Thoughts of the Day: May 22, 2026
- Franz Beard
- May 22
- 6 min read
A few thoughts to jump start your Saturday morning:
The beast within has been awakened. Just ask Vanderbilt and Alabama, who the Florida Gators have flattened in their two games at the Southeastern Conference Tournament in Hoover, Alabama. Vandy went down 8-3 on Wednesday. Thursday, the 5th-seeded Gators (39-18) run-ruled 4th-seeded Alabama (37-19), 13-3, and in doing so made a case for a top eight national seed when the NCAA announces its 64-team field at noon Monday.
Florida came into Thursday’s game with the No. 10 national RPI while Bama was No. 6. Florida State, whom the Gators beat three times this season, is No. 7. The Seminoles play their first game in the ACC Tournament today. At No. 8 is Southern Cal, which has benefitted from a weak Big Ten schedule. No. 9 is Nebraska, like Southern Cal the beneficiary of a weak Big Ten schedule. Both Southern Cal and Nebraska play their first games in the Big Ten Tournament today.
The Gators have won 10 of their 11 games since May 2 and carry a 6-game winning streak into tomorrow’s SEC Tournament semifinal against Georgia, the SEC regular season champion. Despite the Bulldogs’ 43-12 record, they are only No. 14 in RPI. By virtue of the regular season title, no one doubts Georgia will be a top eight seed even if the Gators bushwhack them Saturday. Florida, it turns out, is the only team in the SEC that won a 3-game weekend series against Georgia and the Gators did it in Athens.
Florida has all the momentum and that should be taken into account by the selection committee. The Gators have one of the best 1-2 pitching combos in the country in Aidan King and Liam Peterson, and the bats have gone on a rampage. Thursday against an Alabama team that swept the Gators in Tuscaloosa, both Peterson and the hitters were in a groove. Peterson went five innings to pick up the win, striking out eight while allowing only one run. At the plate, the Gators pounded out 16 hits with Ethan Surowiec going 4-5 with two doubles and his 11th home run of the season. Brendan Lawson hit his 16th home run and a double, his second straight game with a homer and a double.
After the Gators lost to Oklahoma on May 1, they were 28-17 overall and 11-11 in SEC play. In three weeks, Florida has transformed into the hottest team in the nation’s best collegiate baseball conference. This is the team nobody but nobody wants to play right now.
UF SOFTBALL: DOES TIM WALTON HAVE THE MAGIC IN HIM ONCE AGAIN?
There have been times during Tim Walton’s illustrious career as Florida’s softball coach that he has had some moments when it seems he has changing water into wine capabilities. Walton has taken the Gators to Oklahoma City for the Women’s College World Series 13 times in a Hall of Fame career at Florida. He’s won two NCAA championships, eight SEC titles and six times the Gators have won the SEC Tournament.
As 1,079 wins at Florida attest, Tim Walton has this habit of turning the Gators into a formidable foe, particularly at this time of the year. He might have to summon all his inner magic starting today because the Gators (51-10) open NCAA Super Regional play at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium with Texas Tech (55-6), a team that boasts a .388 batting average and a 1.81 ERA.
This will be a chance for Walton to even the score against Texas Tech pitcher Nijaree Canady. Back in 2023 when she was a freshman at Stanford, Canady pitched a 2-hit, 8-0 shutout to beat the Gators in regional action in Palo Alto. Canady has spent the last two seasons at Texas Tech, transferring after a $1 million NIL deal lured her to Lubbock. She is 23-5 this season with a 1.42 ERA.
There is also the problem of UCLA transfer Kaitlyn Terry (24-1, 1.39 ERA), a lefty who also leads the team in hitting at .470. Terry and Canady give Texas Tech perhaps the best 1-2 pitching punch in the country.
Can Walton summon two wins from the Gators this weekend starting with today’s 11 a.m. showdown (ESPN2)? The super regional is a best-of-three format. Nobody has beaten the Gators two games in a weekend series at KSP this season. When Tennessee came to KSP back in March, the Vols were ranked No. 1 in the nation, but Florida won the final two games to take the series.
The Gators are a capable team, but to get past the Red Raiders this weekend, Walton needs to sprinkle some magic woofie dust on his team. Oklahoma City and the Women’s College World Series awaits the winner.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: On more than one occasion since taking the job as head football coach at James Madison University up in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Billy Napier has done a dandy impersonation of Vincent Van Gogh, the great Dutch artist famous, among other things for his many self-portraits. Van Gogh put his self-portraits on canvas. Napier tries to paint using the media where he tries to portray himself as some kind of victim for his time at the University of Florida.
There was this interview with Matt Hayes of USA Today in which Napier said, “This is the first time in my career where I’ve inherited a positive culture, confidence among players and alignment top to bottom.”
In a more recent interview with a Richmond ESPN radio affiliate, Napier said, “Third time being a head coach. I think typically, when you get one of these jobs, it’s broken. There’s a lots of things to fix. You got long lists of problems that you got to solve. And I think here we’re kind of starting on second base a little bit, you know, we’re been benefiting from, you know, the last 20 years, there’s 18 Championships have been won here in football, and there’s been a lot of great coaches rolled through here. So we inherited winning culture … There’s a total commitment to winning.”
Of course there were problems when Billy Napier became Florida’s football coach in December of 2021. Florida wouldn’t have been in the market for a new head coach if Dan Mullen hadn’t hit a wall in 2021. Was Florida broken, however? Maybe that depends on your perspective, but even if we concede that the Florida program was broken, Napier had four years to right the ship and he had advantages that Mullen never had such as the Heavener Center and Spurrier’s Gridiron Grille, a place that wows potential recruits.
Napier has three losing seasons in four years to show for his tenure. He has a former 5-star quarterback (DJ Lagway) who transferred to Baylor and now claims that he wanted to have shoulder surgery ahead of the 2025 season but was pressured to play through the injury by Napier. In 2025 Lagway regressed from Heisman candidate into one of the more erratic quarterbacks in the country, one that led the SEC in interceptions.
That’s a new one. Is it sour grapes on the part of Lagway, the truth or something in between? Only Napier and Lagway know for sure, but it seems entirely possible.
Napier tries to portray himself as a victim, perhaps a modern day Vincent Van Gogh minus the suicide at age 37. Van Gogh battled depression and the belief no one took the time to understand all that he was going through. Napier seems to be telling anyone who will listen up in Virginia that he was a misunderstood victim of an administration that simply didn’t understand all the obstacles left in his path by the previous coach.
Within four months after Napier was hired, Florida hired Todd Golden to succeed Mike White as basketball coach. White left behind a legacy of head scratching losses by underachieving teams. He abruptly departed for Georgia after blowing a winnable SEC
Tournament game in Tampa in March of 2022. Within weeks, Todd Golden was hired from San Francisco to take over a program that was the SEC’s definition of a roller-coaster. Like Napier, Golden was from a non-power conference school. Unlike Napier, Golden wasn’t overwhelmed by the promotion to the big time.
During his four years, Napier posted three losing seasons and the only championship trophy hoisted was that of the lightweight Gasparilla Bowl in Tampa. During his four seasons, Golden has won a national championship (2025), an SEC championship (2026) and has taken the Gators to three NCAA Tournaments, the last two as one of the four No. 1 national seeds.
Now, we are talking two different sports here and yes, there are more moving parts to deal with in football than basketball, but one thing for certain – winners go about the business of winning no matter the obstacles or circumstances. Winners hoist championship trophies. Those who don’t win have this habit of pointing fingers of blame, oblivious to that old adage that when you point a finger you’ve got three pointing back at yourself.
Napier just needs to drift off into the sunset
UF gave bumpkin billy everything he wanted, including his 753 analysts, and not only could he not win but he couldn't even do something as simple as getting the right number of players on the field. His offense, all 5 plays of it, was a joke and only kept our defense on the field for so long every game that they were worn down by the 4th quarter and we lost winnable games. His pressers were nothing but non sensical coach speak word salads that couldn't be understood even when you tried to listen. And his game day and clock management and especially two minute drills were absolutely horrible. He was a narcissist who refused to give up play cal…
Napier’s comment about JMU, “There’s been a lot of great coaches who rolled through here,” is one less “great” coach than he thinks. Winners win, losers blame. That’s how it goes. Meantime, you can attest to the confidence of Steve Spurrier, Billy Donovan, Urban Meyer, Todd Golden and now Jon Sumrall. Loved what Gator tackles Fletcher Westphal and Mark Faircloth said in their WRUF interview this week. Sumrall told the team, “Stay away from ‘energy vampires’”, people whose negativism sucks energy out of everyone around them. So, good riddance, Billy Napier!