Thoughts of the Day: June 20, 2026

(Photo by Chris Spears)

A few thoughts to jump start your Saturday morning:

Perhaps Texas A&M basketball coach Bucky McMillan should heed the advice of my grandmother, the late, great Ivey Van Sickle, who warned about criticizing others: “Remember, when you point a finger at someone you’ve got three pointing back at you.”

On the podcast “Next Round Live,” Bucky took a shot at Florida for retaining Tommy Haugh. Florida spent a rather hefty chunk of NIL money to convince Haugh to return for his senior season even though he was all but guaranteed to be a lottery pick for the upcoming NBA Draft. Because Haugh is such a cleancut, good looking young man with a bubbly personality, endorsements could push his NIL package to the $10 million range.

To that, McMillan said, “Who would’ve ever thought a lottery pick at Florida would come back to college because he has an opportunity to make more, potentially, in college than the NBA? “A lottery pick! Who would have ever thought of that? Like you’ve got to be kidding me that that’s where we are. So, what you’re going to see in the SEC and across college basketball, you’re going to see some incredible basketball, because the players, you’ve got guys that were going to be Top 10 picks going back to college. So you’re going to see some great basketball, but mathematically, I just don’t know how long it can last like this, or places are going to go out of business.”

Now, McMillan is right about a couple of things: (1) A lot of exceptional players – Haugh is one of many – have chosen to forego the NBA Draft for a year in college basketball in many instances because they will make more money in college than late first or second round; and (2) mathematically this is unsustainable. Those are undeniable truths and there will come a day of reckoning across the college sports board if something isn’t done in a hurry to bring back a measure of sanity.

However, before making statements that are veiled shots at a program that has the money and is willing to spend it to build a championship roster, McMillan should look in the mirror. Texas A&M has signed Bryson Warren, who tried to short circuit the system when he was in high school by taking the money to go play for Overtime Elite in Atlanta. Undrafted by the NBA, Warren went the G-League route where he is a 3-year veteran, most recently playing for the Westchester Knicks where he averaged 18.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game. Because he is 21 years old and never played college basketball, there is a very good chance Warren will be ruled eligible to play, whether by the NCAA or the courts.

And, before he makes remarks about the money Florida is spending on basketball, perhaps he should venture over to the football complex where oil gozillionaires are lining up to write checks to lure high school kids and transfers to come play ball for the Aggies.

SUMRALL STAYS HOT, ANOTHER BLUE CHIP ADDED

Jon Sumrall’s first full recruiting class stands at 23 now with the addition of 4-star linebacker Robert Geathers III (6-2, 215, Charlotte, NC Providence Day School), who chose the Gators over offers from Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Southern Cal and LSU among others. Per Jason Higdon of 1standtenflorida.com, the final word when it comes to football recruiting and the Gators, Sumrall is expected to add seven more players. The Gators remain a strong possibility to flip defensive tackle Jalen Brewster (6-3, 313, Cedar Hill, TX) from Texas Tech and wide receiver Easton Royal (5-11, 200, New Orleans, LA Brother Martin) from Texas. In the On3 recruiting rankings, Brewster is the No. 1 player in the country and Royal the No. 4.

OREGON STATE PITCHER TRANSFERS TO UFPer Jacob Rudner of Baseball America, the Gators are adding Oregon State righthander Zach Edwards (6-5, 220, SO) to the portal recruiting class. Edwards is the sixth transfer, the second from Oregon State since Rich Dorman left OSU to become Florida’s pitching coach. Earlier in the week, the Gators landed talented OSU lefty Trey Morris (7-0, 1.98 ERA).

Edwards throws in the mid-to-high 90s. In two seasons at Oregon State he was 3-0 with a 5.68 ERA and 59 strikeouts in 44-1/3 innings.

BINGEWORTHY

With the College World Series almost in the books, we hit that six-week period when we scramble for something to occupy us on television. This is the Binge Season for me in which I go back to series that were must see in years past. Here are a few selections.

Taxi: Christopher Lloyd as Reverend Jim and Andy Kauffman as Latka Gravas made this must see in the late 1970s. Danny DeVito as the taxi garage manager is the perfect straight man for Reverend Jim and Latka.  

Cheers: Ted Danson plays the role of former Major League Baseball pitcher Sam Malone now owner of a bar in Boston. Great cast of characters with Nicolas Colasanto in the role of Coach, George Wendt as Norm, Rhea Perlman as Carla, John Ratzenberger as Cliff Clavin, Kelsey Grammar as Frasier, and Shelley Long as Diane Chambers. Best line ever from Cheers by Norm as he enters the bar: “Terrorists, Sam. They’ve taken my stomach hostage and they’re demanding beer for ransom.”

Frasier: A spinoff from Cheers with Kelsey Grammar taking a job as a radio show psychiatrist in his home town of Seattle where his father, a disabled policeman, lives with him in a penthouse along with Eddie, a Jack Russell Terrier that constantly gets under Frasier’s skin. The interaction between Frasier’s prissy brother Niles, also a psychiatrist, and Daphne, the caretaker/physical therapist for Frasier’s dad, is outstanding.

Boston Legal: Seven seasons of William Shatner Denny Crane and James Spader as Alan Shore, attorneys for Boston’s largest and most prominent law firm. Brilliantly written. Must see in season one when Reverend Al Sharpton makes a cameo by bursting into a court room to save a case for Shore whose client wants to play the role of a black Little Orphan Annie on the touring Broadway show “Annie.”

Hunters: A show based on some truth – Nazis escaped Germany at the end of World War II to settle in America as part of the very real Operation Paperclip – and the fiction that Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun got away to live in Argentina. Al Pacino plays the role of Holocaust survivor and New York philanthropist, who was a Nazi who took on the identity of Meyer Offerman in the concentration camps at the end of the war. A small group of Nazi hunters is directed by Offerman, who in reality is covering his own tracks. Two seasons, compelling drama.

Goliath: Billy Bob Thornton as a once prominent Los Angeles attorney coerced into taking on a case that involves a huge, corrupt defense contractor in season one. William Hurt is part of the season one cast in a very dark role.

Ted Lasso: It's a preposterous idea – a successful American football coach who doesn't know anything about soccer is hired to coach a Premier League team in the UK – but that's why it's so funny. It starts growing on you early on and next thing you know it’s addictive. If you're offended by the F word, then avoid like the plague. If you can get past it you'll laugh. Fourth season coming in the fall.

Yellowstone: Five seasons in which Kevin Costner plays the role of John Dutton, owner of the huge Dutton Yellowstone Ranch in Montana. Constant conflict and well written scripts. Show concluded with Dutton assassinated after he was elected governor. Cole Hauser as ranch foreman Rip and Kelly Reilly as Beth Dutton marry and become the foundation of the Yellowstone spinoff Dutton Ranch, which is in season one.  

Landman seasons one and two: I’m binging on the first two seasons as I wait for season three to debut in November. Billy Bob Thornton as west Texas oilman Tommy Norris. Andy Garcia as a mysterious billionaire tied to the Mexican cartels, Demi Moore as the wife then widow of Monty Miller, Ali Larter as Tommy Norris’ wife, and Sam Elliott, who came on late in season two in the role of Norris’ father. Kayla Wallace as a take no prisoners attorney Rebecca Falcone is outstanding.  

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: There is no question that something has to be done to reel in college sports which seem intent to create their own version of 1928 when the banks and financial system collapsed. We have reached the point that it’s either do something in a hurry or else college sports as we know them will collapse to the point where entire athletic programs will teeter on the verge of bankruptcy.

There aren’t enough fingers to point at who’s to blame for the current situation, even though a good place to begin is the NCAA, which, in its infinite wisdom, continues to compound problems with insanely stupid decisions. In the real world, we would fire the people in charge, but the NCAA doesn’t dwell in the real world. The power behind the organization is college presidents, who, by and large, are clueless when it comes to both sports and business. College sports are big business and the people in charge live in the parallel universe known as academia. Few of them have ever held down a real job and quite a few of them employ coaches who make several times their salaries. You don’t have to be a charter member of Mensa to see the problem there, which is why college sports as we know them hang in a pit and the pendulum balance.  

Things have gotten so bad that the entirety of the college sports world has turned for answers to the only organization in the country that operates on an equal level of ineptitude – the United States Congress. Now that’s not to say that Congress couldn’t be useful to solve the issues. We need them to do two things: (1) Make it far more difficult to bypass the bylaws for answers in the court system; and (2) provide anti-trust legislation that will allow things such as salary caps. Of course, for the Congress to do these things in a way that would provide lasting guidelines it would take the NCAA presidents ceding control of sports to people who actually know what they are doing.

Hence the problem. There is an old joke that could be adapted to both Washington DC and the halls of Congress and Indianapolis, headquarters of the NCAA. It goes something like this: Why wasn’t Jesus born in Washington DC or Indianapolis? Because God couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.

The virginity part is debatable. Three wise men? Not so much.

Are there three wise men at one or both of these locales willing to step up and inject a measure of common sense into the current circumstances? We can only hope.