Thoughts of the Day: May 3, 2026

(Photo by Chris Spears)

A few thoughts to jump start your Sunday morning:

You can’t blame Anthony Richardson for leaving Florida for the NFL after the 2022 season. In his one season as the Gators’ starting quarterback, Richardson oozed potential even though it was a year filled with inconsistency. NFL scouts thought that with some coaching they could bring out the best in Richardson, whose size, speed and arm strength made him the prototype of the future. Indianapolis took him with the fourth pick of the first round.

Fast forward to last Friday and those same Indianapolis Colts declined the fifth-year option on Richardson’s rookie contract. In the NFL that’s the equivalent of dead man walking. The Colts have already moved on. They’re on the hook for Richardson’s money and he will be on their training camp roster unless they can unload him to another team.

So what went wrong here?

The easy thing would be to point fingers at former Florida coach Billy Napier, his predictable offense and underwhelming staff. Those things played a part in this debacle, but the real answer lies in experience. Drafted ahead of Richardson in 2023 were Bryce Young (Alabama, 28 career starts) and CJ Stroud (Ohio State, 25 career starts). Not only did they start but they won. A lot. Young was 28-5 as Alabama’s starter. Stroud was 21-4.

Anthony Richardson started 12 games for the Gators, going 6-6. He had a choice to return to Florida to refine his skills but chose the NFL route. You can’t blame him. He got a 4-year deal worth more than $33 million. That’s generational money and there are no guarantees he would have had the same opportunity to earn the same kind of contract had he returned to Florida for another year.

Anthony Richardson is in limbo now. He’s on a team that has moved on to another quarterback and while he’s publicly stated he would like to be traded, so far there haven’t been any offers. Is his career salvageable? That we don’t know. What we do know is all the talent in the world can’t trump experience and good coaching.

THE SILLY SEASON TAKES ON NEW MEANING

We used to call the time between the end of spring football and the start of fall practice the silly season because this was when athletes and police had close encounters of the arresting kind. Florida was famous for it during the Urban Meyer years. Georgia seems to have picked up the slack during Kirby Smart’s tenure, enough so that the Fulmer Cup should be retired and placed prominently in Athens.

Well, it’s not just athletes cornering the market on brain dead moments anymore. The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, is making headlines with its soon to be law of the land 5-for-5 rule, which is a vote away from eliminating waivers and grandfathering in 4^th-year seniors from 2025. As if we need further proof the NCAA desperately needs real leadership, it plans to expand its cash cow NCAA Tournament to 76 teams.

There is good and bad in the 5-for-5, which will also set a timeframe for athletes in every sport that starts on high school graduation day or age 19, whichever comes first. The new rule should also be amended to include one free transfer during the five years and sit out a year for any transfers beyond that. That would go a long way toward cleaning up the out-of-control portal.

The 5-for-5 is bad because by not grandfathering in the 4^th-year seniors it will open the floodgates for lawsuits. Have you taken a look lately at all the 4^th-year seniors who put their names in the basketball transfer portal? Bet the farm that most of them have already lawyered up and ready to bombard the NCAA with lawsuit after lawsuit. The athletes will win this one, too, because there is the precedent of hundreds of waivers in recent years that granted fifth, sixth and even seventh years of eligibility. To avoid the lawsuits, the NCAA will need to amend its rule to grandfather in all athletes who were in school for the 2025-26 athletic year. If not, the NCAA will be dispatching lawyers to every nook and cranny of the country to do battle with local and state court judges. The NCAA should check its records for Trinidad Chambliss to see how that worked out.

As if embarrassed that the NCAA is stealing all the headlines, the College Football Playoff is embroiled in a feud over expansion of the playoff from its current 12 teams to the 16 favored by most conferences and the 24 favored by Big Ten commish Tony Petiti. We’re two years into the 12-team model and it’s doing fine although it needs some tweaks since the top four teams get bye weeks and most of them lose when they go to the second round having not played a game for three weeks. Indiana was an exception this year as the No. 1, but No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Georgia and No. 4 Texas Tech weren’t so lucky, losing to lower seeded teams that played the week before.

The ideal way to deal with the bye week problem is to eliminate them completely and you do that by expanding to 16 teams. It takes three weeks to get the trash fish out of the pond, leaving only two teams standing for the championship game. Play the first two weeks on campuses, then bowl venues for the semifinals followed by a championship game that is rotated among Atlanta, Dallas, Miami or Tampa, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Although 16 teams does make sense in terms of eliminating bye weeks, it does open the door for teams that truly don’t deserve a chance to play for a national championship. Do we really want a three-or-four loss team to be crowned national champ? Yeah, it happens in basketball, but the national champ has gone through a 40-game marathon that includes three 2-game weekends back-to-back-to-back before they play “One Shining Moment.”

One way to do 16 teams would be the champs from the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC guaranteed, the four highest ranked teams from Notre Dame and the Group of Six plus eight at-large teams. But, that’s not going to pass muster with the powers that be since we saw what happened to Tulane and James Madison when they got into the playoff last year. Ole Miss hung 41 on Tulane and Oregon 51 on James Madison. The power schools will argue for less access by the Group of Six teams, which means we should get ready for three and four-loss teams in the playoff.

A four-loss team in the playoffs? If the College Football Playoff expands to 24 teams, we can expect that to happen.

To make a 24-team playoff work, it would start with eight games (16 teams) with eight teams (conference champions?) getting a first round bye. Then there would be eight games in week two, four games in week three, two games in week four and then then championship game. Throw in conference championship games the week after the final regular season game and we might have an 18-game season for the winning team. The 2025 championship game was played on January 19, 2026. Adding more layers to the playoff would further extend the season.

One thought that is being pushed around is to eliminate conference championship games. Considering how much money the Southeastern Conference makes on the annual pilgrimage to Atlanta, that idea has a snowball’s chance of passing. The solution is to start the season a week or two earlier in August but that means fall practice would begin in mid-July, the hottest time of the year.

What the problems of the NCAA and the College Football Playoff emphasize is the need for real leadership. Both the NCAA and CFP go work on the theory that everything is best decided by a committee. We do not need committees. We need strong leaders to emerge. We need business people in charge and commissioners who know and understand the concept of money and sport in charge. What we don’t need are committees that include clones of Robert Marston, Marshall Criser and Kent Fuchs making decisions.

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Having struck out numerous times while attempting to build a championship roster, Mark Pope of Kentucky found himself in Tel Aviv over the weekend trying to lure a 23-year-old Israeli professional to join a roster that analyst Aaron Gershon evaluated last week like this: “Objectively, on paper, Kentucky has a bottom five roster in the SEC right now and it’s about to be May.”

Well, it is May and Kentucky, with all its tradition and cash for basketball, is, by UK standards, angling for disaster. Last week, Tyran Stokes, the nation’s number one high school recruit, chose Kansas over Kentucky. Kentucky was in it for Sayon Keita, a 7-footer who plays for Barcelona in the Spanish League. Keita chose North Carolina instead. That 0-for-2 week has not settled well with the Big Blue Nation which is already plotting to excommunicate the Pope next March unless things change in a hurry.

Last year spending $22 million on its roster netted 14 losses, proof positive that money doesn’t always buy you love. Despite a willingness to spend freely to lure the best transfers to Lexington, Kentucky has basically struck out. The seven players who departed via the portal have been replaced by Zoom Diallo (Washington), Alex Wilkins (Furman), Justin McBride (James Madison) and Jerone Morton (Washington State). Not exactly household names, and with the exception of Diallo, who is a very good point guard, unlikely to make a dent in the SEC.

If Malachi Moreno ups his draft stock significantly at the NBA combine – entirely possible since he’s 7-0, skilled and just 18 years old – it’s entirely possible he won’t return to Kentucky for his sophomore season. If he doesn’t come back, buzzards will be circling the Kentucky basketball complex and the Big Blue Nation will be plotting to excommunicate the Pope with Billy Donovan the targeted replacement.