Thoughts of the Day: July 10, 2026

Denzel Aberdeen (UAA Photo)

A few thoughts to jump start your Friday morning:

Denzel Aberdeen’s case to get a fifth year of eligibility from the NCAA got a huge boost Thursday from a judge in Ohio who issued a preliminary injunction for 24 men’s and women’s basketball players who are going through the courts to fight the NCAA for a fifth season of eligibility. Cincinnati judge Christopher Wagner ruled that the NCAA’s newly implemented 5-for-5 legislation has been applied unfairly.

In ruling against the NCAA, Judge Wagner said, “Despite arbitrarily excluding a class of athletes from taking part in a fifth season of intercollegiate competition the NCAA seeks to evade judicial review and possibly punish member institutions for their participation in the legal process.”

The class of athletes Judge Wagner is talking about were fourth-year seniors last year, excluded from a fifth year of eligibility by the new NCAA rules while third-year juniors get two more years. Judge Wagner rules that application of the rules blatantly discriminates and therefore is unfair.

Aberdeen was not part of the case in Ohio, but the ruling certainly favors his case to play basketball for the Florida Gators in the fall. Aberdeen has applied for a waiver that will grant him a fifth year but there is no certainty that the NCAA will rule favorably. The NCAA tends to be all over the place when it comes to eligibility. Franck Kepnang, who transferred from Washington to Kentucky, got a waiver to play a seventh season in the fall. The 24 players in Ohio were denied waivers asking for a fifth year.

Aberdeen is prepared to go to court to fight the NCAA if the organization fails to grant his waiver request. Should that happen, the ruling by Judge Wagner offers legal precedent for a temporary restraining order against the NCAA that will free Aberdeen to play for the Gators.

The NCAA, of course, has promised to appeal but as the Trinidad Chambliss case at Ole Miss proved, state courts don’t necessarily look favorable on the NCAA due to its selective enforcement of rules.  Figure Denzel Aberdeen will play for the Gators this fall. The only question is who makes him eligible: the NCAA or the courts?

URBAN MEYER ON LANE KIFFIN

On his Triple Option podcast, Hall of Fame coach Urban Meyer spoke of the pressure to produce at the highest levels faced by Lane Kiffin at LSU. Brian Kelly was fired by LSU even with a 34-15 winning record because he never even sniffed the College Football Playoff. Kiffin is the replacement and expectations in the LSU community are so high that a national championship is the only acceptable outcome.

Meyer said: "The reason I bring up Lane Kiffin is, is it national championship or bust? Because if it's anything less, he's going to get hammered. … He doesn't have to win it, but he's got to be within a swing of it."

THINGS SAID AT BIG 12 MEDIA DAYS

Cody Campbell, Texas Tech mega-booster: "We don't have a problem with the Big 12. We want to find a way to get all other Big 12 schools to elevate themselves. Everybody needs to do some version of what we've done. That's the path forward for this conference. A rising tide lifts all boats. People not on board with that and those that want everyone worse so they can be relatively better, we'll have a problem with those institutions."

Sonny Dykes, HBC, TCU: “What you can get is a model that has proven to work for the last 100 years: the NFL model. They have collective bargaining. Everybody understands what they’re getting into. There’s no lawsuits. There’s no finding a judge you know is going to be sympathetic to your cause. There’s none of that stuff. You have somebody that’s in charge and somebody that says yes or no, and there’s rules.”

Deion Sanders, HBC, Colorado: “When you start talking money in college, that kind of runs people off and runs people away because that’s not what the intention is … I do believe that college athletes should be compensated for their name, image and likeness, but it’s not about name, image and likeness right now. It’s just about pay-per-view. If it is what it is, then let it be it. Say what it is. Don’t hide from it.”

Dave Aranda, HBC, Baylor: “Home field, margin of victory, injuries, all these things. But the thing they don’t have is, dude, there are teams spending $30-40 million on rosters playing teams spending $15 million. It’s the minor leagues versus pro.”

Willie Fritz, HBC, Houston: “I wish we had it where everybody spent equal. Certain people don’t want to do it that way and I don’t think it’ll ever change.”

Rich Rodriguez, HBC, West Virginia: “We’re going to look back at this time in 10 years and say ‘What the hell is going on?’ But if I’m a school with a $40 million roster and I have a competitive advantage, I’m not changing. Why would I want to change?”

Scott Frost, HBC, UCF: “Whoever has the richest boosters gets the best players. That’s not the way college is supposed to be, but that’s the way it is.”

Sonny Dykes, HBC, TCU: “Why not institutionalize something like a luxury tax? Problem is, this money is coming under the table and not being reported. It’s against the rules, but if they did something like (a luxury tax), it wouldn’t be a bad thing. If Texas wants to spend $50 million, pay $75 million and give $25 million to Iowa State and Kansas State.”

CBS SPORTS RANKS FLORIDA NO. 6 RUNNING BACKS ROOM

“Jadan Baugh leads the Gators' rushing attack after averaging 5.3 yards per carry. He excels in inside-zone runs with good patience, vision and the ability to break arm tackles. Baugh had almost 800 yards after contact and should be featured even more in Jon Sumrall's scheme. 

“Florida also has quality depth behind Baugh with Evan Pryor and Logan Montgomery, who were productive starters at Cincinnati and East Carolina, combining for 1,300 rushing yards last season. Duke Clark is also expected to have a role after gaining limited experience last season.”

The top 10 running backs rooms: 1. Miami; 2. Texas Tech; 3. Oregon; 4. Louisville; 5. Southern Cal; 6. FLORIDA; 7. Missouri; 8. Texas; 9. Ohio State; 10. Georgia

FIVE PLACES I WANT TO VISIT AGAIN

1. Teotihucan, Mexico: Along what is known as the Avenue of the Dead is the Pyramid of the Moon. It’s not as tall as the Pyramid of the Sun, so climbing it was less strenuous. Sitting on top I surveyed what was a city of perhaps 100,000 centuries before the Aztec empire.

2. Tikal, Guatemala: Some 3,000 ancient Mayan structures have been cut out of the surrounding jungle. Sitting on top of a smaller pyramid late one afternoon I watched two young kids poking under a large bush down below. Suddenly they jumped up and down with the older boy unsheathing a machete. He hacked twice then held up the head and the body of a bushmaster that I would guess was 10 feet long. Imagine a moccasin on steroids and you have a bushmaster.

3. Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia: On the drive up to the tallest mountain in Southeast Asia where orangutangs live, their safety fiercely protected, we stopped to walk across this narrow bridge suspended above a river. I was halfway across when someone yelled to look at all the crocodiles below. There were dozens of them. I think they looked at me and said, “Happy Meal!”

4. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: This is hallowed ground. I still get chills thinking about how the Civil War turned when Pickett’s Charge was turned back at a place called Cemetery Ridge.

5. Normandy, France: Like many other Americans who visit the beaches where American, British and Canadian troops stormed ashore in the 1944 D-Day invasion, I couldn’t hold back the tears. So many brave people died for the cause of freedom.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: What a week it was. First, Billy Napier tried something straight from the Roseanne Rosannadanna playbook – “It’s always something; if it isn’t one thing it’s something else” – by blaming his inability to properly deal with NIL as the chief culprit for why he got fired at Florida. It wasn’t. His problem was he lost too many games because the Gators were poorly coached.

Napier’s quarterback the last half of 2025 and all of last season was DJ Lagway, formerly the No. 1 high school recruit in the country. In 18 starts at UF, Lagway was 9-9 with 28 touchdown passes and 23 interceptions. When Napier was fired and Jon Sumrall hired, Lagway elected to go into the transfer portal where he committed to Baylor.

Since arriving at Baylor, Lagway has claimed fan pressure made life difficult, that he stayed in his room or at the football complex rather than venture onto campus. Speaking to Matt Hayes of USA Today, Lagway said, “I was in a bubble down there [Florida]. I didn’t feel like a normal person. I didn’t even know what the campus looked like.”

Hayes points out that notoriety never prevented Tim Tebow or Joakim Noah from attending class on campus. It should also be noted that Lagway was a regular at Florida softball games where he was regularly seen mugging for photos with admiring fans.

At Big 12 Media Days Thursday it was Baylor coach Dave Aranda’s turn to take up the poor, pitiful DJ narrative. Aranda claimed that Lagway has found freedom to be himself in wacky Waco that he never found while at Florida.

“He’s very driven, there is a huge chip on his shoulder,” Aranda said. “I could see on the recruiting trip, … I could see someone that just wanted to be free. Like [he was in a] straight jacket, maybe, someone that is just all boxed in and boxed up and just wanted to be free, express himself, play free. And I think he’s felt that  … at Baylor.”

“He’s smiling more, he’s open more, he’s engaging with teammates more. He’s taken the O-line out to eat, he’s taken the receivers off to [practice] seven-on-seven, or they’re at his house watching films. He’s just totally engaged, totally driven. So guys are connected to him and want to play for him, they don’t want to let him down.”

Gag time.

None of these three is giving us the unvarnished truth. They do their best to paint themselves as victims and the University of Florida as the big, bad bully. Maybe that sells in Harrisonburg, Virginia and Waco, Texas but nobody outside those cocoons is giving it more than a nanosecond of serious thought.