesn’t cause for a one-man campaign to try to get the guy fired.

“… But in terms of winning people over that were on the fence with Bryan Harsin, I think he has done that and I think he deserves tremendous praise for taking a road less traveled in taking on those who tried to fire him, and taking on those who creeped in the middle of the night like cockroaches trying to get a man fired with no justification and not one scintilla of evidence.”

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Maybe you’ve been around college football for decades and if you have, you probably remember when SMU got the death penalty back in 1987. SMU had been in trouble multiple times with the NCAA prior to the discovery of a “slush fund” that had been in existence for years to pay players and their families under the table to get them to either sign with SMU or to keep them happy while at the school. Among the players who benefitted from the fund was stud running back Eric Dickerson, who says he got $1,000 in cash monthly from one booster and a Corvette to go with more cash from another booster.

Sounds rather tame when you compare with some of the NIL deals that are out there. Nick Saban says Heisman Trophy QB Bryce Young got somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million in NIL money last year at Alabama. Quinn Ewers skilled his senior year in high school and enrolled at Ohio State in August 2021 to cash in on a couple million in NIL money. Ewers was the proverbial fart in an elevator at Ohio State, which has plenty to do with why he transferred to Texas where he is expected to be the starting QB in 2022. No telling how much NIL money the Texas boosters are giving him. There is an old saying in Texas that only God has more money than the Longhorns.

SMU, which was a national power before the death penalty, has never been relevant since but the boosters, once the pariahs of all of college football, are back in the game again. Only now it’s legal. Isn’t that what NIL stands for anyway? SMU boosters have put together something called the Boulevard Collective which plans to pay every football and men’s basketball player $36,000 a year. What is eye-catching about this collective is that it plans to pay EVERY football and men’s basketball player, not just the stars. Presumably the stars of the team will have opportunities to make even more with their own deals but the fact that everybody gets something should resonate well in the locker room.

SMU probably isn’t the first school to come up with an NIL plan like this nor will it be the last. What I have to wonder is how long before some school makes every athlete an employee? I cringe when I think about it, because once players become employees what’s to stop the school from firing them or even trading them to another school? Something to think about. We’ve entered a very dicey era for all of college sports and I’m not hearing anyone come up with any common sense ideas to take us into the future.