Thoughts of the Day: June 20, 2022

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning:

AL DAVIS SAID IT BEST: “JUST WIN BABY”

Perhaps it’s time to put to rest this long-held notion that Florida fans would rather lose 41-38 than win a game 24-17. It’s great to put points on the board with a quick-strike offense but take a look at some of the scores of the last three years. The Gators lost shootout games to LSU in Baton Rouge in 2019 (42-28), to Texas A&M in College Station in 2020 (41-38), to LSU in Gainesville in 2020 (37-34), to Alabama in the 2020 SEC Championship Game (52-46) and to LSU in Baton Rouge in 2021 (49-42). Win those five games and Dan Mullen is still Florida’s football coach although we would still be staring down talent deficits due to recruiting issues.

Mullen was good for putting points on the board but the inability to keep other people from scoring has plenty to do with why Billy Napier is now the UF football coach. Napier’s offense isn’t nearly as creative as the one Mullen put on the field but history says it works and it wins. Under Napier, there will be a serious commitment to running the football which controls the clock and keeps the defense fresh. If opponents choose to load up the box and take their chances one-on-one with the wide receivers, Napier will have Anthony Richardson throwing going over the top. And, don’t buy this notion that receivers like Justin Shorter and Xzavier Henderson are incapable of getting open. They got open when Kyle Trask was throwing the ball. They were open when Emory Jones was throwing it, too, just that Jones had this habit of throwing off his back foot and completing too many passes to the other team.

If opponents try to play the Gators straight up without loading the box, then we can expect Florida to run the football. People I’ve talked to seem to think Florida’s receivers are better than expected so it’s going to be difficult to load up the box.

It’s a numbers game. Anthony Richardson will come to the line of scrimmage and do some simple math. If he counts eight at or near the line of scrimmage, the ball goes over the top. If he has four receivers in the game and opponents are playing one-on-one with a safety over the top, the Gators will run it with Montrell Johnson, Nay’Quan Wright, Lorenzo Lingard or Demarkcus Bowman. And, oh, by the way, AR15 can run it, too. Quite effectively.

This may not be as sexy as the Mullen offense but it’s designed to control the clock, wear down opponents and minimize the amount of time the defense is on the field. It’s also designed to win football games. If Billy Napier’s offense wins games and delivers championships, nobody will mind if the Gators grind away and beat opponents into submission.

LOSING TO OU IN THE GAINESVILLE REGIONAL DOESN’T SEEM NEARLY AS PAINFUL

Since leaving Gainesville after knocking off the Gators in the final game of the regional, Oklahoma has gone to Blacksburg to eliminate 4th-seeded Virginia Tech and gone 2-0 at the College World Series with wins over 5th-seeded Texas A&M and Notre Dame. The experts warned us that Oklahoma was as hot as any team in the country before they arrived in Gainesville and the Sooners haven’t done anything to disprove them.

This is a well-coached OU team that is a nice combination of timely hitting, aggressive baserunning and excellent pitching. That is what it took to beat the Gators twice in in the Gainesville regional. We’ll never know what the Gators might have done if they had beaten the Sooners in that last game, but one thing for certain – there is no shame in a team that had one of the youngest pitching staffs in the country losing to OU. It wouldn’t be a shock for Oklahoma to make it to the CWS championship round nor would it be a surprise if they won it.

As for the Gators, think of 2022 as a season in the aging vat. They will be one of the teams expected to make it to Omaha in 2023.

As for the SEC in Omaha: Arkansas (47-20) blew the doors off No. 2 seed Stanford, 17-2, Saturday afternoon. The Razorbacks will face Ole Miss (41-22) tonight in a winner’s bracket game (7 p.m.). Ole Miss beat No. 14 seed Auburn (45-21), 5-1, Saturday night. Auburn will face Stanford (47-17) this afternoon (2 p.m.) in a winner goes home game.

Sunday afternoon, Texas A&M (46-19) stayed alive by bushwhacking Texas, 10-2, in an elimination game. The Aggies will face Notre Dame (41-16) Tuesday afternoon in an elimination game with the winner facing Oklahoma (44-22) on Wednesday.

Monday’s games: Ole Miss, which has allowed only one run in the last 29 innings, will be throwing freshman lefty Elliott Hunter (4-3, 2.82 ERA) against Arkansas. In his regional and super regional outings, Hunter went 12 innings, gave up six hits and only one run while striking out 18. He has 92 strikeouts in 67 innings this season. I like the Rebels to prevail over Arkansas, which is likely to go with Will McEntire (1-2, 2.81 ERA), who went 5-2/3 shutout innings in the Hogs’ Chapel Hill super regional clinching win over North Carolina.

In the afternoon elimination game, I like Auburn. I wasn’t sold on Stanford prior to the College World Series and after watching the way Arkansas knocked Stanford ace Alex Williams out of the box Saturday, I think Auburn will prevail.

SEC FOOTBALL/BASEBALL/BASKETBALL

Alabama: All-American linebacker Will Anderson has NIL figured out the right way. Anderson is getting help from NFL players to form his own agency designed to help educate young players how to deal with things like contracts, agents, etc. “I know for me and my family, we didn’t know too much about contracts and stuff like that,” Anderson said on the Paul Finebaum Show.

Arkansas: Righthanded pitcher Connor Noland, who threw 7-2/3 brilliant innings Saturday in the Razorbacks’ 17-2 win over Stanford, began his career at Arkansas as a quarterback, recruited by Bret Bielema.

Auburn: Western Kentucky edge rusher Marcus Bragg is transferring to Auburn. Last season he had 38 tackles including four sacks.

Kentucky: Mike Pratt’s long battle with colon and liver cancer has ended. The former Kentucky basketball star and radio color commentator on the UK network, passed away Thursday night. He was 72 years old. Pratt was an All-American at UK in 1970. For his collegiate career he averaged 16.8 points, 8.8 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game.

LSU: Pitching coach Jason Kelly is leaving to become the head baseball coach at Washington.

Missouri: Mizzou has landed transfer Isaiah Mosley, who averaged 20.4 points, 6.2 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game last year at Missouri State.

Ole Miss: Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco is a Pinellas County native (Seminole High School), who played juco at Indian River before going to LSU to play for Skip Bertman.

NCAA INVESTIGATING MIAMI/RUIZ FOR NIL VIOLATIONS

The NCAA has dispatched some of its enforcement staff to Coral Gables to investigate The Ewe and its gozillionaire booster John Ruiz. There is every reason to believe Ruiz and The Ewe are doing whatever they please in an attempt to bring back the glory days of the past, but Ruiz isn’t simply limiting his efforts to Coral Gables. He has signed 115 athletes to NIL deals including players from North Carolina and Florida International. Ruiz admits to an NIL payroll in the $7 million range.

Ruiz insists he hasn’t done anything wrong, which is probably true when you consider the NCAA never bothered to give us any rules or guidelines in the aftermath of its run-rule, 9-0, loss in the Supreme Court in the Alston case. Considering the lack of rules, how does the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, think it can enforce any rules?

They can’t, and that’s why this visit to Coral Gables is nothing more than a show. Anything the NCAA does at this point will be seen as an attempt to restrict athletes from earning money. The NCAA tries to tell us it’s all for the athletes making money but it wants to limit what a booster can do. As Ruiz and other NIL collectives believe, to limit boosters from engaging in NIL is an attempt to restrict. Additionally, what many states have legislated regarding NIL deals runs contrary to the NCAA and state laws supersede NCAA rules and regulations so, as always, the NCAA is too little, too late.

There is no question NIL is out of control but the NCAA should have thought about that long ago. Of course, that would require the NCAA to think and by now we should know that goes against its by-laws.

SHUFFLING THE AAC DECK

With American Athletic Conference members Cincinnati, UCF and Houston departing for the Big 12 in 2023, the AAC announced those three will be replaced by Charlotte, Florida Atlantic, North Texas, Rice, UAB and UTSA, which are departing Conference USA. That will make the AAC a 14-team league with remaining members East Carolina, Memphis, South Florida, SMU, Temple, Tulane, Tulsa and Navy (football only). The 14th member of the league for all sports other than football will be Wichita State.

Keep an eye on what happens with the Big 12 following the departure of Texas and Oklahoma at a date that has yet to be determined but expected by some experts to be 2024. With the buyout money it gets from the early departures of UT and OU, the Big 12 may decide to poach the AAC for Memphis, South Florida, SMU and East Carolina for a 16-team league. If that happens, there will be a ripple effect throughout college football as more leagues expand and contract.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: It only figured that eventually there would be signs of intelligent life coming from “The Alliance.” Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff successfully derailed expanding the College Football Playoff earlier in the year but in recent months Kliavkoff has concluded that the playoff has to expand and he’s all for whatever plan that can succeed as long as it brings much needed cash to his league, which distributed less than $20 million for the COVID year (SEC distributed a record $56.4 million). Now Kliavkoff and Phillips have spoken out that it’s time for football to govern itself beyond the reach of the NCAA. These two have finally understood that the bureaucratic nightmare that is the NCAA is incapable of governing college football with its one size fits all approach, particularly since the advent of the transfer portal and the Alston vs. NCAA ruling for NIL by the Supreme Court.

“Having a trade organization that represents more than 1,000 schools (across Divisions I, II and III) that operate in very different business models is very difficult,” Kliavkoff said. “Coming up with a common set of rules that make sense for everybody was difficult before Alston, and after Alston coming up with rules and particularly enforcing those rules has proven to be nearly impossible.”

There are currently 131 football schools at the highest level of Division I. They need to re-organize separate from the NCAA, set up their own set of rules, figure out how to enforce them and come up with governance that does not require the approval of the non-football schools. The NCAA basically punted on the transfer portal and NIL, so there is no reason to believe it is possible for any organization headed by the clueless Mark Emmert and his band of academics to come up with any kind of reasonable solution to the problems facing football in the future.

The NCAA runs a rather nice basketball tournament, College World Series, etc. To withdraw all sports from the NCAA makes no sense at this time since it would require too much bureaucracy and take way too much time to set it all up, but there needs to be a reset within the organization particularly when it comes to rules and enforcement. You can’t have schools that operate with bare bones budgets, limited sports and too few scholarships to make the rules for the schools that operate on a much higher plane. The only answer is for the football schools to secede and form a football-only organization.