Will Harris is the replacement coach for Corey Raymond

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning:

It is Monday and after a wildly entertaining weekend of D1AA football – I refuse to call it FCS and Division I FBS – it’s time to verbalize some of the many things meandering through my mind the past three days.

1. Will Harris is the new UF secondary coach

Consider me underwhelmed. Will Harris may very well turn out to be the greatest thing since 1886 when Colonel Pemberton’s nerve tonic began marketing as Coca-Cola, but for now, Harris seems like a watered down Diet Pepsi whose ice has melted. Billy Napier needed a home run hire to coach up the burnt toast that has been the Florida secondary the past two seasons. Will Harris may turn out to be exactly what the Gators need, but for now this seems like a downgrade from Corey Raymond. Raymond has drawn a lot of criticism but he has a long established track record. He didn’t forget how to coach, but something didn’t work out at the University of Florida.

Meanwhile, Will Harris is the new guy in charge of the DBs. He played safety four years at Southern Cal for Pete Carroll where he sandwiched three injury-filled seasons between a freshman year spent on special teams and a senior season (2009) in which he had 69 tackles and four interceptions. He coached defensive backs at Washington from 2018-21, the first two years as the assistant to secondary coach/DC Jimmy Lake, the last two as the DB coach when Lake took over as head coach after Chris Petersen retired. The 2020-21 Washington secondaries allowed 11 TDPs and had 13 picks. In 2021, Washington led the country in pass defense. As Clay Helton’s defensive coordinator at Georgia Southern in 2022, the Eagles finished 129th in the country in total defense (Florida finished 97th).

An assistant secondary coach with the NFL Los Angeles Chargers this season, Harris will join the UF staff today.

2. Whispers from folks who speak like they actually know something

Now, there is no question something went sideways with Florida’s defense the past two seasons, but Raymond and D-line coach Sean Spencer were thought to be outstanding hires when Napier named them to his original coaching staff in 2022. Raymond coached Florida’s corners in 2022, the entire secondary in 2023. There was modest improvement in the secondary in 2023, but the Gators still gave up too many big plays and interceptions dipped from nine in 2022 to three in 2023. The run defense also improved modestly in 2023, but in both years the Gators rarely got to the quarterback. The Gators had 45 sacks combined in the two years. For all the criticism of former coordinator Third and Grantham, his defenses never registered fewer than 37 sacks in a single season.

So what went wrong? Among the “explanations” making the rounds are philosophical differences with 2022 defensive coordinator Patrick Toney and 2023 DC Austin Armstrong. Folks who speak as if they know something say that Spencer and Raymond were less pleased with Armstrong’s schemes and play calls than they were with Toney's. Were both Spencer and Raymond shown the door before they could resign? That is one theory that is making the rounds.

Spencer landed a job almost immediately on the staff of new Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko. Raymond hasn’t landed another job but given LSU’s rotten defense in 2023 and Raymond’s history at the school, would anyone be surprised if (a) Brian Kelly completely revamps his defensive staff and (b) brings back Raymond to coach up the corners?

Meanwhile, UF doesn’t have a D-line coach to replace Spencer. And, still no word on if Napier plans to hire a special teams coordinator and/or turn over the offense to a coordinator while he becomes the CEO of the entire program.

3. Mister we could use a man like Mark Pantoni again …

When Urban Meyer took the Ohio State job after a year away from coaching, his first two hires were strength and conditioning coordinator Mickey Marotti and player personnel specialist Mark Pantoni, both from the Florida coaching staff. Marotti is still at Ohio State while Pantoni is, for all practical purposes, the general manager of Buckeye football.

Pantoni started out as a student assistant working recruiting for Meyer at UF, but he became a full-timer and completely transformed the way Meyer and the Gators recruited. From 2007-2011, the Gators had the No. 1 classes in 2007 and 2010, No. 6 in 2008 and No. 7 in 2009. At Ohio State since 2012, the Buckeyes have had only three classes outside the top five and only one (2019) outside the top 10.

“He’s the best there is at it,” Meyer said on a Sunday phone call. “He’s totally revolutionized the position. These guys used to be paid peanuts, now they’re very well paid and for good reason.”

What separates Pantoni from other personnel directors/general managers in college football is his keen evaluation skills. Meyer said that Pantoni was his “best talent evaluator, even among my coaches. Coaches watch maybe 8-10 guys they’re recruiting but Mark watches all day. If I would ask, ‘Mark, who are my top 10 receivers?’ he would come back with the top 100. He was rarely wrong and I gave him the power to overrule a coach. One of our coaches might say, ‘Let’s get this guy’ but Mark could say, ‘Don’t do it.’ We had some good fights over that, but he very rarely, if ever, gets it wrong.”

It is the consistency that Pantoni brings to recruiting that keeps Ohio State in a reload not rebuild mode. This is what Billy Napier needs to turn the Florida program around. When the Gators were among the dominant forces on the recruiting trail as they were when Pantoni and Urban Meyer hooked up, Florida was a national powerhouse. Recruiting has slipped in the years since and now it’s up to Napier to string together strong enough classes that the Gators have the personnel to compete with anyone on the schedule.

Now about to sign his second full recruiting class, Napier has the Gators poised to finish with a top five class if they can hold on to 5-star D-lineman LJ McCray (6-6, 275, Daytona Beach, FL Mainland) and 5-star safety Xavier Filsaime (6-0, 190, McKinney, TX). One top five class isn’t going to beast mode the Gators, but it’s a beginning. Napier’s talent evaluators have to be able to take their game to a Mark Pantoni level if the Gators are going to make the long climb back to relevance.

4. Gators have a chance to build some pre-SEC momentum

Florida’s 87-76 win over Richmond in the Orange Bowl Classic in Sunrise on Saturday wasn’t the best game the Gators have played this season, but when you can light it up for 87 points against a very good defensive team and you’re not shooting the ball all that well, it’s a statement. At 6-3 and with a roster as intact as it’s been all year, Todd Golden has the Gators in position to build some serious momentum before they start the SEC portion of the schedule on January 6 against Kentucky at the O-Dome.

The Gators will be favored in each of the next four games: vs. East Carolina (6-4) in Lakeland on Thursday, vs. Michigan (4-5) in Charlotte December 19, and at home against both Grambling (6-4) December 22 and Quinnipiac (7-2) on December 30, the Gators have a shot at taking a 10-3 record into the new year. The last time the Gators won 10 games prior to January 1 was the 2016-17 season in which they won 27 games and advanced to the Elite Eight before losing to South Carolina.

It has been quite awhile since a Florida team was as strong on the backboards as this one. Led by 6-10 Seton Hall transfer Tyrese Samuel (14.2 points, 8.3 rebounds), the Gators are outrebounding opponents by 10.6 per game. The Gators are fourth in the country in offensive rebounds (16.1 per game). A year ago, the Gators were outrebounded by four per game. The last time the Gators averaged 40 or more rebounds per game was the 1975-76 season. Samuel, 7-1 Micah Handlogten, 6-11 Alex Condon and 6-9 Thomas Haugh will be joined in the front court rotation rather soon by 6-10 Aleks Szymczyk, who is recovering from a broken foot.

SEC basketball

Sunday’s scores: Memphis (7-2) 81, No. 21 Texas A&M (7-3) 75; Ole Miss (9-0) 70, UCF (6-3) 68

Tuesday’s game: Georgia Southern (0-9) at No. 17 Tennessee (6-3)

Wednesday’s games: Murray State (3-5) at Mississippi State (7-2); Alabama State (4-4) at LSU (5-4); UNC-Asheville (5-5) vs. Auburn (6-2) at Huntsville, AL

Thursday’s game: East Carolina (6-4) vs. FLORIDA (6-3) at Lakeland, FL

Saturday’s games: No. 9 North Carolina (7-3) vs. No. 16 Kentucky (7-2) at Atlanta; High Point (8-3) at Georgia (6-3); Lipscomb (7-5) at Arkansas (6-4); Charleston Southern (3-5) at South Carolina (8-1); California (3-6) vs. Ole Miss (9-0) at San Antonio, TX; Vanderbilt (4-5) vs. Texas Tech (6-2) at Fort Worth, TX; Alabama (6-3) at No. 10 Creighton (8-1); North Carolina State (6-2) vs. No. 17 Tennessee (6-3) at San Antonio, TX

5. Coaching moves

When Willie Fritz left for Houston, Tulane wasted no time in hiring Jon Sumrall from Troy. In two seasons at Troy, Sumrall, the former defensive coordinator at Kentucky, was 23-4.

Kerwin Bell has hired former Gator Jerry Odom as his defensive coordinator at Western Carolina. Odom has been the head coach at Division II Tusculum where his teams went 42-38 in eight seasons.    

Duke’s new head coach is former Miami HBC Manny Diaz, whose Penn State defense leads the country, allowing 233.3 yards per game and ranks third in scoring defense, giving up 11.4 points. In three years at Miami, Diaz was 21-15. Replacement Mario Cristobal is 12-12 in two years at The Ewe.   

Coleman Hutzler, currently the special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach for Nick Saban at Alabama, will be the co-defensive coordinator for Jeff Lebby at Mississippi State. Hutzler spent two years on Will Muschamp’s Florida staff, first in 2011 and then again in 2014, both times coaching linebackers and special teams.

As soon as North Dakota State finishes its run in the D1AA playoffs, head coach Matt Entz will be leaving for Southern Cal where he will be the associate head coach for defense and linebackers. Entz, who has won two D1AA national championships at NDSU, is 60-10 overall as the HBC, 11-3 this season. The Bison will be playing Montana in the D1AA semifinals next weekend.

The latest hire at Texas A&M is Trooper Taylor, who was Mike Elko’s associate head coach and running backs coach at Duke.  

ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: There are a couple of trains of thought regarding the nuclear bomb Charlie Baker dropped on collegiate sports last week. Baker’s proposal calls for a new Division I in which the richest schools will get richer, the poorer schools will get poorer and a whole bunch of schools will probably decide to drop collegiate athletics altogether or else go the DIII no-scholarships route. This is a radical proposal. Too radical, in fact, and as Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports points out, the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, is counting on Congress to intercede.

About the only thing the NCAA has gotten right in Baker’s proposal is the dire need for Division I to go its own way. Baker’s proposal has a new Division I under the NCAA umbrella, but that just won’t work. The only people in the world more inept than the president and numbnuts bureaucrats of the NCAA are our congressional leaders, who keep kicking the can down the road rather than enact a legitimate budget for the country.

Baker says his proposal is a good place to start conversations about the direction of college sports. Okay, let’s have the conversations only exclude the NCAA completely. Come up with a plan for Division I to secede completely, set up its own rules and guidelines and put someone in charge of the organization that actually has a clue. If the new Division I wants to have anything at all to do with the NCAA, then let the NCAA run tournaments. That’s the one thing they do know how to do well.