Thoughts of the Day: July 19, 2023

A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:

A year ago, Billy Napier went to the podium at SEC Media Days hailed as the wunderkind who was going to lead Florida football from the abyss and back to championship levels. After a 6-7 first year, many of those same folks are a bit more skeptical. When Napier takes the podium in Nashville today there will be more than a few in the media audience who claim he’s on the hot seat, that if he doesn’t deliver this year athletic director Scott Stricklin will be going through his Rolodex in search of Florida’s seventh head football coach since Steve Spurrier resigned after the 2001 season.

Unless the Gators go totally in the tank this season, nothing could be further from the truth. With a handful of breaks last year, Napier would have won 10 games even with a roster full of holes left from the previous administration. So many of those holes have been patched through good recruiting and the transfer portal, and the way Napier is hauling in the prospects, the future is looking very, very bright. Already with a class ranked No. 3 by both 247Sports and On3, Napier flipped 4-star wide receiver Tawaski Abrams (5-11, 175, Fort Myers, FL Dunbar) from Florida State Tuesday.

How hot are Napier and the Gators on the recruiting trail? Of the 21 commitments in their 2024 class, 13 have chosen UF since June 1.

Meanwhile, in Nashville Napier will be flying pretty much under the radar. Most in the media have written off UF this season and it will show when the preseason All-SEC team voted on by the media in attendance is released tomorrow. If the Gators get more than one preseason first team pick view it as an upset. EDGE rusher Princely Umanmielen has a legitimate shot at first team, but smart money says second team. Corner Jason Marshall Jr. is one of the four or five best corners in the league but he will be fortunate to be a second team choice. Punter Jeremy Crawshaw would have finished second in the nation in 2022 if he had enough attempts. He won’t even get honorable mention. Why isn’t left tackle Austin Barber getting any attention? Has anyone checked the analytics on left guard Micah Mazzccua, the Baylor transfer?

Such is life when you coach a team that has two consecutive losing seasons. Expectations and perceptions are at the bottom of the barrel.

He won’t say so from the podium today, but Billy Napier is loving the lack of preseason respect.

UF baseball: Who’s signed a pro contract, who hasn’t

Wyatt Langford: The fourth overall pick in the draft, Langford had a slot value of $7,698,000. The Rangers signed him for $8,000,000, a rather nice way to start your adult life.

Hurston Waldrep: Waldrep was the first round pick of the Atlanta Braves who signed him for $2,997,500. The slot value of the pick was $3,270,500.

Brandon Sproat: You have to hand it to the New York Mets. Just because they couldn’t get Brandon Sproat a year ago, it didn’t stop them from trying once again. A second rounder, Sproat signed for his slot value of $1,474,000.

Josh Rivera: The Chicago Cubs took Rivera in the third round and signed him for $725,000. His slot value was $872,400.

Phil Abner: Taken in the sixth round by the Colorado Rockies, Abner has a slot value of $328,000. The only information is that he has agreed to terms.

Signee Steven Echevarria: The righthanded pitcher was taken in the third round where his slot value was $1,005,700. To say he made out like a bandit would be an understatement because the Oakland A’s paid him a flat $3,000,000 to forego the University of Florida.

Signee Stone Russell: The C/IF from Montverde Academy was taken by the Kansas City Royals in the 18th round, but he has yet to agree to terms.

SEC Media Days: They said it

Kirby Smart on what Georgia learned studying the rugby All-Blacks from New Zealand: “This year we studied the New Zealand All-Blacks, most successful sports team in the history of real teams, over 100 years they’ve had the highest winning percentage. So, we took a deep dive. We took six weeks. We took a title and a mantra from them and studied those things for six weeks because we don’t want complacency. They’ve done it better than anybody else, and we use that. One of their big mantras is better never rests. We believe that. Those are strong words now when you think about it. Think deep on it. Better never rests.”

Hugh Freeze on the foundation of Auburn’s football culture: “Our culture is based on faith, attitude and mental toughness, integrity and love and what do those things mean to us. Faith, obviously, that’s a word that can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people, and certainly it means something for me, and the bottom line is if we are going to re-establish Auburn being what Auburn should be, we must have faith in each other. That means faith in our administration. That means faith in our coaching staff, faith in the guy that lines up next to you, and that’s probably where it needed to begin, because I think that was lost for whatever reason … But I did sense coming in that the faith in the whole family of Auburn football was fractured somewhat, and I think that is where I had to start in trying to repair that.”

Zac Arnett on things he learned from the late Mike Leach: “There’s a lot of slogans and words spoken in our building the last three years: Don’t listen to the noise, play the next play, all the in every other football building across the country. Maybe not those exact words, but in other ways. Control the controllables, worry about the things you can control. Al of those things. They are just buzzwords or slogans or catch phrases that coaches say because they’re good to have in a building. They’re actually critical to winning football and developing a winning football team. A lot of the same things that were being preached over the last three years, well, my beliefs are the exact same as Coach Leach about what it is that goes into a winning football team.”

Clark Lea on improving Vanderbilt’s football facilities and what it means to the future of the program: “Look, right now it’s not pretty. There’s a lot of shut-down roads and a lot of dirt and construction equipment but it gives us a chance. It gives us the landscape to paint the picture of what the future will be and in short order we’ll be talking about Vanderbilt football with cutting-edge facilities and best-in-class resources. When has that ever been said? These are all exciting things for us. You’ve got a top 15 school. We play in the SEC. We’re in Nashville, Tennessee. Vanderbilt is one of one. You make no compromises. We’re going to support you with the best facilities and the best resources. You’re going to have coaches that invest in you every day. We’re not out there to swap pieces in and out every year. We’re going to develop from the bottom up.”

No media deal expected for the Pac-12 next week

Someone with supposed knowledge of the situation told The Athletic that no deal will be announced at Pac-12 Media Days because there are more options available that will result in “better deals than the league would have gotten three, six, nine months ago.” We’ve been hearing how imminent a deal is ever since George Kliavkoff became the Pac-12 commissioner. Deadlines or predictions come and go and there is no deal. Everybody always says the presidents of the remaining 10 schools are patient and unified. Meanwhile there is no deal and the longer there is no deal the more likely it is that at least one school bolts to the Big 12.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Given the seriousness of the reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution regarding the football culture at the University of Georgia, you would think Kirby Smart would have been asked more than one question about off-the-field difficulties at SEC Media Days in Nashville. Think about it. There have been something like 312 traffic incidents involving Georgia football players, one of which resulted in the deaths of player Devin Willock and recruiting staffer Chandler Lecroy. Willock’s parents launched a $40 million wrongful death lawsuit against the Georgia athletic department. Just last week, Victoria Bowles, who suffered serious injuries in the accident that killed Willock and Lecroy, filed suit. Included in the AJC investigative report was information about 11 sexual assaults by football players, one of which was a 16-year-old underage recruit who had spent the night on the town drinking with current UGa players.

Tuesday, Smart sounded so remorseful (insert sarcasm) when he said the program “endured the loss of two dear family members, Devin Willock and Chandler Lecroy. We love them and we miss them.”

He wouldn’t have said anything more until someone in the media asked about “traffic-related incidents” and whether he’s disappointed that his players don’t seem to be getting the message that this is unacceptable.

Here is verbatim Smart’s response: “I’m disappointed any time we have traffic incidents. It’s very evident when you look at it, we’ve had traffic citations and incidents throughout the history of being at the University of Georgia. We actually don’t have more than we’ve had in the past. What concerns me most is the safety of our players and when you drive at high speeds it’s unsafe. We don’t want that to happen. We’re going to do all we can to take that out and make sure it’s eradicated. But I’m also smart enough to understand and know that it’s 18-to-20-year olds is when this happens. It’s when it happened to me as a student-athlete. What we want to do is take that out and make it safe and not have high speeds. As long as they don’t get a speeding ticket, it should not be a super speeder.”

What? Did the speech writer for Kamala Harris write that answer on a cue card? That was word salad. Amazing that in the hours since Kirby came up with that brainless response that no one seems to have raked him over the coals. Someone should starting with the comment that there aren’t more traffic incidents now than there were in the past. Oh really? And how about the one that essentially said the equivalent of it’s okay to speed just make sure you’re doing 100 in a 40 mile per hour zone?

The answer should have been something like, “It’s an embarrassment that we have such a lack of discipline in our program and from here on out, anyone who gets a speeding ticket that’s more than a couple of miles over the speed limit will sit a game or two. Get in a high speed wreck and you’re gone.” And while he was about it, he should have addressed sexual assault with “any accusation of violence against women and your scholarship is revoked.”

He should have. He didn’t. It’s Georgia. Kirby Smart, whose salary is 12 times that of the school president runs the place and it’s all about the winning.