Thoughts of the Day: July 7, 2026

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday afternoon:

“Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.” – from “My Way” by Frank Sinatra  

Maybe Frank Sinatra’s regrets were few and far between, but now that he has $21 million of Florida buyout money banked and a new head ball coaching gig at James Madison, Billy Napier has a regret worth mentioning.  In a new twist on taking personal responsibility, Napier admitted he should have ditched play calling responsibilities during his four years as the head Gator but blames the mistake in judgment on NIL.

“I think that I was a little stubborn,” Napier said about his determined hold on calling the plays. That goes down as both an understatement and a serious miscalculation. Understatement in that despite tangible results – an offense that never averaged as many as 30 points a game – should have told him something wasn’t working and that changes should have been made. A miscalculation in that Napier placed far too much trust in his own acuity.

Rather than delegate authority, Napier went the control freak route while at Florida. His fingerprints were on every aspect of the football program, each day planned down to the second. That approach might have worked well when he was coaching at Louisiana, but it certainly failed at Florida.

Napier’s ultimate responsibility was to put a winning football team on the field. Failure to put competent people in place to handle the non-coaching responsibilities ultimately distracted from winning football games. He points the finger at NIL, which would have been far less a problem if he had hired the right people and given them the authority to handle it properly. The Jaden Rashada case should have been an early warning of bad things to come in that respect.

“I think that we really struggled to manage the workload that came with NIL, that came with the portal,” Napier said in the conversation with On3. “I think in general there, the work continued to be loaded up in terms of my responsibility to our team and to our entire organization. So, for me, in general, if I can sum it up, I would say the ability to delegate and hire exceptional people in certain areas and hand over more responsibility to those guys and empower them to do their job at a high level. I think that you have to continue to adapt and evolve, and certainly college football the last few years, that part has been really important. We didn’t do that as well as I would like us to do it. And ultimately, that was my responsibility.”

NIL makes for an easy target. Florida had and will continue to have enough money to compete when it comes to building a successful roster. For sure it is complicated, but that is why the head coaches doing the best job of all that NIL entails hire competent people and give them the authority to make it work. The same thing applies to every aspect of being a head football coach. The HBC is the CEO of the engine that funds the entire athletic budget, which, in the case of Florida, is a more than $200 million a year endeavor.

It is the job of the CEO to make the entire organization function like an efficient, high powered machine. That goes for those who deal with daily administrative tasks and extends to the assistant coaches tasked with prepping a team to win football games. Both require capable people and a CEO who trusts them to get the job done.

Napier admits he didn’t trust his people, but again, it is too easy to blame something else – NIL in this particular case – for the problem.

“I think that that [NIL] took away from the level of detail that I had provided in a lot of those areas in the past,” Napier said. “And then once my back was against the wall, I wasn’t confident or comfortable enough to hand that over to somebody else.”

If it hadn’t been NIL it would have been something else.  

THE LATEST ESPN TOO EARLY TOP 25 FOR BASKETBALL

Led by No. 1 Florida, eight Southeastern Conference teams have made it into ESPN’s too early top 25 basketball rankings. The Big Ten and Atlantic Coast conferences placed five teams each in the top 25 while the Big 12 landed four.

The top 25 (SEC teams bold face): 1. FLORIDA; 2. Duke; 3. Illinois; 4. UConn; 5. Michigan; 6. Tennessee; 7. Texas; 8. St. John’s; 9. Michigan State; 10. Arizona; 11. Arkansas; 12. Southern California; 13. Louisville; 14. Virginia; 15. Alabama; 16. Houston; 17. Kentucky; 18. Miami; 19. Gonzaga; 20. Vanderbilt; 21. Missouri; 22. Nebraska; 23. Kansas; 24. Iowa State; 25. North Carolina

SUMRALL LANDS TWO KEY COMMITMENTS

Jon Sumrall’s latest success on the recruiting trail are corners Kamari Whitfield (5-11, 193, Orlando, FL The First Academy) and Raheem Floyd (6-1, 180, East St. Louis, MO). Whitfield is a very fast and physical 3-star corner from Orlando while Floyd is a 4-star cover corner from the St. Louis metro area. To land Whitfield, the Gators outrecruited Penn State, Notre Dame, Miami, Nebraska and Oregon among others. For Floyd, the Gators outrecruited Indiana, Michigan, Ole Miss and Missouri among others. Whitfield is rated one of the top 60 high school players in the entire state of Florida and the No. 72 corner in the nation. Floyd is the No. 20 corner in the nation and a top 200 prospect nationally.

Here is Florida’s recruiting class as of July 7, 2026:

Quarterback: Davin Davidson (6-6, 215, Sarasota, FL Cardinal Mooney)

Running back: Andrew Beard (5-9, 195, Bogart, GA Prince Avenue Christian)

Wide receiver: Elias Pearl (5-11, 183, Port Charlotte, FL); Tramond Collins (6-0, 185, Cottondale, FL); Anthony Jennings (5-11, 170, Fort Lauderdale, FL Dillard)

Tight end: Tommy Douglas (6-5, 235, Princeton, NJ The Hun School); Jackson Ballinger (6-5, 230, Centerburg, OH)

O-line: Maxwell Hiller (6-6, 300, Coatesville, PA); Elijah Hutcheson (6-5, 275, Roanoke, VA Roanoke Catholic); Peyton Miller (6-5, 300, Anna, TX);

D-line: Zahmar Tookes (6-4, 270, Rochester, NY Brighton); Stive-Bentley Keumajou (6-3, 300, Coral Gables, FL); Cain Van Norden (6-7, 300, District Heights, MD Bishop McNamara); De’Voun Kendrick (6-4, 300, Tampa, FL Carrollwood Day)

EDGE: Cahron Wheeler (6-5, 250, Baltimore, MD St. Paul’s);

Linebacker: Ja’Bios Smith (6-2, 210, Swainsboro, GA); Ellis McGaskin (6-0, 220, Mobile, AL Williamson); Tre Geathers (6-2, 200, Charlotte, NC Providence Day School)

Secondary: Aamaury Fountain (6-3, 182, Warner Robins, GA Northside); Amare Nugent (5-11, 180, Plantation, FL American Heritage); Kamarion Johnson (6-0, 190, Homerville, GA Clinch County); Kailib Dillard (6-2, 175, Tulsa, OK Jenks); Kamauri Whitfield (5-11, 193, Orlando, FL The First Academy); Raheem Floyd (6-1, 180, East St. Louis, MO)

Special teams: Aaron McWilliams (5-11, 185, Sharpsburg, GA East Coweta); Jaydee Lane (6-1, 220, Mendenhall, MS Simpson County Academy)

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Two steps forward and one gigantic step backward. That is the summary of the US Men’s National Team in the World Cup after a brutal 4-1 slapdown by Belgium in Seattle Monday night. Four previous wins in World Cup play were marked by crisp passing, great defense and relentless pressure on opposing defenses. Then came Belgium and suddenly the American team looked like so many American teams in the past when facing a highly-regarded European team – totally outmatched. It is bad enough that Belgium was so much better in every phase of the game Monday night, but there was the ultimate insult that Belgium did it without the necessity of playing two of its better players. Kevin De Bruyne and Jeremy Doku watched from the bench as their mates handled the Americans with been there, done that precision and intensity.

Other than a matching goal of a deflected free kick that made the score 1-1 in the first half, the US rarely found openings in the Belgian defense. Compounding matters were far too many glaring mistakes, none as obvious as the one made by US goalie Matt Freese that allowed the Belgians to go ahead 3-1. There was still plenty of time to rally and make the game interesting after Freese’s brain took a leave of absence, but to rally would have meant the US suddenly found a semblance of the game that got them to the round of 16 in the first place. That wasn’t happening.

There is no sense in sugar coating what happened Monday night. Despite a home field and home country advantage as great as there has been since France won in 1998, the US wilted when it desperately needed an inspired performance. A close call, white knuckles loss would have been tolerable, almost admirable. Instead it was a humiliating slapdown. Not a beatdown, mind you although a three-goal loss in soccer is the equivalent of losing by 30 in American football. Belgium didn’t need to show off a Mike Tyson-like iron fist to the jaw for a knee-crumbling KO. Rather than bloody its fists, Belgium removed its silk gloves and used them to deliver a series of smacks to the face.

This was America’s chance to not only make soccer history but elevate the sport to unprecedented levels in the minds of the entire country. Millions of fans on TV and the 70,000 or so jammed into Seattle’s Lumen Field were prepared to turn soccer fever into a contagion that would sweep the country, elbowing its way into the same conversations with baseball, basketball and football. Instead of a statement that soccer can compete with America’s established professional sports, there was a not ready for prime time reality check for the whole world to see.

This was a huge setback, make no mistake about it. Recovery is possible, but don’t expect rapid progress. You only have to follow the money to understand why. In the rest of the world where soccer is the only true sport of significance, billionaires pour money into their teams and entire nations rally together every four years with the hope of bringing home the World Cup. American billionaires own NFL, MLB and NBA franchises which are proven money makers. Plus there are college sports which not only command the loyalty and investment by millions of fans while serving as a farm system to the pros.

There is only so much money to go around and for now, at least, the money spent on soccer in America will be a trickle compared to the established sports. The faucet was all but turned off Monday night, leaving only a drip, drip, drip.

This isn’t to say soccer can’t grow. It probably will, but it is not going to happen at warp speed. The process is going to take awhile and cannot afford missed opportunities like the one the US team had in a World Cup played on American soil.