Jon Sumrall reacts on the Florida sideline with an official in the foreground. Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media By Buddy Martin Coaches fear success more than failure because failure at least keeps your attention. Welcome aboard, all of you. Mind the gap and watch your step. There’s plenty of room on the bandwagon, but the paint is still wet. A week ago, plenty of you couldn’t have named Florida’s starting left guard. Now you’re checking flights to the College Football Playoff. That’s fine by me. I’ve been in enough press boxes to know that in the SEC, faith isn’t a virtue. It’s a pharmaceutical. Here’s what started all this: Florida is 4-0, 2-0 in the SEC and No. 8 in the AP poll after beating then-No. 4 Ole Miss 52-28 in The Swamp. That’s Florida’s highest ranking since 2020 and its first top-10 appearance since 2021. Then Josh Pate, who can work up a crowd from a microphone better than most, said out loud what Gator people had been whispering. On his show this week, Pate argued that Florida’s ceiling is a national title. He also said a lot of the college football public is reluctant to tell the truth about the Gators because the program has broken hearts for so long. I’ll drink to that. A national championship. In September. After four games. Somewhere, Jon Sumrall just bit through a whistle. The Starving Man’s Buffet Let me defend the people who are about to get scolded, because they’ve earned it. For more than 48 months, Gator Nation showed up. They came for coaching that would have embarrassed a Pop Warner booster club. They came for fourth-quarter collapses, for press conferences full of “process,” and for Saturdays that ended with 90,000 people walking down University Avenue looking like they were in a funeral procession, which in a way they were. The dream died a little every November, and they kept showing up anyway. You don’t get to call a fan base like that “fickle” without also calling it “loyal.” In the SEC, those are the same thing. Down here, football isn’t a pastime. It’s a family heirloom, passed down with the church pew, the tailgate spot and the grudge against Georgia. When a fan base that hungry finally sits down to a hot meal, don’t lecture it about portion control. So yes, they woke up Sunday, saw that No. 8 next to Florida, and felt something they’d almost forgotten. Hope. Karl Marx called religion the opium of the masses. He never sat in the south end zone of Florida Field. Hope is the stronger drug, and this fan base has been in withdrawal for four years. What Scares the Coach Now for the bad news, or at least the coach’s news. Sumrall wants his team to “stay where their feet are planted.” He says it like a man who knows exactly what’s coming. Every coach who has won anything in this league knows that the most dangerous opponent isn’t on the schedule. It’s the press clippings and what’s next around the corner. And look who’s next: No. 25 Missouri, 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Faurot Field in Columbia. This is the kind of trip that ruins seasons. It’s not a marquee night game with a blimp overhead. It’s a ranked team in a stadium where a 20-year-old’s eyes are more likely to drift to the playoff projection on his phone than to the safety rotating late into the box. Coaches fear success more than failure because failure at least keeps your attention. A team that’s been told it’s a national-championship contender has to go relearn, every day, that it’s 4-0 and nothing more. Sumrall’s job this week is to be the least fun person in Gainesville. From what I can tell, he’s overachieving, taking that job seriously. A Word to the Faithful So here’s my sermon, delivered in the spirit of my press box pals who try to maintain a modicum of objectivity and who never met a sacred cow they couldn’t barbecue: Be careful with that tongue, friends. The same mouth that’s shouting “national champions” in October is the one that’ll be calling for heads in November if a ball bounces wrong in Columbia. Early rankings are a false narrative printed in bold type. They’re cheap swagger that pollsters hand out like free samples at Publix. Don’t build a shrine on a poll. And if it all goes sideways, don’t burn the shrine down and blame the people you were just carrying on your shoulders. But brag while you can. Lord, brag while you can. You paid for this with four years of misery, cold hot dogs and halftime scores you had to look at twice to believe. If you’ve got a Bulldog brother-in-law, call him. If there’s a Seminole at the office, leave the AP poll on his desk. Life is short, the SEC is cruel, and nobody hands out refunds on joy. Different Playbooks That’s the beauty of it. Coaches and fans have different playbooks, and they’re supposed to. The coach’s playbook says one game at a time, eyes on the ball, stay where your feet are planted. The fan’s playbook says, “We’re back, baby!” and orders another round. Two things can’t be true at the same time. Both are correct. The program needs Sumrall’s paranoia, and it needs the Gator Nation’s noise. One wins games in Columbia. The other fills the Swamp when it counts. So come one, come all, bandwagon jumpers. There’s room up front. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Just don’t tell the coach. BTW, senior Knijeah Harris is the starting left guard for the Florida Gators. Florida’s full 2026 roster and schedule More from Buddy Martin: watch The Buddy Martin Show live Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at 9 p.m. ET.

The No. 8 Gators have outscored four opponents by nearly 31 points a game while drawing 35 flags for 357 yards, and the play-by-play says the bill has only been deferred, not paid. By GatorBait Staff Jon Sumrall showed his team what he calls the “not our standard” tape Monday, the busts and whiffs from a 24-point win over No. 4 Ole Miss. “You have to humble yourself,” he told them, “or you will be humbled,” as Buddy Martin reported in “Put Down the Poll.” There is a second tape nobody has to cut. The officials already did. Through four games, No. 8 Florida has been flagged 35 times for 357 yards, 89.3 a game, according to ESPN’s team statistics, and ESPN’s rankings put that total among the four highest in major college football. Only a handful of teams have given away more ground. The Gators are 4-0 anyway. They have scored 214 points, allowed 91 and won by an average of 30.75 points. That is why the flags have been a footnote. Saturday at Memorial Stadium, where DraftKings lists Florida a 5.5-point favorite at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC, a footnote becomes a plot. Where the laundry comes from GatorBait went through every Florida penalty in ESPN’s play-by-play for all four games. The 35 flags reconcile exactly with the box scores: 3 for 32 yards against FAU, 8 for 95 against Campbell, 16 for 138 at Auburn and 8 for 92 against Ole Miss. By unit, 17 are on the offense, 10 on the defense and eight on special teams. By type, holding leads with 12, more than a third of the total. Six were on the offensive line or receivers, four came on punts and punt returns, and two were defensive holds that handed opponents automatic first downs. After holding: four false starts, four unnecessary-roughness calls, three personal fouls, three delays of game, two pass-interference calls, two face masks, one roughing the passer, one ineligible man downfield, one unsportsmanlike conduct, one offside and one kick-catch interference. By timing, the picture is less flattering than the usual “undisciplined” shorthand and more specific. Only eight of the 35 happened before the snap. Nineteen were live-ball fouls, holding and interference and face masks, the kind that come from technique and hand placement. Eight were dead-ball or conduct fouls, personal fouls and unnecessary roughness, the kind that come from temperament. Fourteen of the 35 came on first down, when a drive is supposed to be gaining ground, not giving it back. What they have cost The honest answer is points, just not games. Seven of the 11 touchdown drives Florida has allowed included a Gators penalty, and 53 of the 91 points allowed came on drives that included one. The defense has been flagged 10 times, and nine of those came with a first down attached, either automatic or tacked onto a play that had already moved the chains. The sharpest example is the night in Auburn. With Florida leading 17-10 in the second quarter and Auburn facing third-and-6 at the Florida 17, Cormani McClain’s unnecessary-roughness call turned a 2-yard run into first-and-goal at the 7. Auburn tied it. Later, up 41-24, Florida had Auburn looking at third-and-4 after Ben Hanks III broke up a deep ball; a defensive-holding call made it first down instead, and Auburn went 90 yards and converted a 2-point try to make it 41-32. On the Tigers’ last touchdown drive, a Hanks pass breakup at the 2 was erased by an offside. The offense has handed back more. Four plays have been wiped out by flags: a 42-yard Jadan Baugh run and an 11-yard Duke Clark run against Campbell, a 13-yard Vernell Brown III touchdown at Auburn and a 67-yard Brown touchdown against Ole Miss. That last one is the drive to remember. Florida led Ole Miss 10-0 and faced third-and-2 at its 33 when Aaron Philo hit Brown for a 67-yard score. Bailey Stockton’s holding call brought it back, Philo took a delay of game on the replay, Florida punted on fourth-and-15 and Lagonza Hayward was called for kick-catch interference, giving Ole Miss the ball at the Florida 48. Jeramiah McCloud’s face mask on the first play moved it to the 17. Ole Miss kicked a field goal. In less than three minutes of game clock, one series went from a potential 17-0 lead to 10-3. The Auburn trip was the full catalog. Florida’s first touchdown drive included a false start at the 8. Its 16-play, 75-yard second-quarter drive had Brown’s touchdown erased by a Bryce Lovett face mask, then a false start at the 8, an ineligible-man-downfield at the 15 and another false start at the 3 before it finally scored. Six Florida penalties that night came inside the Auburn 15. Just before halftime, with fourth-and-2 at the Auburn 5, Philo was flagged for delay of game and the Gators kicked a field goal from the 10. Florida won 44-39. The margin, 5 points, is smaller than this week’s spread. Why it matters more in Columbia The Gators have been collecting yards from opponents too. Opponents have 30 penalties for 277 yards against them, and Florida’s 13 first downs by penalty are tied for fourth-most in FBS. In blowouts, the two columns wash. They do not wash in a one-score game, and Florida’s last trip to Missouri is the proof. In 2023, Florida took a 31-30 lead on Trey Smack’s 35-yard field goal with 1:36 left. Missouri got to fourth-and-17 at its 33 with 38 seconds left and converted when Brady Cook found Luther Burden III for 27 yards. Harrison Mevis kicked a 30-yard field goal with five seconds left. Missouri 33, Florida 31. That afternoon Florida was flagged nine times for 48 yards, and Missouri seven times for 60. Sumrall knows the history. “The last four trips we’ve gone to Missouri, we’ve lost three of them,” he said Monday, in the staff story “Pay the Toll.” “So if we think it’s gonna be a freaking cake walk, I don’t care if it’s homecoming or whatever, we’re in for a rude awakening.” He called Missouri’s offensive line the best Florida has faced. That is the matchup the flags threaten most. An offensive line that wins the line of scrimmage does not need help; defensive holds and face masks are help. Nine of Florida’s 10 defensive penalties have come with a first down attached. On the other side, a Gators offense that has lived in the red zone at Auburn with false starts and a delay of game will be doing it against a crowd that sees to it the snap count is a rumor. Sumrall’s answer is Tuesday, outdoors, all practice long. “It’s like you gotta pay the toll,” he said. “Get some dirt underneath your fingernails.” The flags have not cost Florida a game. The numbers say that is because the Gators have been too good at everything else for 15 yards here and a wiped-out touchdown there to add up. On Saturday, in a stadium where the Gators have lost three of four, against a line their coach respects and a spread under a touchdown, the yellow laundry stops being a footnote and starts being the margin.

Graphic: GatorBait Media By GatorBait Staff Florida sophomore JACK Jayden Woods has been added to the Chuck Bednarik Award watch list, the Maxwell Football Club announced Wednesday. The award goes annually to the top defensive player in college football. Woods has been one of the breakout stories of Florida’s 4-0 start, posting 19 tackles, six tackles for loss and four sacks through four games — already more tackles for loss and sacks than he had all of last season, when he earned All-Freshman honors in the SEC. He was named the Bednarik Award’s national Player of the Week after Florida’s 44-39 win over Auburn, when he racked up a career-high 3.5 tackles for loss and 2.5 sacks. The next week, against No. 4 Ole Miss, Woods added a strip-sack late in the third quarter that set up a Gators scoring drive in the 52-28 win. Woods joins inside linebacker Myles Graham, a preseason selection, as the second Gator on this year’s Bednarik watch list. Semifinalists for the award will be announced Nov. 10, with finalists named Nov. 24 and a winner crowned as part of the ESPN Home Depot College Football Awards Show on Dec. 10. No. 8 Florida takes the watch-list news on the road, visiting No. 25 Missouri Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET at Faurot Field.

By Franz Beard Denzel Aberdeen is back home where he belongs. He has nothing but praise for Mark Pope and the entire Kentucky experience last season but Gainesville and the University of Florida is where he wanted to be. It is a chance to win a second national championship in three years as well as an opportunity to become the first person from his family to earn a college degree. The opportunity to play a fifth year of college basketball back at the place where his career started in 2022 was afforded Tuesday by Judge George M. Wright in the Alachua County Circuit Court. Judge Wright issued a temporary injunction that will allow Aberdeen to play, an injunction that has the merits to withstand an appeal by the NCAA. Denied a waiver to play a fifth year by the NCAA back on May 29, Aberdeen and attorney Jesse Panuccio filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on Sept. 11. After listening to arguments both by Panuccio and the NCAA lawyers, Judge Wright ruled favorably for Aberdeen on the grounds that the NCAA’s own bylaws legally grant Aberdeen a fifth year of eligibility. The NCAA Division I Council unanimously passed its 5-for-5 legislation that went into effect on Aug. 1. The NCAA has steadfastly held to the notion that athletes who graduated high school in 2022 and played a fourth year in the athletic calendar year that ended July 1, 2026, were ineligible for a fifth year while granting the extra year of eligibility to athletes whose high school graduation year was 2023. What the NCAA failed to do when it put the new bylaws in place was to explicitly exclude the class of 2022 graduates. In Judge Wright’s court, the NCAA lawyers argued that 2022 grads were never intended to get a fifth season of eligibility, but the intent argument didn’t hold up. Judge Wright ruled that the NCAA wrote the legislation without what is legally known as a “carve-out exclusion” that would prevent a fifth year for athletes who were recruited in 2022. Further, Judge Wright ruled that the NCAA bylaws are a contract with its member schools and athletes are third-party beneficiaries of said contract. Therefore, because the NCAA didn’t explicitly put the 2022 exclusion in writing, it represented a breach of contract. Judge Wright’s temporary injunction, which grants the fifth year for Aberdeen, will be appealed by the NCAA but legal precedent makes it highly unlikely the ruling will be overturned in a higher court. Rules of legal construction, also known as casus omissus, say that an appellate court cannot add or interpret words that were left out by the legislation’s authors. With Aberdeen cleared to play, Florida’s already near consensus position as the preseason No. 1 college basketball team in the country is solidified. The Gators return four starters from last season’s team that was the overall No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament (Tommy Haugh, Alex Condon, Rueben Chinyelu and Boogie Fland) and add Aberdeen, a key reserve on the Gators’ NCAA championship team of 2025. At Kentucky last season, Aberdeen averaged 13.5 points, 2.5 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game. When Kentucky’s season ended in the NCAA Tournament, Aberdeen entered the transfer portal with the hope he could return to the University of Florida. “I started off with them [Florida],” Aberdeen said Thursday afternoon at the Florida practice facility. “I always knew in the back of my mind I wanted to come back, but I'm very thankful for Kentucky and everything they did for me the past year. It was very fun. People are amazing, but I always knew this is my home. This is where I want to be.” Leaving Florida after the national championship in 2025 was a difficult experience. NIL money had something to do with it but Todd Golden admits that there were communication breakdowns during the process that led to Aberdeen going to Kentucky. “Obviously, we didn't want Denzel to leave two years ago, but as I've said, there's things I could have done better and he knows there's things that he probably could have done better in terms of the communication during that time period,” Golden said Thursday. “But man, wouldn't it be really silly to let that affect him coming back and getting his degree from here and having a chance to play with his buddies? It didn't take me very long to get over it. I don't think it took him very long. There was a lot of love when we played them [Kentucky] amongst him and his teammates and our staff. He is a uniquely great young man. To get him back, we felt like it was a win for our program. This guy was here for a number of years. He went to another place and decided he liked this place a lot more. So to get him to come back and be a part here, it means a lot to us.” Aberdeen’s return means he will finish his collegiate career where it began. When Golden was named Florida’s head coach just days after Mike White resigned to take the Georgia job in the spring of 2022, retaining Aberdeen was a top priority. Aberdeen was a key cog in a two-year run at Orlando’s Dr. Phillips High School in which the Panthers won a state championship then barely missed a repeat in 2022. Two days after his introductory press conference at UF, Golden and assistant Jonathan Safir drove to Orlando to meet with Aberdeen and his family. Aberdeen could have opted out of his Florida scholarship due to the coaching change, but instead he trusted Golden and elected to stick with his commitment. “We didn't know him, we didn't recruit him,” Golden said. “Jonathan Safir and I drove down to Orlando about a day or two after we got here to meet with Denzel and his parents. They were very loyal and wanted to be Gators. That's really neat for him. He's gonna graduate from the University of Florida. I think he's the first member of his family that's gonna graduate, so it's a pretty neat story and for us kind of a cool full circle moment from when we first got here.” A reserve at Florida his sophomore and junior seasons, Aberdeen blossomed as a starter at Kentucky. He went there as a combo guard who could play on the wing and give solid moments at the point, but injuries forced him to become Kentucky’s full-time point guard for most of the season. He had an outstanding assist-to-turnover ratio, played exceptional defense and became a consistent scorer. As well as the Gators played last year when they went 16-2 in SEC play to win the conference championship, 3-point shooting was an issue. SEC Sixth Man of the Year Urban Klavzar shot 40.6 percent, but no one else even hit 35 percent from distance. Aberdeen shot 36.3 percent which would have been second best had he suited up for the Gators. Always a very good defender, Aberdeen will team up with Boogie Fland for what might be the best defensive backcourt in the SEC and certainly one of the best in the country. The two of them have already established a good chemistry at both ends of the court, but the defense could be special. The Gators have finished top six nationally in the kenpom.com defensive analytics the last two seasons. “We both feed off of each other's energy, especially on the defensive side,” Aberdeen said. “It's going to be a crazy thing this year.” Aberdeen’s focus is locked in on helping the Gators win another championship. In many ways, it’s like he never left because the friendships with Haugh, Condon and Chinyelu endured even during his time at Kentucky. They share a brotherly bond and championship DNA. In many ways they see Aberdeen’s return as the missing link to a team that might be as good or better than any in the country since Rick Pitino-coached Kentucky in 1996. Haugh, a second-team All-American who elected to return to Florida even though he would have been a lottery pick in the NBA Draft, sees a more complete player in Aberdeen than the one who departed in the spring of 2025. “I think you guys are going to see a completely different player than when he left here, you know what I think,” Haugh said. “He got so much better over there in Kentucky, running different positions, being super on the ball over there, too. And then coming back here and fine-tuning everything, too, and meshing that with how we play and stuff, it's just going to be a great combo.” The Gators will face Baylor in an exhibition game in Jacksonville Oct. 18 and Stetson in another exhibition game at the O-Dome on Oct. 27. The regular season begins Nov. 2 when the Gators face Miami in Tampa.

Florida’s goal-line push against Ole Miss, with Jadan Baugh (13) in the pile. The Gators ran for 302 yards. Missouri will try to take that away. (Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media) A whole bunch of Ole Miss fans are of the opinion that the Florida Gators really aren’t as good as their 52-28 win over the Rebels last week. They truly believe that if Kewan Lacy had been healthy and the game hadn’t been the week after an emotional win over LSU in Oxford that it would have been a far different story in Gainesville. They don’t take into account that the Gators rarely lose in The Swamp and the last time Ole Miss visited the Rebels were tagged with a loss that kept them out of the College Football Playoff. The Gators (4-0, 2-0 SEC) parlayed that win over Ole Miss into the No. 8 national ranking. Just like Ole Miss last week, the Gators have to deal with a road trip after a very emotional win and it’s to a place where history has not been kind to UF. Prior to 2012 when Missouri (3-1, 0-1 SEC) bolted the Big 12 to join the Southeastern Conference, the two schools had met only once, the 1965 Sugar Bowl, won by Missouri 20-18 when the Gators missed three straight two-point conversions while rallying in the fourth quarter. Since 2012, the two teams have met 12 times, with Florida owning a 4-2 record against the Tigers in Gainesville, 2-4 in Columbia. Since Eli Drinkwitz took over as the Mizzou coach in 2020, the Gators have won both encounters in Gainesville, lost both games in Columbia. Drinkwitz is 49-30 overall at Mizzou, but a rather sparkling 35-9 at home. Since 2023, Drinkwitz and the Tigers are 21-3 in Columbia. So the task for the Gators Saturday (3:30 p.m., ABC) is complicated. Not only do the Gators have to find an emotional peak to avoid a letdown but they’re also playing in a place where they’ve had minimal success. This might be an even bigger task for Jon Sumrall than preparing the Gators for their first road trip to Auburn a couple of weeks ago. With one SEC loss already (last week at Mississippi State), the No. 25 Tigers can’t afford an 0-2 start to the SEC portion of the schedule so the Gators can expect a backs against the wall mentality. Sumrall is well aware of Florida’s history in Columbia. He is also fully aware of the emotions that went into bushwhacking Ole Miss last week. His solution to what’s ahead is “be where your feet are, just be in the moment.” To bring the Gators back to the moment, Monday Sumrall showed the film of the Ole Miss game. The good news was 302 rushing yards, seven touchdown drives and 52 points but the Gators allowed Ole Miss to score 28 points and throw for 298 yards. “We showed our not-our-standard tape this morning,” Sumrall said, adding “So, yeah, just, I think we have to keep a humble, hungry, gritty blue-collar mindset. You know, tough teams win, selfless teams win. Like, teams that have an edge about them and hunger about them, they win. Complacent, soft, entitled, lazy, selfish teams, they lose.” Will the Gators prove tough enough? Will they play with an edge and have a ravishing hunger to win in a place that hasn’t been kind? Tough questions for The Soothsayer. The Sayer Says Sooth!: Missouri will load the box to stop Jadan Baugh and Florida’s running game while at the same time hope they have the numbers to force Aaron Philo to rush his passes. The strategy didn’t work against Mississippi State last week in Starkville where Kamario Taylor threw for 360 yards and three touchdowns. Philo will loosen up the defense early, then the O-line will get in a groove. The Sayer likes the Gators by more than the 5.5 points they are favored. THE SEC SOOTHSAYER Vanderbilt (3-1, 0-1 SEC) at No. 2 Georgia (4-0, 2-0 SEC), 12:45 p.m., SEC Network: Everybody is talking up Georgia, but to be fair, the Bulldogs haven’t exactly played a decent team. They get Vandy this week and then travel to Alabama next. That’s when they find out if they’re as good as the hype. Vandy will be happy just to keep this one within 20 points. The Sayer Says Sooth!: How is it that Georgia only plays three games outside the state the rest of the way? They’ll blow the doors off Vandy. No. 7 Alabama (4-0, 2-0 SEC) at No. 16 Mississippi State (4-0, 2-0 SEC), noon, ABC: The last time Mississippi State beat Alabama was 2007, Nick Saban’s first year in Tuscaloosa. Nick’s gone and Kalen DeBoer has yet to convince the Tide faithful that he’s a worthy successor. Bama’s defense was supposed to be very good, but 54 points allowed in the last two games have the faithful sweating because they haven’t seen anything like Kamario Taylor. If Where’s Kamario lights up Bama and springs the upset there will be a field storming in Starkville and Kamario will rank right up there with Trinidad Chambliss as the Heisman fave. The Sayer Says Sooth!: It’s very tempting to pick an upset here. Against The Soothsayer’s better judgment, call it white knuckles and a ton of points but Bama prevails. McNeese (2-3) at No. 11 LSU (3-1, 1-1 SEC), 7:45 p.m., SEC Network: McNeese is here for the paycheck to keep its spermwhale harpooning team funded. Lane Kiffin will have to resist the urge to hang 80 on McNeese. The Sayer Says Sooth!: The only upset possibility is the starters playing more than the first quarter. Auburn (3-1, 1-1 SEC) at No. 17 Tennessee (3-1, 0-1 SEC), 3:30 p.m., ESPN: Two of the worst teams in all of college football when it comes to protecting the quarterback go head-to-head at Neyland. If this game were at Auburn, it would be tempting to pick the Tigers. If Josh Heupel is smart, he will pass sparingly and dice up the Auburn defense with a barrage of runs. The Sayer Says Sooth!: The Vols are favored by seven. Why so few? Could it be an upset? Nah. Okay, maybe. But The Soothsayer is sticking with the Vols. No. 24 Kentucky (3-1, 1-1 SEC) at South Carolina (2-2, 0-2 SEC), 4:15 p.m., SEC Network: Nobody needs a win more than Shane Beamer. Nobody on the planet is more cocky than UK coach Will Stein, particularly because he’s already got an SEC road win in College Station under his belt. As if the folks in the Columbia chicken coop can be any worse than a horde of boozed up Aggies. The Sayer Says Sooth!: South Carolina is favored by three which is a shocker. The Wildcats turn this into gourmet KFC. The only thing missing will be pimiento sandwiches. Arkansas (2-2, 0-1 SEC) at Texas A&M (2-2, 0-2), 7 p.m., ESPN2: The Aggies are trying to convince themselves they could still make the College Football Playoff, that all they have to do is run the table for eight straight wins. They won’t get eight straight but right now a one-game winning streak would stop the bleeding. The Sayer Says Sooth!: Marcel Reed needs to regain his confidence. The Aggies will win this one but can they make enough plays for Marcel to feel like he is capable again? COUNTDOWN TO FIRING DAY EXTINCT SPECIES LIST Nobody yet, but keep a close eye on what happens in Columbia, South Carolina this week. ON LIFE SUPPORT Dave Doeren, North Carolina State: The loss to Vanderbilt nearly got Doeren pink slipped. The Wolfpack is 2-2 right now and the schedule has a 6-6 look to it. That’s the problem. After 11 years and no championships, the faithful are tired of break even seasons that result in bowl trips to such exotic locations as Birmingham. Mike Norvell, Florida State: The Seminoles are 2-2. The next four games are Virginia, at Louisville, at Miami and Clemson. Plus there is the season-ender with the Gators. The fans want him gone. The admin wants him gone. There aren’t enough deep pockets to pay the buyout. That is, unless Jimbo Fisher agrees to a 5-year deal in which he will be paid a measly million or two while living off that Aggieland buyout money. If that deal can be arranged, Norvell could be gone in a hurry. Mike Locksley, Maryland: The Terps are 2-2. The next two games are roadies, at Nebraska and at Ohio State, both figure to be blowout losses. After that, there are six games that the Terps should at least be competitive. If they go 6-6 Locksley stays. Anything less and he goes. Shane Beamer, South Carolina: The 2-2 Gamecocks have given up 90 points in their last two games, both losses. A break even season might be salvageable if they can find a way to beat Kentucky in Columbia this weekend. Lose this one and then get conked by the Gators in Gainesville the following week and Beamer Ball might be a thing of the past at midyear. Greg Schiano, Rutgers: The only win is over D1AA Howard. Indiana is Saturday which should make the Scarlet Knights 1-4. Schiano is actually a good football coach, but Rutgers is a graveyard and he’s maxed out. He’s getting $6.5 million and fans think that’s too much for a team that will struggle to win four games. Dell McGee, Georgia State: The Panthers are a surprising 3-1 but have yet to play a Sun Belt game. Are there three wins on the schedule? If not, McGee should be sending out flyers for assistant coaching jobs somewhere. Bill O’Brien, Boston College: The Eagles are the most seriously under-funded team in the ACC and it’s going to show in the weeks ahead. They’re 2-2 right now, but they have six very losable games on the schedule including roadies to Notre Dame and Miami. Bill Belichick, North Carolina: This one is hard to figure. The Tar Heels are substantially better than they were last year (2-1), but scandals that cost Belichick his GM and his defensive coordinator son haven’t resonated well. Notre Dame is in Chapel Hill this weekend. Can Belichick figure out a way to make this a close call? He really needs to get bowl eligible. ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST Luke Fickell, Wisconsin: He bought some time with that comeback win over Penn State. The Badgers are now 3-1, 1-0 in the Big Ten. They are favored to beat Michigan State Saturday but then (at) UCLA, Southern Cal and (at) Iowa. Win at least one of the three and the Badgers could get to seven wins, the absolute minimum for survival. Deion Sanders, Colorado: The Fighting Prime Times have lost their last two and the next two weeks they get Texas Tech and Utah, not exactly conducive to being above .500 at midyear. Watch the grandstands. If there are fewer and fewer fannies in the seats, then the Prime Time luster has worn off and Deion will find it hard to be gainfully employed in Boulder next year. Joe Moorhead, Akron: Yes, he’s always on the hot seat. He doesn’t make a lot of money but Akron doesn’t have much to spend either. That’s the only thing keeping him on the job. Dave Aranda, Baylor: The Bears beat Colorado last week to improve to 3-1. DJ Lagway threw only one interception which seriously helped the cause. Break even the rest of the way and he’s got seven wins which should keep him gainfully employed one more year. Lincoln Riley, Southern California: Bad juju going on in LA. They’re winning at UCLA and the Trojans are getting torched for a vicious late hit on Oregon QB Dante Moore last week. Like all Lincoln Riley teams, the Trojans can score points. And, like all Lincoln Riley teams they can’t stop anybody. The fans wish he would go away. Butch Jones, Arkansas State: The Red Wolves are 2-2 but now the Sun Belt portion of the schedule kicks in. Butch needs seven wins to appease the masses.

Aaron Philo was barely known when the season began for the Gators (Photo by Chris Spears) Trust was put to the ultimate test back in January. Having spent the month of December juggling two jobs – head coach at Tulane where he led the Green Wave to the American Conference championship and the College Football Playoff while prepping to take over full time as the head coach at Florida – Jon Sumrall was shopping for a quarterback. DJ Lagway, who two years earlier was ranked the No. 1 high school quarterback in the country, wasn’t coming back to Florida after going 4-8 while starting all 12 games in 2025. Sumrall was left to play college football’s equivalent of Let’s Make a Deal. He already knew what he had behind doors one and two – Tramell Jones Jr., Lagway’s backup and a redshirt freshman; and Will Griffin, a big-armed 4-star from Tampa who was in Sumrall’s first Florida recruiting class a couple of weeks earlier. Door Number Three was the mystery and that’s where trust came into play. Buster Faulkner, whom Sumrall had plucked from Georgia Tech to be his offensive coordinator, wanted Aaron Philo, who had spent the last two years at Tech backing up Haynes King. Philo had one start under his belt, which paled in comparison to some of the experienced quarterbacks in the portal. Sumrall decided to sink or swim with Faulkner’s guy. “When you don’t have a whole lot of evidence or proof, maybe from a large body of work, it was one of those things where I had to take Buster’s word to some degree on that,” Sumrall said back on Monday. “But, at the same time, if you’re going to hire a guy to be your coordinator, you need to be able to take their word on some things and trust them, so I trusted Buster with that. I knew who Aaron was, but I didn’t know Aaron, and then really, ever since Aaron’s arrival, he’s proved nothing but consistent, tough, dependable, reliable, great teammate, the intangible things that are outside of playing the quarterback position that are just as important to playing the quarterback position. You can have the biggest arm and run and do all those things well, but if you don’t have the intangibles at quarterback it’s really hard to be a great player.” Trust has been rewarded. With Philo as the starting quarterback the Gators are off to a 4-0 start, executing their first perfect September since 2019. Heading into Saturday’s game on the road at No. 25 Missouri (3:30 p.m., ABC), Philo has had some spectacular moments, but mostly he has been the picture of efficiency. He’s thrown for 917 yards (10.5 yards per attempt) while completing 72.4 percent of his passes. He has thrown for seven touchdowns and run for three while directing an offense that is putting up 53.5 points and 532.8 yards per game. Not bad for a quarterback that Athlon ranked No. 13 in the SEC and USA Today had No. 14 prior to the season. Among the quarterbacks ranked ahead of Philo in the Athlon rankings were usual suspects Arch Manning (Texas), Trinidad Chambliss (Ole Miss) and Gunner Stockton (Georgia), but other notables included Marcel Reed (Texas A&M), John Mateer (Oklahoma), Byrum Brown (Auburn), Kamario Taylor (Mississippi State), Austin Simmons (Missouri) and Faizon Brandon (Tennessee). In the USA Today rankings, the only two quarterbacks below Philo were KJ Jackson (Arkansas) and Jared Curtis (Vanderbilt), a true freshman. When Phil Steele ranked the quarterback rooms nationally for his preseason magazine, Florida didn’t even make the top 70. SEC teams listed in the top 70 were (2) Texas; (4) Georgia; (5) Oklahoma; (9) Auburn; (16) Texas A&M; (22) LSU; (25) South Carolina; (38) Alabama; (54) Mississippi State; and (70) Missouri. Wednesday, ESPN posted its quarterback rankings for all 68 Power 4 football teams. Here are the top 12: (1) Darian Mensah (Miami); (2) CJ Carr (Notre Dame); (3) Julian Sayin (Ohio State); (4) Trinidad Chambliss (Ole Miss); (5) Kamario Taylor (Mississippi State); (6) Jayden Maiava, Southern Cal; (7) Keelon Russell (Alabama); (8) Gunner Stockton (Georgia); (9) Drew Mestemaker (Oklahoma State); (10) Lincoln Kienholz (Louisville); (11) Kevin Jennings (SMU); and (12) Aaron Philo, FLORIDA. The other SEC quarterbacks are: (19) Sam Leavitt (LSU); (29) Arch Manning (Texas); (30) Austin Simmons (Missouri); (35) Byrum Brown (Auburn); (42) Faizon Brandon (Tennessee); (45) Jared Curtis (Vanderbilt); (48) John Mateer (Oklahoma); (49) LaNorris Sellers (South Carolina); (54) Kenny Michey (Kentucky); (60) Marcel Reed (Texas A&M); and (65) KJ Jackson (Arkansas). From barely a blip on the radar to No. 12 nationally with time enough to climb and a favorable schedule for Florida to finish in the top 10 and make the College Football Playoff, Aaron Philo is proving a lot of people wrong. The experts rave about Trinidad Chambliss and rightfully so. There is no questioning his talent and by season’s end he is likely to have stratospheric numbers to back his case for winning the Heisman Trophy. Thanks to Will Muschamp’s defense, Arch Manning has a chance to lead Texas to an unbeaten season. Julian Sayin gets to throw to Jeremiah Smith. Meanwhile, Aaron Philo is called to pass less than 22 times per game on the average, not conducive to making the Heisman podium. How does Aaron Philo compete for publicity and Heisman consideration with those guys? He doesn’t. He simply goes about his business of leading the Gators efficiently. Philo figures to finish middle of the pack statistically in the SEC, but the Gators have a legitimate shot at making the playoff for the first time. He will take the wins over stats every single time. Florida injury report: Wide receivers Vernell Brown III and Bailey Stockton are both listed as questionable for Missouri. ELSEWHERE IN THE SEC No. 7 Alabama (4-0, 2-0 SEC): Right tackle Jayvin James is listed as questionable for Mississippi State. Defensive back Zavier Mincey is listed as probable. Out are linebackers Justin Hill, Cayden Jones and Desmond Umeozulu, defensive backs Nick Sherman and Jorden Edmonds, and defensive lineman Jeremiah Beaman. Arkansas (2-2, 0-1 SEC): JACK linebacker Jamonta Waller is out for Saturday’s game at Texas A&M while Steven Soles Jr. is listed as questionable. Also out are defensive back John House IV and tight end Maddox Lassiter. Auburn (3-1, 1-1 SEC): Out for Tennessee are offensive lineman Tai Buster and tight end Hunter Herring. No. 2 Georgia (4-0, 2-0 SEC): Out for Vandy are outside linebacker Amaris Williams, safety Tyriq Green and offensive lineman Marcus Harrison. Listed as questionable are running back Nate Frazier, wide receiver Isaiah Canion and outside linebacker Chase Linton. No. 24 Kentucky (3-1, 1-1 SEC): Out for South Carolina is defensive back Grant Grayson. Wide receiver DJ Miller and long snapper Cole Marszalek are doubtful while offensive lineman Jay Clark is questionable. Probable is safety Jordan Castell. No. 11 LSU (3-1, 1-1 SEC): The injury to Whit Weeks has thrust Davhon Keys into a starting job at linebacker. Jhase Thomas is now starting at safety after the season-ending injury to Dashawn Spears. No. 16 Mississippi State (4-0, 2-0 SEC): Out for Alabama are wide receiver Ayden Williams and defensive linemen Trevion Williams and Diesel Moye. Linebacker Zakari Tilliman is listed as questionable while safety Isaac Smith and running back Fluff Bothwell are considered probable. No. 25 Missouri (3-1, 0-1 SEC): Out for Florida are safety JaDon Blair, running backs Ahmad Hardy and Malae Fonoti, offensive lineman Josh Atkins and tight end Gavin Hoffman. Questionable are EDGE Langden Kitchen, linebacker Bobby Washington Jr. and EDGE Darris Smith. Oklahoma (2-2, 0-1 SEC): Defensive lineman David Stone, who dislocated his kneecap at practice last week but played a few days later at Georgia. No. 9 Ole Miss (3-1, 1-1 SEC): The Rebels are hoping the open date will give running back Kewan Lacy time to heal his injured shoulder. Lacy missed the loss to Florida. South Carolina (2-2, 0-2 SEC): Out are EDGE Dylan Steward, EDGE Kobby Sakyi-Prah, defensive back Jalwewis Solomon, wide receiver Jayden Sellers and linebacker A.J. Holloway. Defensive lineman Gabriel Brownlow-Dindy is listed as questionable. No. 17 Tennessee (3-1, 0-1 SEC): Listed out for Auburn are tight end Ethan Davis, wide receiver Joakin Dodson, linebacker Jaedon Harmon, defensive backs Edrees Farooq and Dylan Lewis, defensive lineman Kedric Golston II, and offensive lineman Wendell Moe Jr. Doubtful is running back Javin Gordon. Questionable is offensive lineman Shamurad Umarov. Defensive lineman Nathan Robinson is listed as probable. No. 1 Texas (4-0, 1-0 SEC): Texas hopes to get running back Hollywood Smothers and wide receiver Cam Coleman healthy during the open week. Texas A&M (2-2, 0-2 SEC): Wide receiver Terry Bussey is out against Arkansas, while Mario Carver is listed as questionable. Vanderbilt (3-1, 0-1 SEC): Starting quarterback Jared Curtis is listed as questionable for Saturday’s game at Georgia. Out for the game are linebacker Jamison Curtis, corner Jaylin Lackey and defensive linemen Aaron Bryant and Nikhil Jefferson.

Inside the Mind of Florida’s New Offensive Ringmaster By Buddy Martin GatorBaitMedia.com The more I listen to Buster Faulkner, the more I watch how he carries himself and the more I think about how smart this guy is, the clearer it gets: he’s going to be a head coach, and soon. I hope not too soon. Give it a couple of years, because he has a quarterback he could win multiple championships with. But you never know what happens when somebody waves the long green in front of a man’s nose. I love the way Faulkner thinks. The creative right side of his brain comes up with the complicated formations. The organized left side keeps it all in order. Add the pre-snap motions, and a linebacker or safety feels like he’s standing in the middle of the interstate with traffic coming at him from both directions. His plays have a short expiration date and don’t last long. “There’s a joke in the office that if it works one time, we retire it,” Faulkner said Tuesday. You get the idea. You can’t steal his playbook because it’s all in his head. Then there’s the magic touch: the right play at exactly the right moment. Take the trick play that was so huge against Auburn when Florida featured Kahleil Jackson passing to Amir Jackson. Since it was Jackson-to-Jackson, the play was nicknamed “Uncle Jack.” You might say he doubled down on “JACK.” Faulkner does something to defensive coordinators that’s worse than sleep apnea. He haunts them with bad dreams that keep them up all night. For Gator fans, it’s a blast watching him run a scheme or game, moving players around like chess pieces. Or sometimes just making it up as he goes along. Florida ran for 300 yards and has had 50-plus rushing attempts two games in a row. Buster says that wasn’t the plan. It happened because they could. “Anytime you hit 300, you got a good chance to win,” he said. He wants an offense that can “beat you in really any facet.” Right now, the ground game is the one beating people. The running game drives everything. Faulkner’s volume, motions and shifts get attention, but the core is five or six run plays in different packaging. He can afford to be creative because Florida can run it 50 times. The experts out in the desert are starting to look at Faulkner’s offense like it’s some serious new horsepower under the hood, carefully harnessed by Jon Sumrall to make sure these boys don't suffer from any emotional letdowns. For Saturday’s late-afternoon showdown in Columbia, Vegas opened Florida as a cool 5- to 5.5-point road favorite. The moneyline is hovering around -215, with the total over/under sitting at a lively 56.5 points. The math guys and their fancy computers are completely smitten with this system. We’re talking about an offense that enters Week 5 sitting pretty at No. 1 in the country in EPA/Pass and No. 5 in EPA/Rush. With Jadan Baugh churning out real estate down on the ground at a 150-yards-per-game clip, Faulkner has a security blanket that makes life mighty easy for young Aaron Philo. The ESPN Football Power Index is leaning heavily into a Gator victory, slapping a 70.2% win probability on the game, while the smart models predict a comfortable 31-25 final. You always worry a bit about a “letdown factor” after an emotional afternoon like the one we just witnessed against Ole Miss. Going on the road in the SEC as a ranked favorite is never a walk in the park. But if Philo simply goes out there and keeps his composure, Sumrall's disciplined hand should keep this engine firing on all cylinders. I’ll be honest. This Buster guy could turn out to be brilliant. Maybe even Steve Spurrier brilliant. But I’d never put him above the Head Ball Coach, or even in the same paragraph. Faulkner has to earn that. Remember, Spurrier changed the entire SEC from a running conference to a passing conference. Still, before he’s done, Faulkner is going to leave a big mark on the Florida Gators, and maybe on the SEC. And that’s a fact, Uncle Jack!

Why are these guys smiling? (UAA Photo) A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning: To paraphrase Steve Spurrier, God smiled on the Gators Tuesday. First, Alachua County judge George Wright issued a temporary restraining order against the NCAA that will allow Denzel Aberdeen a fifth year of eligibility. While that was going on, Ian Condon (6-7, 245, Washington, DC Sidwell Friends School), a 4-star 2027 forward considered the No. 1 player in the talent-rich Washington metro area, committed to Todd Golden and the Gators. The good day for Todd Golden began when Judge Wright ruled Aberdeen meets the requirements for a fifth season of college basketball. Denied a waiver for a fifth year by the NCAA back on May 29, Aberdeen filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on September 11. The NCAA enacted its 5-for-5 legislation back in June and that formed the foundation of Aberdeen’s lawsuit. He was being denied a fifth year because he graduated high school in 2022, never took a redshirt, and played all of 41 minutes as a UF freshman in the 2022-23 season. Aberdeen played briefly in 11 games, his only extensive action nine minutes against UCF in the NIT. A key reserve on Florida’s 2025 national championship team, Aberdeen spent last season in exile at Kentucky where he averaged 13.5 points, 2.5 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game while shooting 43.3 percent overall from the field and 36.3 percent from the 3-point line. Immediately after Kentucky was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament, Aberdeen entered the transfer portal for a return to Florida while also petitioning the NCAA for a fifth year of eligibility. It seemed strange that Aberdeen would be denied a waiver since he played so little as a freshman and returned to Florida to finish the few hours needed for his degree. Even stranger, the NCAA cleared Washington transfer Franck Kepnang to play a SEVENTH season at Kentucky even before the 5-for-5 legislation was passed unanimously by the NCAA Division I Council. Kepnang spent two seasons at Oregon State then played the last four years at Washington. Injuries factored in the Kepnang decision, but he still played in 113 college basketball games. Even without Aberdeen the Gators would enter the 2026-27 season that begins officially November 2 in Tampa against Miami as the nation’s No. 1 team. Adding him to the roster and starting lineup only strengthens Florida’s position as the preseason No. 1. Cameron Salerno of CBS Sports wrote, “Duke and Illinois were among the teams in the sport with the highest retention, but Florida’s elite frontcourt play, paired with two high-level guards in Aberdeen and Boogie Fland will make the Gators the team to beat this season. Getting Aberdeen back is just the cherry on top.” Wrote CJ Moore of The Athletic: “With Aberdeen now eligible, Florida has five players – Aberdeen, Haugh, Alex Condon, Rueben Chinyelu and Urban Klavzar – who were part of the rotation on the 2025 national champs. The Gators also return Boogie Fland, who started every game at point guard last season. An argument could be made for Illinois, Duke or Arizona as preseason No. 1, but the Gators are the likely choice, especially now with Aberdeen.” Condon, no relation to Alex Condon, is a self-described “three-level scorer” who can knock down threes, hit the midrange shots and put the ball in the basket in the paint. Condon played on the Nike EYBL circuit for Baltimore-based Team Melo during the summer, averaging 18.3 points and 6.0 rebounds per game. Prior to selecting the Gators, Condon considered offers from Syracuse, North Carolina State, Notre Dame, Northwestern and Georgia Tech. THEY SAID IT: BUSTER FAULKNER AND BRAD WHITE Faulkner: “I think they [offensive line] get better as the game goes.
You know, you look at run game and early in the game, it's usually harder to run than it is later in the game. But if you're getting four yards, five yards in the first quarter, you kind of project out, those can be six, seven, eight-yard gains later as the game goes. So, yeah, you can see their confidence as the game went on. And I think that's a tribute to our strength staff, Rusty [Whitt] and the guys. I thought our guys were fast, fresh, strong, and that's all we take a great deal of pride in as an organization around here." More on the O-line: “Those two sacks, I think, were both on sprint-out type plays, so it really wasn't on the offensive line. One thing that I'm a firm believer in offensive linemen get criticized for giving up a lot of sacks. I don't believe that it's just always the offensive line. I think play-calls can help that out, using your tight ends in the chip game, sprinting out, quarterback getting the ball out, running backs in protection. When we talk about protecting a quarterback, we're not just talking to the offensive line. We're talking to the offensive line, the tight ends, the running backs. we're talking to the quarterback too. Like, you got to get the ball out and understand where you're vulnerable and all those different things that come with it.
So again, that's like a unit thing. It's not just the O-line. If you're giving up a bunch of sacks, it's not just the offensive line." White: “I think it’s [Missouri] definitely one of the best O-lines in this conference and the best one we've seen thus far this year. So big challenge up front and then you mix the fact that it's a heavy outside zone scheme. They do a great job working together, and that's a big piece of being successful in in that scheme run-wise. Everybody's got to be in lockstep, and they target together, they understand their track together, and the running back feeds off that. He does a great job being able to lead it. He keeps it front side more than a lot of people in outside zone that looked to wind it back. So that post is a little bit of a different challenge, where a lot of times you get your backers to stack and fall back. Now you got to be mindful, ‘Hey, this might stay frontside.’ Something we've got to we got to be really disciplined in our run fits. We got to be really good up front. You talk about the pass rush aspect of it, but we got to be really good against the run. It’s sort of the best running football team we've seen up to this point, and so we're going to have to do a good job eliminating that. And then, obviously, they'll push the ball downfield. Caden Lee does a nice job in the middle of the field between the hashes and so they've got the ability to get explosive and get behind you. Yeah, big challenge, especially on the road.” ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: The Protect College Sports Act is halfway home now, needing only to get through the House of Representatives to become law of the land. So many of the provisions in this legislation will come in handy at a time when soaring costs and certifiably nuts boosters are shaking college sports at their very foundations, but there is also a dark side to all this, one that nobody seems willing to talk about. Start with the obvious. Allegedly, once this legislation is signed into law, the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, will have the power to enforce its own rules. Allegedly is a good word to use here because it assumes that once it has Congressional backing the NCAA will be able to effectively put an end to all the chaos that is threatening to unhinge college athletes as we know them. The chaos is real. The need to regain control of college sports is pressing and long overdue. But, do we really believe that order will be restored? For instance, do we really believe that this legislation will put an end to the hundreds of lawsuits the NCAA is fighting over a couple of provisions in its 5-for-5 rules? Even back when we thought the NCAA was in control there were lawsuits. Lots of them. The NCAA lost nearly every one of them, too, just as it is losing nearly every one of those lawsuits it is fighting so diligently in court these days. The NCAA’s record in court cases tells us three things: (1) Even with all those PhD types to rely on for wisdom the NCAA can’t seem to write rules that make enough sense to withstand challenges in court; (2) the NCAA’s own record of inconsistent and selective enforcement of its rules invites challenges; and (3) all these losses in court tell us the NCAA has a lousy track record when it comes to hiring lawyers because for all the billions spent in billable hours over the years, the NCAA gets its butt kicked regularly. The 5-for-5 law is the perfect example. The four years of eligibility rules have been in place for decades but the new rules set a timeline of five years from high school graduation to complete eligibility. An athlete can play all five years if uninjured, but there is a catch. Athletes who graduated high school in 2022 aren’t included. Last year’s fourth-year seniors who graduated high school in 2022 don’t get a fifth year. Those who graduated in 2023 and are in their fourth year this year, have another year of eligibility at their disposal. That reeks of unfairness which is why Darren Heitner and other lawyers have been taking on the NCAA in courtrooms across the country and winning temporary restraining orders. Denzel Aberdeen beat the NCAA in court yesterday. If the NCAA had a functioning brain – a question certainly worth asking – it would have simply grandfathered in all the 2022 high school grads. It would have saved multiple millions in legal fees and court costs. Making matters worse for the NCAA is its inconsistent waiver grants. It denied Aberdeen a fifth year when he applied for a waiver back in the spring even though he played only 41 minutes as a freshman in the 2022-2023 season. Prior to 5-for-5, play one game in basketball and it counts as a full year. Prior to 5-for-5, a football player could play in four full games and still get a redshirt for the season. Plus you have waivers granted for injuries. Florida wide receiver Kahliel Jackson, who is back in action after missing the three previous seasons due to injuries, is actually in his seventh season of college football. He began at UF in 2020 and earned his degree in 2023. Now, there are provisions in the Protect College Sports Act that are necessary and should have been enacted years ago but the bill isn’t without its flaws, one of which is an attempt to empower the NCAA. Does anyone in his right mind believe the NCAA is salvageable? Why hasn’t some brave soul in Washington demanded either a complete overhaul of the NCAA before voting yes on this legislation? Better yet, why hasn’t some brave soul in Washington given us a timeline for phasing out the NCAA while phasing in a new organization complete with a commissioner for each sport and a willingness to enforce rules while demanding accountability among its members?

O-line coach Phil Trautwein and family celebrate the win over Ole Miss (Photo by Chris Spears) A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning: Driving home on I-75 from Jon Sumrall’s Monday morning press conference in Gainesville, cruise control set at 77 to keep steady with the flow of traffic, I’m listening to the album “Hitman: David Foster and Friends.” The music makes the miles go faster but one song in particular bridges 42 years of Florida Gators football and everything in between. “Something happened along the way What used to be happy was sad Something happened along the way And yesterday was all we had” – From “After the Love Has Gone,” music and lyrics by David Foster I flash back to 1984 at the Gator Bowl. No. 8 Georgia vs. No. 10 Florida. Galen Hall is Florida’s interim coach having taken over the reins of the team when Charley Pell was dismissed by UF president Marshal Criser when the NCAA dropped the hammer on the Gators for 109 NCAA violations. What Charley Pell did paled in comparison to what was going on not only in the Southeastern Conference but wherever winning college football was played. A case of selective enforcement not to mention a good bit of deceit. Charley was promised the University of Florida would stick with him much the way Oklahoma stuck with Barry Switzer. Of course it didn’t happen that way, but that’s another story for another day. Over on the Georgia sidelines was Vince Dooley, as big a hypocrite as ever served as head coach and athletic director at an SEC school. In retrospect, I have to believe Vince Dooley looked across the field, saw what amounted to an NFL roster in orange jerseys and felt the urge to purge. There was no way in hell he could keep up with Charley Pell’s recruiting. How many Herschel Walkers were out there to buy? Florida didn’t have Herschel Walker, but it had three first round NFL Draft pick running backs in Neal Anderson, John L. Williams and Lorenzo Hampton; the best offensive line anyone had ever seen with monsters like Lomas Brown, Jeff Zimmerman and Crawford Kerr; four future NFL wide receivers in Ricky Nattiel, Ray McDonald, Frankie Neal and Gary Rolle; and over on defense unblockable nose tackle Tim Newton, scary good linebacker Alonzo Johnson, and a secondary led by Jarvis Williams and Adrian White. There was also a safety on that team named Vernell Brown, yes, the grandpa of the very talented sophomore wide receiver that current UF offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner keeps finding creative ways to use, keeping opposing defensive coordinators burning midnight oil to figure out how they’re going to neutralize him. There was this Georgia mystique about the Florida game. Vince Dooley ruined Steve Spurrier’s senior season in 1966. There was Fourth and Dumb 10 years later. Lindsay Scott providing the 1980 miracle. Herschel in beast mode in 1982 when Georgia whomped the Gators 44-0. Vince had Charley’s number. Five of Georgia’s six straight wins came at Charley Pell’s expense, but 1984 was different. There was no Georgia mystique. Kerwin Bell threw a TDP to a leaping Lorenzo Hampton for one touchdown and Neal Anderson went over the top for a second one as the Gators built a 17-0 halftime lead. At the start of the third quarter Georgia marched down the field but in one of the great goal line stands in Florida history, Roger Sibbald made the initial hit on fourth down and a host of Gators swarmed in for the stop at the two. Two plays later, Kerwin and Ricky Nattiel teamed up for a 96-yard TDP. Then came the grind. With a 24-0 lead, the Gators ran the ball. They ran it some more. Georgia was powerless to stop Florida. The final score was 27-0 and it could have been worse except Galen Hall took pleasure in delving out the punishment and humiliation by pounding away. I will go to my grave believing the beating Vince Dooley took that day convinced him to do whatever it would take to bury the Florida Gators. Thinking about the second half of the 1984 win over Georgia reminded me of last Saturday’s Ole Miss game. The Gators threw only six passes in the second half. Why throw it when Florida’s O-line, led by Southeastern Conference Offensive Lineman of the Week Bryce Lovett, punished Ole Miss with 26 carries for 169 yards and four rushing touchdowns in quarters three and four. SEC Offensive Player of the Week Jadan Baugh (29-142, 3 TDs) got the last one. Just as Auburn was a week earlier, Ole Miss was powerless to stop the Florida run game. The offensive line wasn’t supposed to be this good. At least that’s what the folks at Athlon and Phil Steele thought. Someone forgot to tell that to Phil Trautwein and Faulkner. You think these guys are good now, think about this. All five starters – LT Lovett, LG Knijeah Harris, C Harrison Moore, RG TJ Shanahan and RT Emeka Ugorjie – have another year of eligibility. These guys are good and they’re only going to get better. “We're not finished there,” Sumrall said Monday morning. “We can improve in some of that, but I think just doing your job and not blowing assignments helps, you know, and then I think there is also a mindset of like, we're gonna try to move the pile. We’re gonna try to move forward each play.” And there is the Faulkner Factor. Everybody in the stadium and watching on TV knew the Gators were going to run the football. Nobody knew better than the Ole Miss staff. What they never figured out was how Buster calls the game. You can know a run is coming, but it’s hard to stop it if you’re uncertain of the point of attack. And, it’s doubly hard to stop it because quarterback Aaron Philo does a dandy impersonation of Kerwin Bell, not only the mustache on a baby face but the way he processes information and then executes plays because he can make all the throws. Load the box and he goes over the top to the best set of receivers the Gators have had in years. Some might call him a game manager, but he doesn't make many mistakes. If that's what a game manager is all about, I'm all in. Then I think about all that has happened since that 1984 Georgia game. We had the Spurrier years with six SEC titles and the 1996 national championship. There was the Urban Meyer meteor, six years that flashed across the sky too quickly with two national championships, two SEC titles and three 13-win seasons. Glory years those were and in the 15 years since then until now, it’s like the song – something happened along the way and yesterday was all we had. We had some moments during the four coaches and 15 seasons prior to Jon Sumrall that gave us a measure of hope but the collective of those years was like watching a gymnastics meet when one of those athletic, talented pixies twists, turns, tumbles and flies through the air but doesn’t stick the landing. It’s been quite awhile since Florida football stuck the landing. There is something about Jon Sumrall that lends itself to this growing confidence that the best is ahead for Florida football. Yes, I’m quite aware that we’re only four games into the season. Sumrall didn’t use Nick Saban’s “rat poison” analogy Monday, but he put the eight weeks of football that lie ahead in perspective. For him, this is a one-game season. Missouri. Beat Missouri and it will be another one-game season. South Carolina. And so on. Focus on winning the week ahead, then flush last week. Pay no attention to rankings or what’s on message boards or social media. Minimize the outside noise. Praise is a wonderful thing, but don’t buy into it. Instead keep a mindset of what can I do to get better. “Well, I've helped block it out for them this morning by showing them all the bad stuff we put on tape, too,” Sumrall said. “We showed our not-our-standard tape this morning. I said this, I think last week maybe, but nobody, you don't hang a banner or get celebrated for where you're ranked between game four and five in college football. Like, the rankings mean absolutely nothing. And anybody that's feeling really good about us being ranked wherever we're ranked, it means nothing to me today. It really doesn't mean anything until after the last game is played and it's like, ‘All right, where were we? How did we do?’ “And so I realize in the public area, the fanbase, it's exciting. There's a lot of great, you know, morale, whatever, but here's the deal, and I told the team this morning, you have to humble yourself or you will be humbled. Like, if we don't look in the mirror and hone where we're deficient still, somebody else will show it to us. And so we … I'm very happy that we won last week, I’m happy that we won each week so far. It beats the alternative. But I'm not, like, celebrating anything. Nobody in our building should be celebrating anything. If we are, then we're totally off base at how you find success over the long term. So, yeah, just, I think we have to keep a humble, hungry, gritty blue-collar mindset. You know, tough teams win, selfless teams win. Like, teams that have an edge about them and hunger about them, they win. Complacent, soft, entitled, lazy, selfish teams, they lose.” ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act last night with 77 votes. The House of Representatives still has to pass it and many experts say that’s iffy at best. There are provisions in this bill to like and some that will require tweaking. I won’t claim I have done an in-depth study of the bill, but my Readers Digest Condensed Version mind sees this for what it is – a stopgap measure that will halt the lemmings from racing to the cliff and leaping to their death in the sea below. We are at a juncture in which the future of college athletics hang in the balance. I might be in a minority here, but I think college football players especially should be paid. They rally us to the point we’ll join 90,000 of our closest friends to scream until our throats are sore and our lungs feel like collapsing on a Saturday afternoon while watching them put their future health on the line all for the sake of our entertainment. Spend some time with Scot Brantley. Talk to Wilber Marshall about his aching, deteriorating body. Then tell me these guys don’t deserve to be paid and have health care that extends well beyond their playing days. But when we have a system that invites greed, which is what we have now, and results in kids still in high school selling out to the highest bidder, then something has to be done to bring some sanity back into the equation. I don’t know if anyone has all the answers but there is more to this than this bill the Senate just passed. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tze once said “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” The Protect College Sports Act is a single step. We should pray that the people in charge of college sports and the legislators in Washington will see this for what it truly is – the first step in a journey that probably won’t end anytime soon.

File photo: Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Photo by Alex Shepherd. The U.S. Senate voted 77–22 Monday night to pass the Protect College Sports Act, moving a broad college athletics overhaul toward the House of Representatives. ESPN reported the vote, and the Senate Commerce Committee confirmed the September 28 result. The measure is not law. House approval and enactment are still required before the proposal can become a new federal framework for college sports. Monday’s vote does not, by itself, change Florida’s roster, player contracts or transfer rules. The legislation, S. 4668, was authored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. Its passage gives their bipartisan effort a significant victory, while leaving another major decision to House lawmakers. The proposal addresses how athletes are paid, how they move between schools and how long they can compete. It would establish national rules and give the NCAA, conferences and schools limited protection from antitrust lawsuits when enforcing covered rules. That legal protection is a central part of the debate. Supporters argue that enforceable standards would help schools plan their spending and protect sports that do not generate large television revenues. Critics argue that restrictions backed by federal law could reduce athletes’ bargaining power. A large Senate majority does not resolve that disagreement. The athlete protections deserve attention, too. In its September summary, Cantwell’s office described provisions protecting NIL earnings, scholarships and medical coverage, along with safeguards against predatory agents. NIL means name, image and likeness: the commercial use of an athlete’s personal brand. The proposal would regulate that marketplace rather than eliminate it. For Florida, the practical questions reach beyond the football depth chart. How would a national framework affect recruiting and keeping players? What obligations would the athletic department have to athletes after an injury? And how would spending decisions affect teams outside football and basketball? Those are implications to watch, not confirmed changes at UF. The Senate result alone cannot establish whether Florida would gain a recruiting advantage, save money or alter a particular athlete’s eligibility. Those judgments require the final enacted language and the rules that follow it. The distinction matters for the next roster conversation. A federal proposal can influence planning long before it takes effect, but a Senate vote is not an instruction for a player to transfer, a school to change a payment or a coach to rebuild a depth chart. The next legislative stop is the House. For Tuesday’s morning news, the development is clear: a major college sports bill passed the Senate Monday night. The next question is whether Congress can finish the job. Sources ESPN: Monday’s Senate vote Senate Commerce Committee: September 28 passage announcement The Washington Post: Scope of the bill and House action Cronkite News: Supporters’ and critics’ arguments Senate Commerce Committee: September 17 athlete-protection summary

The Gators dominate Ole Miss for a season defining win, but Sumrall notes the Gators are still a work in progress. By Loren Meadows, GatorBaitMedia.com, Football Analyst, Host of the Gator Lowdown with Loren Meadows What We Thought: This was billed as a matchup between two of the nation’s best players in Trinidad Chambliss and Jadan Baugh. Chambliss had been nearly flawless early this season and had played his way into the conversation as the Heisman front runner after knocking off Lane Kiffin and LSU a week ago. Florida countered with Jadan Baugh, who entered the game with four straight 100-yard rushing games. While Florida had played well through three early season wins, the defense had not played to the same level of an offense that was averaging 54 points per game and averaging over seven plays of 20 yards or more to begin the year. Defensively there were concerns for the Gators in particularly in the secondary where they had surrendered 231 yards per game and facing the nation’s eighth ranked pass offense would make life even tougher for a secondary that was under construction. With all that said Ole Miss would win a scoring fest as the Gators would play well but ultimately fall in a close contest that would lend itself to the fact that the Gators were improved but not ready to stand toe to toe with the SEC’s best. What We Got: One of the most important things that a man does as he matures is admit when he was wrong (that’s me). If Ole Miss and Chambliss were supposed to continue their march to the top of the polls and the Heisman podium someone forgot to give Florida the memo. From the opening bell the Gators continued their “work the cut” mentality in systematically breaking down Ole Miss in all three phases to bring home a huge win in front of a raucous crowd of over 90,000. Jadan Baugh was sensational again rushing for 142 yards on 29 carries and three touchdowns. Baugh is now the first SEC back since Derrick Henry to score multiple TDs in five straight games (and we know how that year finished). His compadre Duke Clark was nearly as impressive averaging 10.5 yards per rush for 126 yards and a touchdown. What was lost on the win was how the Florida special teams made an impact with kickoff returns by London Montgomery of 41 yards and 74 yards on back to back opportunities after Ole Miss scores brought the deficit to three. Bailey Stockton would also add a gritty 25 yard return to complete the day for the Gators special teams units that have been great in kick coverage as well. To complete the success of all three phases, Aaron Philo was sharp again completing almost 70 percent of his passes for 196 yards and a touchdown. Philo has now gone all four games without an interception that can be attributed to his own error. The defense, that was the greatest area of concern was better than the score may show making life hard on an Ole Miss offense playing without top back Kewan Lacy. Florida held the Ole Miss offense to 4 of 11 on third downs while limiting the run game and forcing Chambliss into two turnovers. While Florida would only sack Chambliss once they constantly pressured the Heisman favorite and forced him to move off his spots to force errant throws on key downs. Without Lacy the Ole Miss offense was held to 128 rushing yards which exceeded its average (114) but forced the offense to play in a one dimensional space the defensive coordinator Brad White loves to scheme around. The Skinny: When Jon Sumrall was hired, he supposedly asked Florida AD Scott Stricklin if it would be possible for him to hire another Group of Five coach from Louisiana. Regardless of the answer, this seems to be a match made in heaven for the Florida program. After the game Sumrall noted that while this is the best win for the Gators in at least four years, his team is still a work in progress. Putting a 50 spot on the number four team in the country is “not our best football.” Sumrall’s demeanor and the play of his team bring back Spurrier excitement with Meyer toughness. Teams that show up and execute at a high level, make enough plays on defense, and find a way to affect the game on special teams when no one’s looking. The offense is multilayered in a physical run game, explosive passing game, and creative enough to keep even the best defensive minds like DJ Durkin and Pete Golding off balance. The defense, that was the center of negativity among observers (including me) has found a way to make enough plays when it matters including eight takeaways in four games. At this pace the Gators would double their total from 2025 which would have put the Gators in the Top 15 nationally last season. After “working the cut” against Auburn and the “so what, now what” motto against Ole Miss, it will be interesting to see what the intensely motivated Sumrall brings to the table as his team gets ready for yet another Top 25 matchup. One thing is for certain this team has learned to turn the page during games and most importantly in their weekly preparations resonates in any successful program. The most important thing is that Florida’s coaches and players feel truly blessed to be in Gainesville and believe in the plan. That more than anything may be the key to this team’s resurgence. Final Score: Florida Gators 52 Ole Miss Rebels 28 (Prediction Ole Miss 38 Florida 35)

The whole first half, it felt like Florida was about to break out and blow Ole Miss off the map. By Buddy Martin GatorBaitMedia.com GAINESVILLE — It almost looked too easy. For a while the Florida Gators played like good Southern hosts, with hospitality plus. “More Sweet tea sir?” “Excuse me for bumping you on that pass route – here, let me give myself a yellow flag!” “Sorry but we don’t really like you scoring those points, so let us introduce Mr. Jadan Baugh to you!” They let the visitors from Mississippi hang around and get comfortable, maybe help themselves to a second plate. Then the Gators got plain ugly about it and ran the Rebels out of the house. Final score: Florida 52, No. 4 Ole Miss 28. The unbeaten Rebels were tossed around like a rag doll, and the message went out loud and clear: football is serious bidness in Gainesville again under Jon Sumrall. Some might call it serious badness. The No. 21 Gators are 4-0 and 2-0 in the SEC. They finished September unbeaten for the first time since 2019. After years of looking through the keyhole at the Land of the Giants, Florida just kicked the door open. If this keeps up, they'll have to make room for the Gators at the adults' table of college football. Maybe they belong there because maybe they are one. And don't forget how some of the "experts" howled when Florida was installed as a 3-point favorite. You'd have thought somebody had called Trump a Democrat. Florida covered that spread by 21 points and didn't need to break a sweat to do it. Baugh Joins Emmitt and Fred It's time to say what the rest of the country is only starting to figure out. Jadan Baugh may be the best running back in America. He was nothing short of magnificent: 142 yards and three touchdowns. That's his fifth straight 100-yard game, a streak only two other Gators have put together. One was Emmitt Smith, who did it twice in 1987 and '88. The other was Fred Taylor in 1997. When your name goes next to those two in the Florida record book, you're in the pantheon. Baugh has also scored 11 touchdowns, the most by any SEC player through four games since the league expanded in 1992. Pick an era, pick a legend. Nobody in this conference has started this fast. "I feel that this team is so gritty," Baugh said. He'd know. He's the grit. He carried the load all day for a Florida ground game that piled up 302 rushing yards against a defense that came in thinking it was a contender. Every Punch Answered This wasn't supposed to happen. The whole first half, it felt like Florida was about to break out and blow Ole Miss off the map. Even after the officials had clock problems in the first two minutes, right in the middle of a Gators drive, slowing Florida's tempo. The Gators still took the lead. Ole Miss kept answering. That's because Trinidad Chambliss is a terrific football player. He came to town hailed as maybe the best player in the country, and he played like it. Twice in the third quarter he cut the lead to three. With 12 minutes left he threw a touchdown pass to make it 38-28, and you started wondering who'd blink first. Florida didn't. Every time No. 4 Ole Miss threw a punch, Florida punched back harder. After one of those three-point scares, Duke Clark answered with a 45-yard touchdown run. After the other, London Montgomery returned a kickoff 74 yards and nearly broke it all the way. Aaron Philo punched it in from a yard out to make it 31-21, and Dallas Wilson's 6-yard run made it 38-21. The Gators scored touchdowns on their first five possessions of the second half, and Florida never led by fewer than 10 again. That's the headline under the headline. These Gators proved they can stand their ground and take a punch. Florida teams of the recent past didn't always get back up. Don't Forget the Cowboy If Chambliss is maybe the best player in the country, what does that make Aaron Philo? He wasn't at his sharpest early, but he was never bad, and he got better as the pressure went up. He finished 16 of 23 for 196 yards with a touchdown passing and another running. The numbers won't win him any beauty contests. The leadership might win Florida a few more big games. Philo just keeps being the cowboy he's been all season: tough, unbothered and in charge. The Loudest Swamp I've been coming to this place a long time. I don't carry a decibel meter, but I'll tell you the crowd was as loud as I've ever heard it. At one point it felt like the hair on your head was going to stand straight up. That's the Swamp we remember, and it's back. Class Both Ways Sumrall gave the Ole Miss quarterback his due. Sumrall said Chambliss looked as uncomfortable as he had ever seen him. "He's kicked my butt as a head coach twice last year," Sumrall said. Not this time, Coach. Here's the classiest scene of the day: Chambliss stood and waited through Sumrall's entire TV interview just to congratulate him. It's easy to see why Ole Miss fans love that young man. Sumrall, being a coach, wasn't about to hand out any trophies. "We still are not a finished product," he said. He's saving some coaching points for Monday, no doubt, and his defense will have to tighten up before it faces the next Chambliss. But the rest of us don't have to be that careful. Florida now leads the all-time series with Ole Miss 14-13-1. The Gators are unbeaten, the running back is historic, the quarterback is a cowboy and the Swamp is roaring again. The Land of the Giants had better set another place at the table. Buddy Martin GatorBaitMedia.com