The obituary was being penned and haggling had begun to get the right price for the coffin. That was three weeks ago when plans were in progress to lay Florida’s 2026 football season to rest. That was before all hell broke loose not only in the Southeastern Conference but in college football nationwide. The Gators beat Texas, Auburn beat Georgia and Tennessee beat Alabama. That was two Saturdays ago when the Gators rediscovered their pulse and suddenly found themselves back in contention for both the SEC Championship Game and the College Football Playoff. The Gators’ chances got a boost yesterday when both Ole Miss and Tennessee were tagged with their second loss, leaving upstart Kentucky and Georgia as the only one-loss teams in the conference. The Gators are among the eight teams still in contention with two losses. For Florida and everyone else in the pack every game from here on out is an elimination game. The way things are shaping up for the playoff the only way a three-loss team makes it to the College Football Playoff is to suffer the third loss in the conference championship game. Prior to Saturday’s chaos, the 12-team CFP was shaping up for three teams each from the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 with the bracket filled out by Miami, Notre Dame and the highest rated conference champ from the Group of Six. Then UCF stunned No. 2 BYU and No. 8 Texas Tech was whacked by Cincinnati, leaving Utah on top of the league and one of three remaining unbeaten teams in the country (Miami and UCLA are the other two). Rather than three teams in the CFP, the Big 12 might land only one. If the Big 12 cannibalizes itself, the door could swing wide open for both the SEC and Big Ten to sneak a fourth team into the playoff picture. If Notre Dame loses to Miami, would the playoff committee pick a two-loss Notre Dame over a two-loss team that had run the SEC scheduling gauntlet? Among the two-loss teams in the SEC, Florida is the only one with two wins over then top ten teams (Ole Miss and Texas). Beating Georgia, which seemed a teensy bit hallucinogenic three weeks ago seems do-able now. By the time the Gators travel to Kentucky, the Wildcats could be staring down their first SEC championship since they shared it with Georgia in 1976 and before that, 1950, a couple years before they ran Bear Bryant off. Could the Gators pull it off? Stranger things have happened and it should be lost on no one that Jon Sumrall has played for four consecutive conference championships (two at Troy, two at Tulane). The Gators would have to win their next five games to make the SEC Championship Game. Difficult for sure. Impossible? Maybe but maybe not. Sumrall has had winning streaks of 10 and 11 games during his career so he knows what it takes to get a team on a roll. Three weeks ago we wouldn’t have even given a second thought to the notion that the Gators could make the playoff. That was then. This is now. For the moment, at least, it does seem possible. SEC CONTENDERS (TEAMS WITH ONE OR TWO LOSSES) No. 12 Kentucky (7-1, 5-1 SEC) The Wildcats are living large in rarefied air but the three games after the bye week will determine if they’re contenders or pretenders. Saturday: Open. Other remaining games: at No. 11 Tennessee; No. 20 Florida; at No. 22 Missouri and Louisville. No. 5 Georgia (6-1, 4-1 SEC) Georgia is capable of running the table. The Bulldogs are also capable of losing two of the next three. Saturday: No. 20 Florida in Atlanta; Other remaining games: at No. 7 Ole Miss. Other remaining games: No. 22 Missouri; at South Carolina and Georgia Tech. No. 13 Alabama (6-2, 4-2 SEC) Get past LSU in two weeks and Alabama has one of the easier paths to the playoff. Saturday: Open. Other remaining games: at No. 18 LSU (6-2, 3-2 SEC); at Vanderbilt; Chattanooga and Auburn. No. 20 FLORIDA (5-2, 3-2 SEC) This isn’t rocket science. Just win the next five games and the Gators are in the College Football Playoff and perhaps even the SEC Championship Game. Saturday: No. 5 Georgia in Atlanta. Other remaining games: Oklahoma; at No. 12 Kentucky; Vanderbilt; at Florida State. No. 7 Ole Miss (5-2, 3-2 SEC) The only ranked team remaining is No. 5 Georgia in two weeks. Otherwise it is a do-able schedule. Saturday: Auburn. Other remaining games: at No. 5 Georgia; at Oklahoma; Wofford; Mississippi State. No. 11 Tennessee (6-2, 3-2 SEC) The game with Kentucky in two weeks is an elimination game for the Vols. Saturday: Open. Other remaining games: No. 12 Kentucky; at Texas A&M; No. 18 LSU; at Vanderbilt. No. 18 LSU (6-2, 3-2 SEC) Nobody has a more difficult schedule than the Fighting Kiffins. The next three games are brutal. Saturday: Open. Other remaining games: No. 13 Alabama; No. 19 Texas; at No. 11 Tennessee; at Arkansas. No. 19 Texas (5-2, 2-2 SEC) Saturday: Mississippi State. Other remaining games: at No. Missouri; at No. 18 LSU; Arkansas; at Texas A&M. No. 22 Missouri (5-2, 2-2 SEC) Saturday: at Arkansas. Other remaining games: at No. 5 Georgia; No. 12 Kentucky; Oklahoma. Oklahoma (4-3, 2-2 SEC) Saturday: South Carolina. Other remaining games: at FLORIDA; No. 7 Ole Miss; Texas A&M; at No. 22 Missouri SEC PRETENDERS (THREE OR MORE LOSSES) Mississippi State (4-3, 2-3 SEC); Auburn (4-3, 2-3 SEC); South Carolina (4-3, 2-3 SEC); Arkansas (3-4, 1-3 SEC); Texas A&M (4-4, 1-4 SEC); Vanderbilt (3-5, 0-5 SEC) SATURDAY IN THE SEC No. 19 Texas (5-2, 2-2 SEC) 34, No. 7 Ole Miss (5-2, 3-2 SEC) 27 Texas built a 24-3 lead at the half, then held on for dear life to remain in contention for as Arch Manning played the best two quarters of his collegiate career. In the first half, Manning connected with Ryan Wingo for a 50-yard touchdown pass and ran for another TD. The defense, meanwhile, held Ole Miss to 139 first half yards while keeping the Rebels out of the end zone. South Carolina (4-3, 2-3 SEC) 27, No. 11 Tennessee (6-2, 3-2 SEC) 24 Dylan Stewart hit Tennessee quarterback George MacIntyre, forcing a fumble that teammate Tomiway Durojaiye recovered with 33 seconds remaining, setting up Malik Orsan’s game-winning 48-yard walk-off field goal. South Carolina tied the game at 24-24 with 2:18 left in the game when LaNorris Sellers capped a six-play, 61-yard scoring drive with a four-yard touchdown run. Sellers was sacked five times but still threw for 210 yards and a TD and ran for 96 and two TDs as the Gamecocks knocked off their second straight ranked team. No. 12 Kentucky (7-1, 5-1 SEC) 34, Vanderbilt (3-5, 0-5 SEC) 17 The Wildcats outscored Vandy 20-7 in the second half to remain at the top of the SEC standings and probably crack the top ten for the first time since 2022 when they made it up to No. 7 before absorbing a loss to Ole Miss. Kentucky’s defense eliminated Vanderbilt’s run game (15 yards), forcing the Commodores to throw every down. Kentucky converted 8-13 on third down, kept the chains moving and prevented the Commodores from mounting a comeback. No. 13 Alabama (6-2, 4-2 SEC) 31, Texas A&M (4-4, 1-4 SEC) 20 Keelon Russell threw two touchdown passes in the fourth quarter to lead Alabama to a come from behind win over Texas A&M. Trailing 20-17 going into the fourth quarter, Russell connected with Marshall Pritchett from five yards out for the go-ahead touchdown and sealed the win with an eight-yard TD pass to Kaleb Edwards. Russell finished the game with 311 passing yards for three touchdowns. Dijon Lee had a 39-yard pick six in the first quarter, his second TD on an interception return this season and the sixth defensive touchdown of the season for Alabama. The Aggies were held to 278 yards by the Alabama defense. Aggie QB Marcel Reed threw two interceptions and fumbled three times, losing one. No. 18 LSU (6-2, 3-2 SEC) 38, Auburn (4-3, 2-3 SEC) 17 LSU sacked Byrum Brown seven times while holding Auburn to a single touchdown and 204 yards of offense. Brown, whose mobility was the critical factor in Auburn’s upset of Georgia last week, was credited with 21 rushing yards on 19 attempts. Meanwhile Sam Leavitt threw for 387 yards and three touchdowns while running for 54 and another TD as LSU racked up 552 offensive yards. LSU is the only team in the country that ranks top ten in both total offense and total defense. Oklahoma (4-3, 2-2 SEC) 23, Mississippi State (4-3, 2-3 SEC) 15 First and foremost, John Mateer didn’t throw an interception. Secondly, Oklahoma ran for 184 yards. Combine that with Kamario Taylor tried but couldn’t get past the first quarter and you have in a nutshell how it is Oklahoma won on the road in Starkville. Mateer threw two touchdown passes, one of them to Isaac Sategna, who caught eight for 164 yards. Fluff Bothwell returned for Mississippi State, gaining 111 yards on 17 carries, but it wasn’t enough. Original illustration: GatorBait Media.

File photo: Jon Sumrall on the Florida sideline against Ole Miss at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Sept. 26, 2026. Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media. Thoughts of the Day | Oct. 24, 2026 A few thoughts to jump-start your Saturday morning: Confession time. In the privacy of your own home with no one to witness, raise your hand if you thought two weeks ago that the Florida Gators would be most fortunate to limp home with a 6-6 regular season? Losing to Missouri and South Carolina in thank you sir may I have another fashion will do that to you. Memories of Mizzou and South Carolina are in the rearview after the upset of Texas in Austin and the bye week has provided necessary time for Florida’s walking wounded to heal up in time for the five-week gauntlet ahead. Have the last two weeks pumped hope back into the collective mindset of the Gator Nation? Or, is it because next up is Georgia next Saturday in Atlanta that you are tempering your expectations? Fair questions that deserve honest answers. Bunch me in with the doubters, especially after the way the Gators were skewered and rotisseried by the Gamecocks at The Swamp. Losing to Missouri wasn’t necessarily a surprise given the way the Gators seem to always dial up crappy when they travel to Columbia. Even a 28-point loss could be rationalized to a certain degree. But blown out by the Chickens on national TV in The Swamp? That had me thinking 6-6 likely, 7-5 if the offensive line could remember it’s legal to block somebody wearing a different-colored shirt and the defense discovered that it is okay to get off the field on third down. Then came Texas and that 15-play drive that took more than eight minutes off the third-quarter clock. Once the Gators fell behind 17-3, the defense went beast mode, turning Arch Manning and the Texas offense into a generic version of corn flakes. You know the type. Crispy until the milk turns them soggy. Hope is once again whizzing through my veins. Eight wins? Not only doable but an achievement since it will be doubling up on last year’s four-win total. Nine? Not out of the question. Impossible without a win over Georgia or Kentucky but as Auburn proved to Georgia and Alabama to Kentucky, if you are vulnerable you can be had. I’m not even going to think about getting to 10 wins. That would mean running the table but before dismissing that as a possibility, I can’t overlook that Jon Sumrall had win streaks of 11 and 10 games in his two years at Troy, eight and five in his two years at Tulane. He is 48-14 counting the 5-2 at Florida this season. To paraphrase Curt Cignetti, he wins. Google it. Some may dismiss this as another case of sunshine pumping on my part, but I started writing about college football in 1967. I’ve been around. Experience tells me certain coaches have this aura about them. I am reminded of the late, great Bum Phillips and his awe of Bear Bryant. Bum said, “He could take his’n and beat yours, and take yours and beat his’n.” Wherever he was, whatever the circumstance, whoever his players were, Bear Bryant won. Something about Sumrall gives me a similar feeling. I admit, I wanted Lane Kiffin. I think everybody did. All the things Lane says that cause us to shake our heads we would be defending right now if he were the Florida coach. He’s only outrageous when he’s coaching somewhere else. If he were a Gator we would be saying he’s Spurrier, Part Deux. But Lane is at LSU where he’s probably going to win a national championship when all is said and done. Jon Sumrall is at Florida and I couldn’t be happier. Starting with his first press conference, he’s grown on me and continues to grow on me. He doesn’t sugarcoat things. He speaks his mind. He demands accountability from his coaches, his players and everyone associated with the program. He takes personal responsibility when everyone else around him comes up short of expectations. I think he’s the right coach at the right time and for all any of us know, he just might win a national championship here before Lane Kiffin wins one at LSU. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? URBAN MEYER ON THE FLAW IN THE 24-TEAM PLAYOFF Like it or not – I don’t – the 24-team College Football Playoff era is upon us, maybe as soon as next year. I may warm to the eventuality of playoff expansion but for now I’m stuck in the Stone Age. Urban Meyer, while admitting the 24-team playoff concept has grown on him to the point of acceptance, laments that expansion isn’t without consequences. On his Triple Option podcast, Meyer said, “The only concern I have, and I’ll keep saying this as long as I’m around, those who say that conference championship games are not important, I will say never played in it, never coached in it, and never won a ring … Conference championship games are one of the most exciting things that ever happened in my lifetime, and certainly for my players. And they’re gone. They’re gone.” ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte spent a portion of his Friday trying to convince the civilized world that everything is just peachy on The 40 Acres, which is what Texas calls the campus in Austin. Sark is just fine. Arch couldn’t be better. Life could be a dream. The only people who don’t think so are the ones who don’t live in Austin. He was selling hard. Not so sure how many are buying, certainly not those of us living in the real world. And how many of the folks living in Austin are happy that, despite all the cold, hard cash the faithful have poured into football, the Longhorns find themselves on the brink of playoff elimination? Life could be a dream is the Del Conte message and yes, should the Longhorns whip up on Ole Miss tonight and run the rest of the regular season table they will be sitting pretty at 10-2, virtually assured of the College Football Playoff. Do that and Steve Sarkisian goes from overhyped and time to leave to conquering hero who should hang around awhile. Nightmares are dreams, too. If you ignore the peachy keen rhetoric, instead taking the I live in the real world approach, a nightmare is what Texas will have if it gets kicked in the crotch by Ole Miss tonight. Thanks to the Big 12 which could have two unbeatens and another two one-loss teams in the regular season, the Southeastern Conference probably only gets three teams in the playoff, none of which will have three losses. So tonight is an elimination game for the Longhorns. As if the idea of missing the playoff isn’t pressure enough, there is the Manning factor. Ole Miss is where Archie and Eli Manning played college football. The entire Manning clan with the exception of Peyton, who the faithful whisper was dropped on his head too many times as an infant, thus explaining why he went to Tennessee, is Ole Miss royalty. Texas has to win this game for obvious reasons, but Arch Manning has to play lights out to uphold the Manning honor. If Arch flames out like he did against Oklahoma and Florida, it will be like tossing a couple of those NASCAR pitstop cans filled with gas on the bonfire that is already raging back in Austin. Here is the kicker to this narrative. Had Arch chosen Ole Miss instead of Texas back when he was the consensus No. 1 high school quarterback in the country, it is highly unlikely that Trinidad Chambliss would have wound up in Oxford. Trinidad is the nation’s best quarterback, whose journey to Ole Miss is routed through Division II Ferris State in Michigan. On his average to bad days he’s still better than Arch is on his good ones. On his good days, Trinidad Chambliss performs like it’s a Heisman Trophy audition. With him at QB, Ole Miss might win the national championship. He’s that good. Would Arch have developed at Ole Miss? He certainly hasn’t developed under Steve Sarkisian who seems destined for a pink slip in the event of a loss tonight. The next and most painful question that begs to be asked: Is Arch Manning simply the worst of the Manning quarterbacks? Secondly, can his career be rehabbed? If Sark loses tonight everything won’t be peachy in Burnt Orange Country. If you believe the rumblings from the boosters that echo from sea to shining sea, Sark is a goner if he loses to Ole Miss. The last two games have exposed Arch’s lack of football common sense. His inconsistent football instincts are why he has gone from a candidate to be the overall No. 1 draft pick next April to desperately needs another year of college football to see if the rough edges can be smoothed out. Will he stay at Texas if Sark is fired? Ole Miss will need a QB next year. As blasphemous as it sounds, would Ole Miss even welcome Arch if he entered the portal? This is football’s version of the soap opera. If Days of Our Lives had plots like this it would still be on network TV instead of streaming.

Vernell Brown III at The Swamp, and Tramell Jones Jr. handing off to Jadan Baugh against Texas in Austin. Brown photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media; Jones/Baugh photo courtesy UAA and Hannah White. Editorial collage by GatorBait Media. Thoughts of the Day · October 23, 2026 A few thoughts to jump start your Friday morning: Traditionally, both Florida and Georgia have a bye week prior to their close encounter, usually in Jacksonville but in Atlanta this year, Tampa next while EverBank Stadium is renovated. No one could have possibly foreseen just how perfect the timing of the bye week would be for Jon Sumrall, whose 20th-ranked Gators (5-2, 3-2 SEC) have used the open date to heal their banged up wide receiver corps. Getting Vernell Brown III, Eric Singleton Jr. and Bailey Stockton as close to full speed as possible enhances the Gators' chances to spring the upset on the 5th-ranked Bulldogs (6-1, 4-1 SEC), who were exposed as vulnerable by Auburn, a team the Gators beat. The extra week also benefits Florida quarterback Aaron Philo, who took a blow to his throwing shoulder in the loss to South Carolina and missed the Gators' upset of Texas. It is said to be either a bruised or sprained AC joint. Best-case scenario for healing: three to four weeks. Worst case, out the rest of the year. The game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta will be week three in the healing process. Enough time for Philo to be healthy enough to play? Only time will answer that question. Meanwhile, Tramell Jones Jr. has a Texas scalp under his belt and he's preparing in earnest to earn his spot in Gator lore if he's able to take down a second top-10 team in just his second start. He rallied the Gators from 14 down to win against that fierce Texas defense and he did it without Brown and with Singleton and Stockton both slowed by injuries. Whether it's Philo or Jones taking the snaps, if all the receivers are at or near 100 percent the idea that the Gators could beat Georgia doesn't seem as preposterous an idea as it might have only a few weeks ago. THE SEC SOOTHSAYER No. 7 Ole Miss (5-1, 3-1 SEC) at No. 19 Texas (4-2, 1-2 SEC) 7:30 p.m., ABC This could one day be known as Sark's Last Stand. Lose and the Longhorns, for all practical purposes, are left sitting on the curb while a whole bunch of College Football Playoff contenders go whizzing by. Lose, and for all practical purposes, Steve Sarkisian is a dead man walking. Texas lost to Florida and a backup QB making his first collegiate start last week. This week the Longhorns get to face probably the best college football quarterback in the country in Trinidad Chambliss, who has the luxury once again of handing the ball off to Kewan Lacy, finally healthy and running over, under, around and through people. Texas has to hope that Arch Manning will be inspired by the idea of beating the alma mater of Hall of Fame relatives, grandfather Archie and uncle Eli. The Ole Miss defense just held Missouri to a three-spot. The Rebels are good enough to win this one by a couple of touchdowns if they don't turn the ball over. The Sayer Says Sooth!: Here's something to rattle around in your brains. Ole Miss wins, Sark gets fired and at the end of the season, Arch hears Mama call and transfers to Ole Miss where he can get coached up (finally!) and restore the honor of the Manning name. Texas is somehow a 3.5-point favorite. It's not because of Arch but because of Will Muschamp's defense. Doesn't matter. Ole Miss is going to emerge the winner. No. 11 Tennessee (6-1, 3-1 SEC) at South Carolina (3-3, 1-3 SEC) 3:30 p.m., ESPN Something seems very wrong here. The Vols are coming off a dominant 25-10 win over Alabama, a no doubter if ever there was one. Yet, here we are a week later and they're 2.5-point underdogs on the road at Willy Brice where the Chickens had a bye week. Do the experts think LaNorris Sellers awakened from a coma when he led South Carolina to a decisive win over Florida in The Swamp? That's what it will take for South Carolina to win this one, but if they do stick it to the Vols, it is very likely Shane Beamer will be coaching in Columbia again next year. When the Chickens beat Florida, they stuffed the run and made the Florida passing game very ordinary. Something along those lines will be necessary along with Sellers escaping the UT pass rush, which leads the nation with 30 sacks. Can the Vols run the football? If they can't they're going to lose. The Sayer Says Sooth!: It's really tempting to pick an upset here but the way Tennessee played last week against Alabama says no way. However, if it is close at the end of the third quarter, all bets are off. Vanderbilt (3-4, 0-4 SEC) at No. 12 Kentucky (6-1, 4-1 SEC) 7:30 p.m., SEC Network The way Will Stein has the Wildcats playing, the UK faithful need to be ordering Ted Lasso "Believe" T-shirts and sweatshirts in bulk. If Kentucky beats Vanderbilt Saturday evening, the Wildcats will have guaranteed their first winning season since 2023. For all the talk about how Stein has rejuvenated the UK offense, it's the defense that is actually stealing the show. The Wildcats lead the SEC in turnover margin. Vanderbilt is learning what life is like with a true freshman quarterback in the SEC. Jared Curtis is going to be a fine quarterback someday. Just not Saturday. Vandy fans must be wondering how it is that Kentucky basketball player Franck Kepnang got a seventh year from the NCAA and Diego Pavia didn't get a seventh (or is it eighth) to play football at Vanderbilt? The Commodores are a 10.5-point underdog in Lexington. It feels like that number is way too small. The Sayer Says Sooth!: A win would certainly change the mood on Nashville's West End where folks are thinking we're back to being Vandy again after winning 10 games last year. The Commodores will be fortunate to find another win on their schedule, so 3-9 is highly likely. Something about this one says Kentucky wins in a blowout. Texas A&M (4-3, 1-3 SEC) at No. 13 Alabama (5-2, 3-2 SEC) 3:30 p.m., ABC Is there a more disappointing team in the SEC than the Aggies? And, is there a more disappointing QB in the entire country than Marcel Reed? With that being said, this is a chance for both the Aggies and Reed to right a listing ship. Can they spring the upset? A week ago the answer would have been no, not a chance and hell no. That was before Alabama got thoroughly exposed by Tennessee's defense which sacked Keelon Russell five times, held the Tide to 54 rushing yards, forced four turnovers and allowed only 10 points. Mike Elko's rep is that of a defensive genius. Can he get the Aggies to replicate what Tennessee did? Can Marcel Reed remember it's not nice to turn the ball over? As for Alabama, this is an elimination game, for the team's hopes of the College Football Playoff and perhaps for Kalen DeBoer's hopes of being gainfully employed in Tuscaloosa next year. A third loss this season will be his eleventh in three years. Bama fans are quick to tell you Nick never did that. The Sayer Says Sooth!: This just reeks of an upset even though the Aggies have found themselves on the blowout end of two of their three SEC losses. The Aggies are 13.5-point underdogs and Alabama will be without its most explosive offensive player, wide receiver Ryan Coleman-Williams. If Alabama still has a Tennessee hangover, it will be low tide in Tuscaloosa. Fortunately for Alabama, Marcel Reed is the opposing QB, but it's going to be a chest clutcher at the end. No. 18 LSU (5-2, 2-2 SEC) at Auburn (4-2, 2-2 SEC) 12 noon, ABC This may turn out to be the best game of the day. LSU's defense pitched a shutout last week at Mississippi State while Auburn QB Byrum Brown was too hot for Georgia to handle in Athens. LSU is giving up only 88 yards per game on the ground and has sacked quarterbacks 27 times. Sam Leavitt is starting to play like the QB he was hyped to be when he transferred in from Arizona State. None of that bodes well for Auburn, which ranks dead last in the SEC and 134th nationally in sacks allowed. Florida sacked Brown seven times. Georgia got to Brown five times last week, but he escaped enough times to lead Auburn to a shocking win. He needs to be in his feets don't fail me now mode against LSU and Auburn's defense needs to play as well as it did last week when it forced three critical Georgia turnovers. The Sayer Says Sooth!: It's an elimination game for LSU, which has to win the next five games to have a shot at the College Football Playoff. For Auburn, it's a chance to prove the win over Georgia wasn't a fluke and that first-year coach Alex Golesh has the Tigers headed onward and upward. Lane Kiffin knows what it takes to motivate a team when its back is to the wall. LSU is favored by a TD. White knuckles at the end and Lane gets a win. Oklahoma (3-3, 1-2 SEC) at Mississippi State (4-2, 2-2 SEC) 3:30 p.m., SEC Network Oklahoma is sticking with John Mateer at quarterback. If Kamario Taylor and Fluff Bothwell can't go for Mississippi State, Mateer might be the Bulldogs' secret weapon due to his penchant for completing passes to the other team. Oklahoma has a world-class defense that held Kentucky to 230 yards last week. If Mateer and the offense had cooperated, the Sooners would have won the game. Without Taylor and Bothwell, Mississippi State's offense is on the same plane as Oklahoma. The Sayer Says Sooth!: Oklahoma is a 5.5-point favorite, largely due to the likelihood Taylor and Bothwell won't play. The Bulldogs are an explosive team with their two studs. Without them, they will go down in what promises to be an ugly game from start to finish. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT There is a theory out there, most recently promoted by Arizona basketball coach Tommy Lloyd and embraced by Gary Parrish of CBS, the best basketball writer in the country, that the NCAA is actually promoting the chaos that it claims will result from 2022 high school grads getting a fifth year of eligibility. Bear with me on this one. It's complicated but logical. It goes something like this: The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, claims that 2022 high school grads are excluded from a fifth year of eligibility because (a) it will create fewer opportunities for incoming freshmen and (b) a coach adding a 2022 grad to his roster will in turn cut a player already on scholarship. Therefore, chaos! Florida coach Todd Golden debunked that defense more than a week ago. Meanwhile, 2022 athletes who feel unfairly left out by the NCAA have taken to the courts where they are winning injunctions that will make them eligible. The NCAA is appealing their injunctions and in some cases getting a stay of the players' temporary restraining orders. Millions of billable hours for attorneys and players' lives held hostage. The NCAA, of course, could give up the appeals and simply grandfather the players in, making them eligible to play. So why doesn't that happen? This is where Lloyd and Parrish chime in – it is because the NCAA is trying to create the chaos it claims to be fighting for the purpose of taking a cattle prod to Congress to pass the Protect College Sports Act. "I think my theory is this thing has gotten so political – and, obviously, there are a lot of things that need to be fixed in college sports," Lloyd said. "So [in my opinion,] the NCAA doesn't mind the 'chaos' right now because it can help drive the case for them to promote the [Protect] College Sports Act, which I'm sure we need." Translation: The NCAA is so out of control it needs an act of Congress to stabilize things and it's willing to sacrifice the players it claims to protect to get the outside help it HOPES will save its control. What we really need is something other than the NCAA, but unfortunately no one has a Plan B for a brand new organization that will enforce its own rules fairly.

He left in 1995 with 31 touchdown catches, still the school record and second in SEC history. Think about the receivers who have come through Gainesville since then By Buddy Martin GatorBaitMedia.com They used to hand Chris Doering a scout-team jersey and tell him to go get hit. He’d take the beating, show up the next day, and take it again. No scholarship or promise came with it, and nobody in Gainesville was printing his name in the program. He was a skinny kid from P.K. Yonge whose dream was bigger than his resume. Thirty-five years later, that kid is an SEC Legend. Doering was named Thursday last week to the 2026 SEC Football Legends class. It’s a 16-member group full of Heisman Trophy winners, national champions and NFL stars: Nick Saban of Alabama, Mark Richt of Georgia, Billy Sims of Oklahoma, Patrick Peterson of LSU, Randall Cobb of Kentucky and Ricky Williams of Texas. The walk-on is standing in that crowd. Tell me this game doesn’t still make room for a good story. “The Scarlet Letter” You have to understand how much that label stung. “I hated being called a walk-on,” Doering told me on The Buddy Martin Show. “It was such a scarlet letter to me. It always felt like it was just less than everybody else. So I wanted that validation of having a scholarship. It meant more to me when I finally got it.” So he tore it off. Doering walked on for Steve Spurrier in 1991 and had a scholarship before his sophomore season. Nobody gave it to him. He took it, one scout-team rep at a time. Then he went out and rewrote the Florida record book. He left in 1995 with 31 touchdown catches, still the school record and second in SEC history. Think about the receivers who have come through Gainesville since then. None of them has caught him. He finished with 149 catches for more than 2,000 yards. His senior season was something special: 70 catches, 1,045 yards and 17 touchdowns. That earned him second-team All-America from The Associated Press and first-team All-SEC from both the league’s coaches and the AP. The 17 scores still rank second on Florida’s single-season list. Doering wasn’t a passenger, either. He helped the Gators win three straight SEC titles from 1993 to 1995. Jacksonville drafted him in the sixth round in 1996, and he lasted 10 seasons in the NFL with Indianapolis, Denver, Washington and Pittsburgh. Ten years is a long time for a guy they once said was too slow and too small and not on scholarship. The Phone Call The best part of this story isn’t the stats. It’s the phone call. Last summer, Florida SID Scott Burns called Doering. He said coach Jon Sumrall wanted to know whether Doering would be doing his show in Atlanta for SEC Championship weekend, and whether he’d speak to the team the Friday night before the game. Doering admits his first thought was a raised eyebrow. “I’m thinking, ‘Man, first year, they’re already ambitious enough to believe they’re going to be in the SEC Championship Game?’” he said. “I was like, ‘Sure, I’ll be happy to do it.’ I figured we’d cross that bridge when we got there.” A few weeks later, with Florida in preseason camp, Burns called back. He wanted to “run something past” Doering, Tuesday at 2:35. The phone rang. Doering picked up and said, “What’s up, Scott?” It wasn’t Scott. “Hey, this is actually Coach Sumrall. They talked football for a few minutes, the camp and what the staff was seeing. Then Sumrall told him why he’d really called. “He goes, ‘Well, sorry to mislead you, but we just wanted to break the news to you that you’re going to be the legend representative for the Gators when we go to SEC Championship weekend,’” Doering said. “I was almost in tears just hearing him say that. To have him take the time during training camp to deliver that news to me really made it even more special.” Give Sumrall credit. A first-year head coach in the middle of camp has a hundred things to do. He stopped to make that call himself, and that tells you he understands what Florida football is supposed to mean. What Kept Him Going As for the scout team, people don’t know how punishing it is. Every walk-on has two or three days when you’re ready to quit, beat up, ignored and wondering why you’re doing it. Doering didn’t quit. I asked him what kept him going. “Couple things stand out to me, Buddy,” he said. “One, we have this ignorance in life, some naivety, we’ll call it. Luckily, we never know how hard the journey’s going to be. Because if we knew in advance how hard it was going to be, we probably wouldn’t sign up for it, you know? “So I didn’t know what I was getting into. I believed in myself, and my parents supported me as a walk-on, paying for my school and housing and everything else. And so I just did it. “And the luck that I had in playing for Coach Spurrier, who didn’t care if you were a walk-on or a scholarship player. He just wanted guys to compete and do the things they were coached to do. So I was just lucky with the timing of all of it.” Lucky? Maybe a little. But luck doesn’t get you through a year of getting knocked flat by scholarship players while your parents pay the rent. Even after he made it, the road kept turning on him. He became a hero at Kentucky, led the conference in catches a couple of weeks later, then landed in Spurrier’s doghouse and lost his playing time for the rest of the season. He had to earn his way back again. “It’s never a direct path,” Doering said. “Success takes longer and is more of a convoluted path. But at the end, the sacrifice you make and the work you put in makes it that much more gratifying.” Some people have asked him why this honor took so long. He doesn’t see it that way. “There’s hundreds of players every single year on this team,” he said. “There’s way better players than I am that still haven’t been recognized. … So I’m just grateful to have the honor.” That’s how a former walk-on thinks, even 30 years later. The Last One Now for the part that hurts. “We’re about to be in the last SEC Championship that we’ll ever have,” Doering said. With playoff expansion coming, he believes this December’s game in Atlanta will be the final one. For those of us who watched it grow, that’s hard news. Florida built that game. Spurrier, Wuerffel, Doering and a whole line of Gator All-Americans left their mark on it. The idea that it could disappear is devastating to all of them, and to me. I reminded him of something Spurrier often says and Nick Saban said not long ago: for teams in the South, winning the SEC meant more than winning the national championship. That was certainly true in Florida. Doering was there at the beginning. He played in the first four. “At the inception of the SEC Championship Game in ’92, when we went to Birmingham, we were like, ‘What is this?’” he said. “We had no idea what it was. It quickly became the original conference championship game. Nobody ever did it as good as the SEC did, especially when we moved to Atlanta and what it became. “It does mean more. I would say now you have a better chance of winning a national championship than you do an SEC championship, with only two teams making it. It’s a very huge honor to even play in that game.” If he’s right about this year, the timing is almost too neat. A guy who was there at the start will be honored at the finish. The legend class will be celebrated Dec. 4 at the SEC Legends Celebration presented by T-Mobile at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. The honorees will be recognized again Dec. 5 before the SEC Championship Game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. ‘Doering’s Got a Touchdown!’ No Gator fan will ever forget the night of Sept. 11, 1993, in Lexington. Florida’s quarterbacks threw seven interceptions that night. The Gators trailed Kentucky 20-17 with seconds left. Then redshirt freshman Danny Wuerffel fired a 28-yard pass over the middle to the former walk-on, and Mick Hubert lost his mind on the radio: “DOERING’S GOT A TOUCHDOWN! DOERING’S GOT A TOUCHDOWN! OHHHH MYYYY!” Florida won 24-20 with three seconds to play. Doering has said that catch “changed the trajectory of my life.” It also helped launch a run of four straight SEC titles. Plenty of players arrive at Florida with five stars and a scholarship. Chris Doering arrived with nothing but stubbornness. They gave him a scout-team jersey and expected him to disappear, and in December he’s going to Atlanta as a legend. Doering’s got a touchdown! Again. Make that “The Legend’s Got A Touchdown!”

Photos by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media. Photo collage prepared by GatorBait Media. A few thoughts to jump start your Thursday morning: When the Associated Press named its preseason All-America basketball team Wednesday, Florida’s Tommy Haugh was on the first team, named on 56 of the 58 ballots cast. Only Jeremy Fears of Michigan State received more votes (57) than Haugh, predicted to be the Southeastern Conference Player of the Year and a firm candidate for national player of the year. Haugh went from a valuable reserve on Florida’s 2025 NCAA championship team to leading scorer (17.1 per game) last season when he made second team All-America. He scored 20 or more points 13 times. The Gators, the consensus preseason No. 1 in the nation, play Stetson Tuesday night in an exhibition game and then open the regular season November 2 in Tampa with No. 14 Miami. AP Preseason All-America: Jeremy Fears, Michigan State; Tommy Haugh, Florida; Tyler Tanner, Vanderbilt; David Mirkovic, Illinois; Montiejus Krivas, Arizona WALTER CLAYTON JR. TO DALLAS Two days after being waived by the Memphis Grizzlies, Walter Clayton Jr. signed with the Dallas Mavericks on a two-way contract that will see him playing both in the G-League and with the Mavericks. Getting out of Memphis is the equivalent of a call from heaven saying it was a clerical error that sent you to Hell and that you are free to go where you choose. He made the smart choice to go to Dallas where former Florida assistant and Michigan head coach Dusty May is now in charge. There isn’t the logjam on the perimeter in Dallas, which is open for business and ready to do some deals to get some front court players to complement Cooper Flagg. As the roster fluctuates Walt should get his opportunities to make it to the NBA roster. He can shoot and that will keep him in the league. Walt still gets the third year money that was guaranteed in his rookie contract ($4.19 million) which was paid by Memphis, plus as a two-way player he will make an additional $678,882. Every game he’s on the NBA bench he makes $16,000+. COUNTDOWN TO FIRING DAY: OCTOBER 22, 2026 EPISODE EXTINCT SPECIES LIST Mike Locksley, Maryland: The loss to Rutgers was an elimination game. Greg Schiano won, therefore he survived. Locks lost and got canned. ON LIFE SUPPORT Mike Norvell, Florida State: He can complain all he wants about the holding call and the call on the Hail Mary jump ball at the end, but that isn’t going to make anyone happy. Seminole fans are asking how the hell did we get into a situation like this in the first place? Of course, all fingers point to Norvell, 10-21 since 2023. Three wins in the last five games might save his job. Nobody likes break even but it beats the alternative of paying a buyout of $51.4 million. Waiting to December only saves $5 million. Dave Doeren, North Carolina State: A 3-3 record at midseason which probably means another 6-6 regular season. So, same verse same as the first and fans are wanting to sing something new. If he gets to eight wins he probably survives even though the fan base won’t be happy. The buyout is only $10 million so it won’t cost an arm and a leg to send him packing. Greg Schiano, Rutgers: This season is not going to end well for Schiano and the Scarlet Knights, who have a win over D1AA Howard and Maryland to show at midyear. Rutgers will be serious underdogs in the six remaining games. He’s on a pathway to get fired, but could they find a better coach? Hardly. This is Rutgers the flagship university of the state where America dumps its toxic waste. Bill O’Brien, Boston College: The Eagles shocked the world, not to mention their own fan base, with their win over Pittsburgh last week. They are 3-3 now and it’s hard to find more than one win in the last six. Joe Moorhead, Akron: The Zips are 1-6. Figure they’ll be 2-10 at best when the season comes to a merciful end. Will they fire Moorhead? They’ve been saying this will be the year for a long time now but there is no money. Steve Sarkisian, Texas: He can coach his way off this list, but he’s got to get the team to cooperate. One more loss and he can kiss the College Football Playoff good-bye, not to mention his job. They spent more money than some Third World Countries to upgrade the roster but it hasn’t helped. The Longhorns have lost twice and they still have to play Ole Miss, Missouri and LSU among others. ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST Shane Beamer, South Carolina: Still riding the high of beating the Gators in The Swamp, Beamer could get a hall pass for the season if he can figure out a way to knock off No. 11 Tennessee Saturday at Willy Brice. The next three games – (at) Oklahoma, Texas A&M and (at) Arkansas – are all winnable. Bowl eligibility will get him back for one more year. Deion Sanders, Colorado: You know a coach is feeling the heat when he starts talking about how unified his team is while in the middle of a four-game losing streak. Since last season the Buffaloes have lost 11 of their last 13 games and the euphoria of Prime Time has all but worn off. He probably won’t get canned this year but it’s possible if the Buffs can’t find a way to eke out a win or two. Dave Aranda, Baylor: The Bears are 4-2 but they end the season with (at) BYU, Texas Tech and (at) Houston, not exactly conducive to giving the fan base the warm and fuzzies. The fans aren’t happy, especially with QB DJ Lagway whose bad mechanics cause him to miss way too many open receivers. They should give a call to Florida fans who can tell them what’s ahead. He survives with two more wins and bowl eligibility. Brent Venables, Oklahoma: Sooner fans love the guy and they love his defense, which is world class. Who they hate is the offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle who they blame for John Mateer’s ability to complete passes to the other team. Venables signed a long term extension earlier in the year so he will survive this year especially if he requests Arbuckle seeks gainful employment someplace else. Butch Jones, Arkansas State: Three straight winning seasons and four straight bowl seasons are on the line for the Red Wolves, who have no money and are filling only half of a 30,000-seat stadium. The people who sign the checks would be very pleased if Butch would do them a solid by winning three more games to preserve the bowl streak while preventing them from writing a buyout check. Fran Brown, Syracuse: The glow of that 10-3 first season in 2024 has worn off. The Orange went 3-9 last year and they’re 2-4 at midseason. There is a good chance they don’t win again. He probably won’t get fired this year. Next year is a different story if he doesn’t produce some wins. Dabo Swinney, Clemson: The Tigers are 4-2, heading for 7-5 or 8-4. Fans don’t like it. They remember when Clemson was a championship contender. They would love to see Dabo retire but they won’t force the issue. At least not this year. Kalen DeBoer, Alabama: Alabama has lost two games this season and the way the playoff picture is shaping up, three losses and you’re out. That means DeBoer has to run the table in the regular season to get there. LSU is standing in the way, otherwise the schedule is manageable. Stumble against the Fighting Kiffins and it will be 11 losses in three years. That never happened to Nick, not even after a 6-loss first season on the job in 2007. THE RECYCLE BIN To paraphrase the late, great General Douglas MacArthur, “Old coaches never die, they just find a new gig somewhere.” Here are current and former coaches whose names will be dropped into every conversation once a firing or retirement takes place. Brian Kelly: He’s been lobbying for a new coaching gig ever since he got canned at LSU. He has a career record of 297-109-2 with two Division II championships at Grand Valley State. His success has all come in the Midwest. Maryland isn’t Midwest but it is in the Big Ten, probably a better fit than LSU ever was. Dan Mullen: He’s out in Las Vegas where he has a QB who can’t throw and a defense that can’t defend. But he does know how to put points on the scoreboard. Syracuse would be a good landing spot for him since he was once an assistant for Paul Pasqualoni back when the Orange actually won football games. Jimbo Fisher: Everybody in Tallahassee and the FSU hinterlands knows he’s poised and ready to take over. He works cheap since he got that $75 million buyout from the Aggies. Billy Napier: If he’s smart he’ll stick to where he is. There is a reason he’s called Sun Belt Billy. Beyond that it’s The Peter Principle all over again. The Maryland folks have an interest just the same. Chip Kelly: Do you ask how is it that Northwestern is suddenly making waves in the Big Ten? It’s the Chipster’s offense that is doing all sorts of funky things making the Wildcats one of the more interesting teams in the country. He would like one more time to prove he’s capable of winning at the highest levels as a head coach. If Sark survives he would be smart to make Chip an offer he couldn’t refuse to take over the offense. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: In the rush to expand the College Football Playoff to 24 teams, nobody has yet to figure out what to do about the lost revenue of cancelling out the conference championship games. It is true the regular season will become less meaningful as college football attempts to parrot the NFL, but in the eyes of the folks pushing expansion, that’s just another minor consequence of progress. If a less meaningful regular season and a loss of the SEC Championship Game are minor consequences of progress then I want to return to the Stone Age of college football. I was content with the 10-team SEC and while Arkansas and South Carolina weren’t at the top of my list when the league expanded to 12 teams, their 34 years in the league have been productive. And, by moving to a 12-team league we got the SEC Championship Game. I’ve dealt with losing Auburn as an every-year opponent. I’ve dealt with adding Missouri and Texas A&M. I’ve dealt with further expansion to bring in Texas and Oklahoma. I’m dealing with a nine-game SEC schedule, largely because it means all the creative scheduling in the world can’t prevent Georgia from having to play every team in the league home and on the road. I’m not handling the loss of the SEC Championship Game very well. What’s going to replace the revenue and the tradition? Getting to Atlanta is a VERY big deal and now that’s going to be gone? I’m also not handling the fact that expanding the playoff to 24 teams will mean three and four-loss teams will get into the playoff. Who are they fooling? In any given year there aren’t more than seven or eight teams capable of winning four straight playoff games and now we’re adding extra layers to the championship process? Oh please. This is supposed to be progress but when three and four loss teams can get into the playoff that is embracing mediocrity. The only real accomplishment will be to spare athletic directors from firing coaches who can win eight games, sometimes nine, but are incapable of winning championships. Return me to the Stone Age please.

Cover photo courtesy UAA and Hannah White. Nowhere in collegiate sports are the expectations higher than they are for quarterbacks tagged with a fifth star, most often by a recruiting analyst who might have been a star in the co-ed intramural flag football league back in the day. Five stars projects the perception of greatness even before the first collegiate snap is taken. It also projects the greatest perception of bust for those who don’t measure up to expectations that range from stratospheric to walks on water. Talent alone is no guarantor for success at quarterback, where borderline insane expectations have to deal with the reality of the greatest risk and overall the fewest rewards. Nationally since 2015 there have been 38 quarterbacks with a 5-star rating (per 247Sports) of which it could be said that seven performed up to or beyond expectations. The two 5-stars signed by the Florida Gators during that span – Feleipe Franks and DJ Lagway – had pockets of success before transferring out. The quarterback under the most scrutiny at present and perhaps since some keyboard cowboy came up with star ratings is Arch Manning, described as a generational talent when he signed with Texas in 2023. After sitting two years while backing up Quinn Ewers, another 5-star whose career never matched expectations, Manning is 16-4 as the starter but very few of the winning starts have earned spectacular reviews. Three of the four losses are to unranked teams including a pair of blemishes at the hands of Florida. It really isn’t fair to compare Arch Manning with his Hall of Fame heritage – grandfather Archie and uncles Peyton and Eli – particularly in light of Texas coach Steve Sarkisian’s track record with quarterback development. Quinn Ewers was also described as a generational talent but his 27-9 record as the starting QB under Sarkisian left both the fan base and nation asking overhyped or undercoached? The same questions are being asked of Arch Manning, still the No. 1 QB at Texas even though Sarkisian is giving some first team reps to freshman KJ Lacey. At Florida, where the quarterback position has produced three Heisman Trophy winners, eight have arrived since 2000 with 5-star ratings. Only two – Chris Leak and Tim Tebow – have proven worthy of the hype. Cam Newton also lived up to the hype but only after transferring to juco and then to Auburn. Those three have national championship rings to validate their 5-star ratings. The most recent 5-star at Florida was DJ Lagway, who arrived in 2024 as the nation’s No. 1 recruit. As a part-time starter in 2024 and full-time in 2025 he produced a 10-9 record and barely more touchdowns (28) than interceptions (23). Lagway is at Baylor now where his scattergun accuracy is creating calls for his benching in favor of Nate Bennett, a borderline 3-star when he arrived from a California high school in 2024. There is no quarterback controversy at Florida currently where neither Aaron Philo nor Tramell Jones Jr. were anything close to 5-stars coming out of high school. Philo, a former 3-star recruit at Georgia Tech, started Florida’s first six games (4-2 record) but an injury to the AC joint in his right (throwing) shoulder opened the door for Jones (former 4-star) to start last week against Texas, where he played turnover-free to beat the then 7th-ranked Longhorns and Manning in his first collegiate start. If Philo’s injury lingers and Jones has continued success, it will force head coach Jon Sumrall to make a tough decision when Philo is healthy. Will he stick with the unwritten football rule that you don’t lose your starting job to an injury or will he stick with the QB who is winning since taking over the job? From a statistical and experience standpoint, Philo has the better track record but Jones, of course, hasn’t had the opportunities. The one thing that Jones does have over Philo is a comeback win. Jones brought the Gators back from a 17-3 deficit to beat Texas in Austin and while his stats were quite average, they don’t take into account inspiration. The troops responded to Jones. The two previous weeks against Missouri and South Carolina Philo was unsuccessful in rallying the troops to mount a comeback. How will that factor into a starting QB decision when Philo is healthy to play again? The only one who can answer that question is Sumrall who says he is confident the Gators can win with either Philo or Jones taking the snaps. There is no quarterback controversy at Florida now, but that’s not to say it will hold true a couple of weeks from now. FLORIDA QUARTERBACK SIGNEES SINCE 2000 Spurrier recruits Brock Berlin (2000 5-star) Ingle Martin (2001 4-star) Notes: Berlin transferred to Miami 2001; Martin transferred to Furman 2004 Zook recruits Gavin Dickey (2002 4-star) Patrick Dosh (2002 3-star) Justin Midgett (2003 4-star) Chris Leak (2003 5-star) Notes: Dickey gave up football for baseball; Dosh transferred to ECU 2003; Midgett transferred to Eastern Illinois (2004) Meyer recruits Josh Portis (2005 4-star) Tim Tebow (2006 5-star) Cameron Newton (2007 5-star) John Brantley (2007 5-star) Jordan Reed (2009 4-star) Trey Burton (2010 4-star) Tyler Murphy (2010 3-star) Notes: Portis transferred to Maryland (2006); Tebow won the Heisman trophy at UF 2007; Newton transferred to Blinn JC then to Auburn where he won the 2010 Heisman; Brantley started 2010-11; Reed became an NFL tight end; Burton became an NFL tight end; Murphy transferred to Boston College 2014. Muschamp recruits Jeff Driskel (2011 5-star) Jacoby Brissett (2011 4-star) Skyler Mornhinweg (2012 3-star) Max Staver (2013 3-star) Will Grier (2014 4-star) Treon Harris (2014 3-star) Notes: Driskel started 2012-13 then transferred to Louisiana Tech 2014; Brissett transferred to North Carolina State 2013 and is still in the NFL; Mornhinweg transferred to Columbia 2015; Staver transferred to Tyler JC 2014 then to Houston Baptist and then to Maine; Grier transferred to West Virginia 2016; Harris transferred to Tennessee State 2017. McElwain recruits Feleipe Franks (2016 5-star) Kyle Trask (2016 2-star) Jake Allen (2017 3-star) Notes: Franks started at UF 2017-18, injured game three 2019, transferred to Arkansas 2020, NFL tight end; Trask started last nine games 2019 and all of 2020, made Heisman podium in 2020; Allen transferred to Dartmouth 2018. Mullen recruits Emory Jones (2018 4-star) Jalon Jones (2019 3-star) Anthony Richardson (2020 4-star) Carlos Del Rio-Wilson (2021 3-star) Notes: Emory Jones started at UF 2021, transferred to Arizona State 2022 then to Cincinnati 2023; Jalon Jones dismissed from UF 2019, transferred to Jackson State; Richardson started at UF 2022 and was first round NFL Draft pick; Del Rio-Wilson transferred to Syracuse 2022; transferred to Marshall 2025 where he is the starting QB. Napier recruits Max Brown (2022 3-star) Jaden Rashada (2022 4-star/transferred to Arizona State) Jack Miller (2022 transferred from Ohio State) Graham Mertz (2023 transferred from Wisconsin) DJ Lagway (2024 5-star) Tramell Jones Jr. (2025 4-star) Harrison Bailey (2024 transferred from Louisville) Notes: Brown transferred to Charlotte 2024 then transferred to West Virginia 2025; Rashada signed with Florida, got out of his LOI, transferred to Arizona State 2023, transferred to Georgia 2024, transferred to Sacramento State 2025, transferred to Mississippi State 2026; Mertz started 2023 and had a season-ending ACL in 2024, drafted by Houston Texans NFL; Lagway started half of 2024, all of 2025, transferred to Baylor; Bailey transferred from Louisville and never played. Tramell Jones started at Texas and won last Saturday. Sumrall recruits Aaron Philo (transferred from Georgia Tech) Will Griffin (2026 4-star) Notes: Philo started first six games for Florida 2026; Griffin has yet to play. STATS FOR FLORIDA’S 5-STAR QUARTERBACKS SINCE 2000 Brock Berlin (2000-01): 1-0 record as a starter; 53-87 for 653 yards (7.5 per attempt); 11 touchdowns, 2 interceptions. Chris Leak (2003-06): 35-12 as a starter with the 2006 national championship; 895-1,458 for 11,213 yards (7.69 per attempt); 88 touchdowns, 42 interceptions. Tim Tebow (2006-09): 35-6 as a starter; 2008 national championship; 2007 Heisman Trophy; 661-995 for 9,285 yards (9.33 per attempt); 88 touchdowns, 16 interceptions; 692-2,947 yards rushing for 57 touchdowns. Cam Newton (2007-08): 0-0 as a starter; 6-12 for 53 yards (4.41 per attempt); 21-113 rushing for four touchdowns. John Brantley IV (2007-11): 15-9 as a starter; 398-645 for 4,750 yards (7.36 per attempt); 30 touchdowns, 18 interceptions. Jeff Driskel (2011-14): 14-6 as a starter; 328-552 for 3,411 yards (6.17 per attempt); 23 touchdowns, 20 interceptions; 220-649 yards rushing for nine touchdowns. Feleipe Franks (2017-19): 16-8 as a starter; 367-622 for 4,593 yards (7.38 per attempt); 38 touchdowns, 17 interceptions; 189-438 for eight rushing touchdowns. DJ Lagway (2024-25): 10-9 as a starter; 328-529 for 4,179 yards (7.89 per attempt); 28 touchdowns, 23 interceptions; 121-237 for one rushing touchdown. NATIONAL FIVE STAR QUARTERBACKS SINCE 2015 2015 1. Jarrett Stidham, Baylor 2. Josh Rosen UCLA 3. Blake Barnett, Alabama 4. Kyler Murray, Texas A&M Other notables not 5-star with national ranking: 13. Sam Darnold, USC 15. Joe Burrow, Ohio State 18. Lamar Jackson, Louisville 2016 1. Shea Patterson, Ole Miss 2. Jacob Eason, Georgia Other notables not 5-star with national ranking: 5. Dwayne Haskins, Ohio State 6. Feleipe Franks, Florida 10. Jalen Hurts, Alabama 39. Justin Herbert Oregon 2017 1. Davis Mills, Stanford 2. Tua Tagovailoa, Alabama Other notables not 5-star with national ranking: 3. Jake Fromm, Georgia 11. James Blackman, Florida State 12. Hendon Hooker, Tennessee 19. Kenny Pickett, Pittsburgh 29. Mac Jones, Alabama 39. Jake Allen, Florida 2018 1. Trevor Lawrence, Clemson 2. Justin Fields, Georgia 3. JT Daniels, Southern Cal Other notables not 5-star with national ranking: 8. Matt Corral, Ole Miss 10. Tyler Shough, Oregon 16. Emory Jones, Florida 49. Will Levis, Penn State 50. Brock Purdy, Iowa State 2019 1. Spencer Rattler, Oklahoma Other notables not 5-star with national ranking: 2. Jayden Daniels, Arizona State 3. Bo Nix, Auburn 7. Graham Mertz, Wisconsin 22. Jalon Jones, Florida 2020 1. Bryce Young, Alabama 2. DJ Uiagalelei, Clemson 3. CJ Stroud, Ohio State Other notables not 5-star with national ranking: 8. Harrison Bailey, Tennessee 10. Haynes King, Texas A&M 13. Carson Beck, Georgia 14. Anthony Richardson, Florida 27. Jack Miller, Ohio State 33. Max Johnson, LSU 39. TJ Finley, LSU 52. Brady Cook, Missouri 53. Will Rogers, Mississippi State 2021 1. Quinn Ewers, Ohio State 2. Caleb Williams, Oklahoma 3. Sam Huard, Washington 4. Drake Maye, North Carolina Other notables not 5-star with national ranking: 13. Jaxson Dart, Southern Cal 14. Jalen Milroe, Alabama 19. Garrett Nussmeier, LSU 31. Carlos Del Rio-Wilson, Florida 37. Shedeur Sanders, Jackson State 2022 1. Drew Allar, Penn State 2. Cade Klubnik, Clemson 3. Conner Weigman, Texas A&M 4. Ty Simpson, Alabama Other notables not 5-star with national ranking: 7. Gunner Stockton, Georgia 35. Max Brown, Florida 40. Noah Fifita, Arizona 42. Josh Hoover, TCU 57. Ashton Daniels, Stanford 61. Rocco Becht, Iowa State 75. Byrum Brown, South Florida 2023 1. Arch Manning, Texas 2. Nico Iamaleava, Tennessee 3. Dante Moore, UCLA 4. Jackson Arnold, Oklahoma 5. Malachi Nelson, Southern Cal Other notables not 5-star with national ranking: 6. Jaden Rashada, Florida/Arizona State 8. Austin Mack, Washington 9. Avery Johnson Kansas State 14. Kenny Minchey, Notre Dame 18. Sam Leavitt, Michigan State 20. Marcel Reed, Texas A&M 34. LaNorris Sellers, South Carolina 35. Austin Simmons, Ole Miss 2024 1. DJ Lagway, Florida 2. Dylan Raiola, Nebraska 3. Julian Sayin, Ohio State Other notables not 5-star with national ranking: 4. Luke Kromhoek, Florida State 6. CJ Carr, Notre Dame 10. Ryan Puglisi, Georgia 19. Demond Williams Jr., Arizona 47. Aaron Philo, Georgia Tech 57. Whit Muschamp, Vanderbilt 2025 1. Bryce Underwood, Michigan 2. Keelon Russell, Alabama 3. Tavien St. Clair, Ohio State 4. Husan Longstreet, Stanford Other notables with national ranking: 8. Kamario Taylor, Mississippi State 17. George MacIntyre, Tennessee 25. Tramell Jones Jr., Florida 34. Bear Bachmeier, Stanford 2026 1. Keisean Henderson, Houston 2. Jared Curtis, Vanderbilt 3. Faizon Brandon, Tennessee Other notables with national ranking: 5. Dia Bell, Texas 16. Will Griffin, Florida 21. Dereon Coleman, Miami Photo courtesy UAA (University Athletic Association, FloridaGators.com) and Hannah White. See more of her work on Instagram, and the official Florida Gators photo galleries at FloridaGators.com.

By Buddy Martin Gatorbaitmedia.com Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media. Two words on a football schedule don’t mean much to most people: “Open Date.” To a normal citizen it’s a blank square on the calendar. It’s a fine Saturday for a wedding, a trip to the mountains or finally cleaning the gutters. But if your life is built around a football team, those two words sound like a Merle Haggard ballad drifting out of a jukebox. Sweet, a little sad and exactly what you needed to hear. For Jon Sumrall, this week is that song. His Gators have played seven straight Saturdays. They’ve been to the mountaintop, No. 8 in the country after running Ole Miss out of the Swamp 52-28. They’ve been in the ditch beside it, falling out of the poll after a homecoming loss to South Carolina. Then last weekend they went to Austin, where the barbecue smoke hangs over the interstate and nobody expects the visitors to leave happy, and beat No. 7 Texas 27-24. That’s a season’s worth of mood swings in seven weeks. A team needs a nap. So this Saturday in Gainesville, the practice fields will be quiet and the training room will be full. It’ll be ice tubs instead of film sessions. Somewhere a backup linebacker will sleep until noon and call it the best thing to happen to him since signing day. Florida is 5-2, ranked No. 20 and back in the conversation. That’s the cheerful part. Now for the part where I squint. In their infinite wisdom, the voters put Texas at No. 19, one spot ahead of the Gators. That’s the team Florida just beat on its own field. It’s like losing the wrestling match and getting the trophy anyway because your singlet fit better. I’ve been reading polls longer than some of those voters have been alive, and I still can’t tell you what they’re measuring. Apparently neither can Mario Cristobal, but more on him in a minute. The History of Doing Nothing Open dates get oversold, like a waterfront lot in Florida that comes with alligators. Rest heals, but rest also rusts. Look at 1996, the gold standard of Gator football. Steve Spurrier’s national champions had three open dates that season: Sept. 14, Oct. 26 and Nov. 23. Coming off the first, they went to Knoxville and beat No. 2 Tennessee 35-29. Coming off the second, they beat Georgia 47-7. Coming off the third, they went to Tallahassee and lost to Florida State 24-21 — due mostly to two regular offensive linemen being injured and out. And don’t get me started on the late hits to “the echo of the whistle” by FSU. So the most famous rest-week record in Gator history is 2-1, and the one blemish on a national champion came right after a week off. Steve Spurrier got his revenge in the Sugar Bowl, 52-20, for the natty. As he put it, “we won the one that really counted the most.” But that November, nobody in Gainesville was calling open dates magic. The lesson then is the lesson now: the week off doesn’t win anything. Depth does. A rested team with nobody behind the starters is just a team that’s about to get tired again. Florida has been on the other end of the calendar math, too. In 2019, the Gators and Miami opened in Week 0 in Orlando. That stretched a 12-game schedule over 15 weeks and gave Florida three open dates. Good teams use that kind of breathing room. Thin teams just get more time to worry. Meanwhile, Down in Coral Gables Here’s where the record skips. The same week Florida climbed back into the Top 25, guess who’s sitting on top of it? The Miami Hurricanes are No. 1 in the AP poll for the first time since Dec. 8, 2002. A whole generation of Canes fans had never seen it. Some only knew about it from uncles in gold chains. They got there the hard way and the easy way at once. The hard way was a 43-35 double-overtime escape against Florida State. The easy way was No. 1 Georgia losing at home to unranked Auburn 27-24 while No. 2 Notre Dame lost at BYU. Five of the top seven teams went down on one Saturday, a first in poll history. Miami won the No. 1 ranking the way you win a hot-dog eating contest after everybody else gets sick. To his credit, Cristobal isn’t buying the crown. He called the ranking “absolutely insignificant and irrelevant with the changing of the guard from week to week.” He’s right. Texas held No. 1 and lost to unranked Oklahoma. Georgia took over and lost to unranked Auburn. In 2026, the top spot has been less a throne than a trap door. Miami gets unranked Pitt this week. History says the Hurricanes should check the floorboards. The Real Reason to Rest Here’s my footnote to the cheerful news. Florida’s open date isn’t exactly a head start, because Georgia is off this week, too. The two teams meet Oct. 31 in Atlanta. Not Jacksonville, which still feels like a priest saying Mass in a bowling alley. Both will arrive with fresh legs and fresh grudges. The wise guys favor the Bulldogs by 12.5 points, with the over/under at 53.5. The same Bulldogs who lost to Auburn last week. Auburn, of course, was one of the five teams the Gators had beaten this year, but put that aside for right now. Georgia will be angry about Auburn, and Florida will be confident about Austin. The Bulldogs’ staff will spend the week reminding the players how that loss felt. Sumrall will spend it hoping his players’ ankles heal faster than their egos swell. That’s the job of an open date. It isn’t for celebrating the last win; it’s for getting ready for the next fight. Heal the ankles. Fix the pass protection. Remind the young guys that No. 20 is a number, not a résumé. So enjoy the quiet Saturday, Gator Nation. Go to the wedding, take the trip, clean the gutters. Just be back by Halloween. The music’s about to get loud again.

By Buddy Martin GatorBaitMedia.com As a former St. Petersburg resident and a sports columnist for the St. Petersburg Times who campaigned for major league baseball there back in the day — some 45 years ago — I have a confession and a hurrah. The confession: somewhere between covering the Gators and falling back in love with baseball, I became a Rays fan who watches 50, 60 games a year on TV whenever Florida isn't on. The hurrah: Friday night in Milwaukee, my Rays open the World Series — the third trip in franchise history, after 2008 and 2020 — against the Milwaukee Brewers. I have some "Rays the Roof" skin in this game. And I'll confess to one more thing: I've about had it with the big-market dudes who have spent this week telling anyone who'll listen that this is "a terrible World Series." Terrible for whom? Terrible for the teams that spent the money and stayed home, maybe. Here's the number that ought to embarrass the chorus: the Brewers and Rays, combined, are playing this World Series on a payroll of $241,821,789. Seven — count 'em, seven — major league clubs spent more than that all by themselves this season (figures via Spotrac). The Mets' payroll alone is bigger than these two teams put together. The Dodgers' luxury-tax penalty was bigger than any one of the other three League Championship Series clubs' entire payrolls. Neither of these teams even cracks the top half of the payroll standings — Milwaukee ranks 19th, Tampa Bay 28th. The Rays got here on $95 million and change, which in New York barely covers the bullpen and the postgame spread. And what did all that big-market money buy? The defending champion Dodgers got swept out of the NLCS in four straight by these same thrift-store Brewers. The Mets, owners of baseball's highest payroll, were a last-place club by August. So when the dudes on the big-market networks call this a "terrible World Series," understand what they're really saying: terrible ratings in New York and Los Angeles. The rest of us call it small-market standard-bearers, playing for the first World Series championship in either franchise's history — the first Fall Classic since 1980 where both teams are chasing their first title. They've given a whole new meaning to the phrase "small ball." It was quite a moment Monday night at Tropicana Field. Freddy Peralta, of all people, grinding through 5⅓ innings of one-run ball. Junior Caminero — 42 homers in the regular season, nothing to show for the playoffs until the seventh inning of Game 6 — launching a two-run shot off the left-field foul pole and taking that home-run strut around the bases, all 38.7 seconds of it. Then Yandy Díaz, who had all but guaranteed a Game 6 victory the day before, icing it with a two-run blast in the eighth. Rays 7, Guardians 3. Third pennant in 29 seasons. The Amazin' Rays are back. And the irony of the night: Yandy, acquired from Cleveland in that three-team swap back in 2018, delivered the knockout blow against his former club — and now Freddy Peralta gets his own reunion with Milwaukee. Oh, what a story that one is! The Brewers traded Peralta to the Mets in January, the Mets gave up on him by the deadline, and the Rays bought low on Aug. 2. All he did after that was win the American League Championship Series MVP — and now he's headed back to the ballpark he called home for eight seasons, possibly to start Game 2, with a chance to haunt the team that traded him. "Milwaukee is going to be always in my heart," Peralta says. "But it's time to compete." Baseball, you gorgeous, cruel sport. In Kevin Cash, the Rays have the best and most resourceful manager in baseball, and in Kyle Snyder the best pitching coach. It is a fun team to watch — it has been all year — and now it is four wins from the first championship in franchise history. One housekeeping gripe, filed on behalf of the customers in Cleveland: while everybody waited and waited and waited last week for somebody at MLB to say a word about the rainout, the parking lots and concession stands kept right on running the meter. You could have played baseball in the Trop — that's the whole point of a roof. Thankfully, this Series guarantees indoor games in St. Pete —and Milwaukee, which plays under a lid, too, so we will be watching baseball's first all-indoor World Series. Either way, nobody in either city will be checking the radar. The last time the Brewers made the Series, 1982, I was there in St. Louis — and they called themselves "Harvey's Wallbangers," after manager Harvey Kuenn, who took over the club that June, and the Harvey Wallbanger cocktail. The nickname was well earned: that team hit 216 home runs. The Brewers came to Busch Stadium leading that Series three games to two, one win from the whole thing. I was in the press box for Game 5 with Woody Paige — we were both of the Denver Post — and what we watched was the Cardinals refusing to die despite a loss to Milwaukee. Now, here's the story I really want to tell you about that night. The phone rang at our hotel. It was Rick Reilly — a cub reporter for us back then who happened to be down in nearby Louisville, where he'd been working on a Dan Issel feature — asking if there was any way we could get him into the World Series. I guess so! Who gets a ticket to the World Series at the last minute? Woody and I had just checked the St. Louis hotel's room-service menu for an afternoon snack and discovered we could get "mixed nuts" for $32. Keep in mind, this is 1982 — $32! So we kidded each other: Well, shall we get the mixed nuts, or shall we give Rick a chance to come down and write the game story while we concentrate on writing our columns? We chose Rick. He wrote his first major-league game story that night. And when we walked out of Busch Stadium at 1 a.m., he was soaring about three feet off the ground, still pumped about his assignment. "I hope you didn't write that the Brewers 'decked the Cards,'" I told him — the Cardinals had just been beaten them 6-4. This was the day before cell phones, remember. Rick stopped dead in his tracks and said, sheepishly, "I gotta call the newspaper office. Where's the pay phone?" Reilly was on his way to stardom like a rocket to the moon. Next stop the Los Angeles Times, then Sports Illustrated, where he'd become the most famous and best-paid sportswriter in America. ($1M a year) and on that night in St. Louis, all the future star wanted was to find a dime, or a quarter, or whatever it cost to feed a pay phone. So no, I'm not tired of this World Series. I'm tired of hearing about the ones that didn't happen because some $300 million team mailed it in. What we've got instead is two clubs that built their rosters the old way — scouting, development, nerve — playing for a trophy neither franchise has ever held. One of them is going to win it. That's not a terrible World Series. That's baseball working exactly the way it's supposed to. Forty-five years ago we dreamed out loud about October baseball in St. Petersburg. Friday night, the dream plays Game 1. Rays the Roof, indeed. Photo courtesy TBS

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning: Forget about that exhibition game loss to Baylor. It didn’t count nor should it temper anyone’s expectations for the Florida Gators, now the consensus No. 1 preseason team after the Associated Press and Coaches polls were released on Monday. The Southeastern Conference placed seven teams in the top 25 in both polls followed by the Big 12 with six and the Big Ten with five. The ACC, once considered the best league in all of college basketball, had four. The only team from a non-power conference is Gonzaga. Florida will play one more exhibition game (next Tuesday against Stetson) before opening the regular season in Tampa with No. 14 Miami. Associated Press Preseason top 25 1. FLORIDA 2. Duke 3. Illinois 4. UConn 5. Arizona 6. Michigan State 7. Texas 8. Tennessee 9. Virginia 10. Houston 11. Louisville 12. Arkansas 13. St. John’s 14. Miami 15. Gonzaga 16. Michigan 17. Kansas 18. Iowa State 19. Texas Tech 20. Alabama 21. Southern California 22. UCLA 23. Kentucky 24. Vanderbilt 25. BYU Coaches Preseason Top 25 1. FLORIDA 2. Duke 3. Illinois 4. Arizona 5. UConn 6. Michigan State 7. Texas 8. Houston 9. Tennessee 10. Virginia 11. Louisville 12. Gonzaga 13. Arkansas 14. (TIE) St. John’s and Iowa State 16. Texas Tech 17. Miami 18. (TIE) Kansas and Alabama 20. Michigan 21. Vanderbilt 22. Southern California 23. Kentucky 24. Purdue 25. BYU COLLEGE FOOTBALL RANKINGS Associated Press top 25 1. Miami 6-0 2. BYU 6-0 3. Ohio State 6-1 4. Notre Dame 6-1 5. Georgia 6-1 6. Indiana 6-1 7. Ole Miss 5-1 8. Texas Tech 6-0 9. UCLA 6-0 10. Utah 6-0 11. Tennessee 6-1 12. Kentucky 6-1 13. Alabama 5-2 14. Houston 6-1 15. Iowa 5-1 16. Southern Cal 6-1 17. Wake Forest 6-1 18. LSU 5-2 19. Texas 4-2 20. FLORIDA 5-2 21. Boise State 5-1 22. Missouri 5-2 23. SMU 5-1 24. Northwestern 5-1 25. Arizona 5-1 AFCA Coaches top 25 1. Miami 6-0 2. Ohio State 6-1 3. BYU 6-0 4. Georgia 6-1 5. Texas Tech 6-0 7. Ole Miss 5-1 8. Notre Dame 6-1 9. Utah 6-0 10. UCLA 6-0 11. Tennessee 6-1 12. Kentucky 6-1 13. Alabama 5-2 14. Iowa 5-2 15. Southern Cal 6-1 16, Houston 6-1 17. LSU 5-2 18. Texas 4-2 19. Wake Forest 6-1 20. SMU 5-1 21. Missouri 5-2 22. Boise State 5-1 23. Northwestern 5-1 24. FLORIDA 5-2 25. Oregon 4-2 WHAT LIES AHEAD FOR EACH SEC TEAM No. 13 Alabama (5-2, 3-2 SEC) The only game against a ranked team remaining on the schedule is November 7 at LSU, a game that is all but certain to be played at night at Tiger Stadium. That will be an elimination game for the College Football Playoff since both teams already have two SEC losses. If could also be an elimination game for Kalen DeBoer, who already has 10 losses in less than three years on the job. The Tide faithful aren’t happy campers these days. Saturday: Texas A&M (4-3, 1-3 SEC), 3:30 p.m., ABC Arkansas (3-4, 1-3 SEC) The Hogs are assured they won’t go winless in the SEC thanks to their win over Vanderbilt. They will be double digit underdogs in the remaining five games. To finish the season 4-8 would be considered an accomplishment. Auburn (4-2, 2-2 SEC) The win at Georgia has revived hope among the faithful. Of the six games still on the schedule there is a three-game stretch of Arkansas, (at) Mississippi State and Samford. Win those three and Auburn has its first winning season in six years. Getting another win among LSU, (at) Ole Miss and (at) Alabama would be a bonus. Saturday: No. 18 LSU (5-2, 2-2 SEC), 12 noon, ABC No. 20 FLORIDA (5-2, 3-2 SEC) From dire straits back to optimism. Amazing what the win over Texas has done to change perspectives about the last five games for the Gators. Suddenly, Georgia looks beatable and everybody thinks the Kentucky bubble is going to burst. Oklahoma, Vanderbilt and (at) Florida State look like wins. Eight would be doubling up on last year. Nine? It would mean winning either the Georgia or Kentucky game? If everybody gets healthy and the defense plays like it did at Texas the Gators could make it a November to Remember. No. 5 Georgia (6-1, 4-1 SEC) Despite the loss to Auburn, Georgia is still viewed by many of the national experts to have the team most capable of winning the national championship. The next three games will tell a lot about the Bulldogs – Florida in Atlanta, (at) Ole Miss and Missouri. No. 12 Kentucky (6-1, 4-1 SEC) The euphoria will continue this weekend with Vanderbilt coming to Lexington, after that we find out if the Wildcats are contenders or pretenders. The last four games are (at) Tennessee, Florida, (at) Missouri and Louisville. Saturday: Vanderbilt (3-4, 0-4 SEC), 7:30 p.m., SEC Network No. 18 LSU (5-2, 2-2 SEC) There is no wiggle room for Lane Kiffin and the Tigers. One more loss and they probably won’t make the College Football Playoff. After Auburn on Saturday, the next three games are brutal – Alabama, Texas and (at) Tennessee. Saturday: at Auburn (4-2, 2-2 SEC), 12 noon, ABC Mississippi State (4-2, 2-2 SEC) The Bulldogs need two wins to become bowl eligible. Vanderbilt and Tennessee Tech are on the schedule, so that should get the bowl game, leaving one win among Oklahoma, (at) Texas, Auburn and (at) Ole Miss to assure a winning season. Getting to seven wins and beyond will be determined by the health of QB Kamario Taylor. Saturday: Oklahoma (3-3, 1-2 SEC), 3:30 p.m., SEC Network No. 22 Missouri (5-2, 2-2 SEC) Which is the real Missouri? The one that clocked Florida and the Aggies on consecutive weekends or the one that was road kill at Oxford? The only surefire win of the last five games is Arkansas in two weeks. After that the last four games are Texas, (at) Georgia, Kentucky and Oklahoma. It will take Mizzou running the table to make the CFP. Oklahoma (3-3, 1-2 SEC) Oklahoma has to go 6-0 the rest of the way to make the College Football Playoff and that’s not going to happen with turnover machine John Mateer at quarterback. There are at least a couple more losses on a schedule that includes (at) Florida, Ole Miss and (at) Missouri. Saturday: at Mississippi State (4-2, 2-2 SEC), 3:30 p.m., SEC Network No. 7 Ole Miss (5-1, 3-1 SEC) Start with Saturday at Texas and the schedule only gets tougher before easing up with D1AA Wofford. Auburn and Georgia are home games then there is a roadie with Oklahoma in November when the weather could be a factor. A 10-2 record will get the Rebels into the playoff. Saturday: at No. 19 Texas (4-2, 1-2 SEC), 7:30 p.m., ABC South Carolina (3-3, 1-3 SEC) The Gamecocks are fighting for Shane Beamer’s job and they’ll need four wins to assure he isn’t canned. Of the six remaining games, Tennessee and Georgia are the toughest but both are played at Willy Brice where the Chickens are very good. An 8-4 season would be outstanding but 7-5 seems more reasonable. Saturday: No. 11 Tennessee (6-1, 3-1 SEC), 3:30 p.m., ESPN No. 11 Tennessee (6-1, 3-1 SEC) The way the defense manhandled Alabama has flipped the narrative for the Vols. With five games to go they can absorb one loss and probably make the CFP. South Carolina won’t be easy but there are home games with Kentucky and LSU. Right now 11-1 or 10-2 seems likely. Saturday: at South Carolina (3-3, 1-3 SEC), 3:30 p.m., ESPN No. 19 Texas (4-2, 1-2 SEC) Can Steve Sarkisian survive if the Longhorns lose another game and fall out of the playoff picture? Ole Miss comes to town Saturday and there are still road trips to LSU and Missouri. Complicating matters, Arch Manning is splitting reps as the first team QB. That is confirmed. Saturday: No. 7 Ole Miss (5-1, 3-1 SEC), 7:30 p.m., ABC Texas A&M (4-3, 1-3 SEC) Season in the Tank. That would be a good title if someone wanted to write a book about this year’s Texas A&M team. Right now getting to six wins and bowl eligible will be an accomplishment for a team that was preseason top 10. Saturday: at No. 13 Alabama 5-2, 3-2 SEC), 3:30 p.m., ABC Vanderbilt (3-4, 0-4 SEC) There are five games left and Vandy will be serious underdogs in every one of them. For long time SEC fans, that means there is something right in the universe because Vandy is back in the SEC cellar. Saturday: at No. 12 Kentucky (6-1, 4-1 SEC), 7:30 p.m., SEC Network ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT Could the Big 12 be the big winner when the College Football Playoff committee fills out the brackets in December? Right now the Big 12 has three unbeatens in No. 2 BYU (6-0), No. 8 Texas Tech (6-0) and No. 10 Utah (6-0) plus two one-loss teams in No. 14 Houston (6-1) and No. 25 Arizona (5-1). BYU has to play Utah on November 7, its only game against a ranked team on the remaining schedule. Texas Tech’s only game with a ranked team is Arizona October 31. Utah plays Houston Saturday and Arizona November 14. Other than Utah, Houston doesn’t have a game against a ranked team. Prediction: BYU, Texas Tech and either Utah or Houston get in the playoff. In the ACC, No. 1 Miami (6-0) travels to Notre Dame (5-1) on November 7. Win or lose that one and the Hurricanes are still in the CFP field as long as they win the ACC championship game. No. 9 UCLA (6-0) is the only unbeaten team in the Big Ten. The schedule is quite favorable to making the Big Ten championship game with (at) Michigan and No. 16 Southern Cal (6-1) standing in the way. No. 3 Ohio State (6-1) will be without QB Julian Sayin for weeks but the schedule isn’t that difficult with only Southern Cal and No. 25 Northwestern (5-1) ranked among the last five games. No. 6 Indiana (6-1) has to play at Michigan and Southern Cal. With Ohio State and Indiana back-to-back and a season ender with UCLA, Southern Cal has the toughest path to the playoff. Prediction: UCLA, Ohio State and Indiana get in. During his four years in Gainesville, his nickname was Sun Belt Billy. Now that he’s back in the Sun Belt where he won 40 games in four years at Louisiana, Billy Napier is unbeaten (7-0) at James Madison where he actually could make the College Football Playoff. The Dukes, who will be leaving the Sun Belt for the American Conference in 2028, are the only unbeaten team remaining in the Group of Six and just one of six unbeatens in the entire country. They have outscored opponents 300-112 and the only team with a winning record on the remaining schedule is Appalachian State, who they play Thursday night. Standing in the way of James Madison getting the CFP spot reserved for the highest ranking conference champ among the Group of Six is No. 21 Boise State (5-1), which will be favored to run the table the rest of the way. Prediction: Boise State will be the Group of Six rep. As for the SEC, I’m going with Georgia, Tennessee and Ole Miss, all of them with two losses so the playoff field is SEC (3), Big Ten (3), Big 12 (3), Notre Dame, Miami and Boise State.

They remind me of an old TV commercial for Timex. “Take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.” By Buddy Martin Gator bait media.com There’s nothing quite like a welcomed Open Date week for Gator fans taking a respite from the chaos, the joy and the intensity. I thought about this today after taking a deep breath, as I am preparing to take a much-needed three-day trip to NW Florida to see a loved one and maybe watch those remarkable Tampa Bay Rays, who unlike the Gators, haven’t had the extra benefit of energy infused by a strong fan base. But let me stop right there and say, as a so-called impartial observer – journalist/fan- we should pay tribute to the dedicated fans who make this whole thing work, who put their hard-earned money down each week. Who stay the course when it looks imperiled without much return on investment. Now, would it be all right if we took a short fall break? I come before you today with a confession. I’m happy. About Gator football, no less. Please don’t call anybody. No intervention is necessary. And don’t mistake this for a declaration that Florida has solved every problem between the offensive line and the parking lot. I’m simply enjoying what I’m seeing. A football team learning to punch back. A coach giving it a reason to believe. And a fan base that deserves something more rewarding for its investment than another explanation of why everybody needs to remain patient. Patience is a fine virtue. But after a while, you’d like it to produce a first down. Now comes an open date, arriving like a screen porch and a comfortable chair. Would it be all right if we sat down for a minute? Not quit. Not lose interest. Just take a breath in this beautiful fall weather and remember that watching sports is supposed to be fun, too. I’m preparing for a much-needed three-day trip to Northwest Florida to see a loved one. Along the way, I intend to watch a little baseball, enjoy those remarkable Rays and let somebody else worry about what it all means. For a quick second, I’d like to be a spectator. A fellow watching the game instead of mentally writing the third paragraph during a pitching change. There’s Gator basketball to enjoy, too. And no, I don’t intend to turn an exhibition loss to Baylor into a congressional investigation. But before I step away, a thank-you is in order. To the Gator fans. Photo courtesy UAA and Hannah White. For the juice. For the loyalty. For continuing to show up when showing up required considerably more faith than the preseason brochure suggested. Those folks put down their hard-earned money, fill the Swamp and keep caring through seasons when the return on investment wouldn’t get past the first meeting at the bank. They remind me of an old TV commercial for Timex. “Take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.” And they are to be commended for their loyalty. Although I suspect a few of them would appreciate a Saturday when nobody has to test the warranty. We in the press box sometimes perform a little balancing act with that word “fan.” We’re supposed to observe, evaluate and tell the truth, not lead cheers with a laptop. Fair enough. But you can recognize loyalty without surrendering your credentials. And you can appreciate what these people bring without pretending you haven’t noticed what they’ve endured. Jon Sumrall noticed. He said the passion surrounding Florida helped attract him here. Now we’re beginning to see what happens when his team borrows some of it. Down 17-3 at Texas, with untested backup quarterback Tramell Jones Jr. at the controls, Florida had an opportunity to follow a familiar and thoroughly unpleasant script. Instead, the Gators changed the ending. Jones helped give them a chance. A tweaked defense finally got off the field on those aggravating third downs. And when Texas threw a punch, Florida did something its coaches had been asking it to do. It punched back. On the Longhorns’ own grass. That’s a satisfying place to hold a Texas roadside barbecue. It brought to mind something Steve Spurrier often told his struggling teams: “Just keep playing hard … and something good will happen.” Simple advice. No consultant required. And frequently, something good did happen. Think about where Florida stands now: two victories over top-seven teams and one win away from bowl eligibility. I realize “bowl eligible” isn’t a phrase that sets off fireworks around here. This is Florida. The historical ambition involves considerably more than securing an extra practice schedule and a December itinerary. Still, there’s a difference between acknowledging progress and lowering the ceiling. You can enjoy climbing a few steps without declaring you’ve reached the penthouse. And suddenly, that next daunting assignment looks a little different. What once might have felt like an opt-out has become an opportunity. Please don’t get me started on comparative scores. That road usually ends with a man explaining on a napkin why his team should be national champion. But wasn’t that Auburn team that beat Georgia the same Auburn team Florida defeated? Just asking. Leaving the napkin in my pocket. On a weekend when SEC giants fell like redwoods, a little daylight appeared where Florida’s path had looked awfully shaded. There’s still plenty to sort out over these last five games. I had this pegged as a 6–6 season, and these Gators are giving me reason to reconsider. Being wrong has never frightened me much. In this business, you learn to leave room for it in the overhead compartment. Especially when being wrong might turn out to be this enjoyable. So I’m going to savor Austin, thank the people who never stopped caring and take my little fall respite. And now for the weekend: A loved one. Some baseball. A little basketball. A few hours without treating every scoreboard as a personal medical report. Then I’ll be back for the football. Happily. That last word feels pretty good. Photo courtesy UAA (University Athletic Association, FloridaGators.com) and Hannah White. See more of her work on Instagram, and the official Florida Gators photo galleries at FloridaGators.com.

Cover: Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media By Franz Beard gatorbaitmedia.com JACKSONVILLE – Start with the obvious. It was an exhibition game, the college basketball version of what happens every March in Florida and Arizona when Major League Baseball teams prep for April when the games count for real. So while the Baylor Bears got an 82-76 win over the No. 1 preseason Florida Gators at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, it doesn't count in the grand scheme of things. That doesn't mean for even a nanosecond that Todd Golden will shrug this one off. Hardly. However, he walked away Sunday afternoon with a list of must correct this notations to fill a couple of legal pads. For example, the Gators made only 25 of their 72 shots from the field. That's not good. Even worse, however, was the three-point shooting. Take away the 2-6 by Tommy Haugh and the 1-1 by Boogie Fland and the rest of the team was 1-22. In this new era of college basketball in which the game is all about threes and layups, that is the ultimate recipe for disaster. Then there was the foul line where the Gators were anything but clutch, 62.9 percent at 22-35 with a bunch of critical misses late regulation. So, on an afternoon in which the couldn't find the ocean if they were standing on the end of the pier, they still could have and should have beaten Baylor, which is indeed a quality opponent. Even if it wouldn't have counted had they made a few more shots. Todd Golden wasn't happy and he shouldn't have been, but he has another exhibition game with Stetson next Tuesday (Oct. 27) and the games don't start counting for real until Nov. 2 when the Gators play Miami in Tampa in the regular season opener. "My hope is that we can use this as an opportunity to grow with a couple more weeks before the regular season," Golden said. "Yeah, I mean, I would prefer to teach after a win than a loss always. After today's game, it does change our mentality moving forward probably a little bit, two and a half weeks until the regular season starts, and yeah, I think you can learn a lot from these games. That's why we wanted to play a really good opponent like Baylor to kind of see how we looked against somebody else. When you practice against your own team, great athleticism and quickness and do things differently, which they did, and I thought they bothered us a little bit." Yes, Baylor bothered the Gators. Injuries depleted Scott Drew's front court so he went small with a scrambling defense that tried to force Florida's guards out beyond their comfort zone, fronted Florida's big guys whenever possible and trapped on the wings and in the corners. It was bothersome although it didn't result in turning the Gators over very much. The Gators committed only eight turnovers and those were converted into four points. When the ball did go inside to Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu Baylor brought the double team from the backside. While it might have reduced scoring opportunities for Condon and Chinyelu it left openings on the perimeter that the Gators failed to exploit. Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media "I don't think their double teams bothered us a whole lot, to be honest," Golden said. "I thought that when we were able to get it inside, whether it was to Rueben or Condo, when they did bring the baseline double, it actually opened up the weak side of the floor, and they did a pretty good job for the majority of the game of getting it up and out to an open shooter." Open shooters have to at least knock down a reasonable number of shots, however. That's something the Gators didn't do. "One for 13 [from three] in the first half on what we thought were about 10 uncontested looks," Golden lamented. "So we left a lot of points on the board that way." Points were there to be had in the second half and overtime as well, but there was only slight improvement (3-16 from three) when there were plenty enough makeable shots that wouldn't go down. Shooters you expect to make shots when they were wide open missed consistently. Denzel Aberdeen, a good shooter throughout his career, was 3-17 from the field overall, 0-10 from the three-point line. He did make the shot with 0:00.8 left in regulation that sent the game into overtime, which was a positive along with going 9-10 from the foul line although the only miss was with 20 seconds to go. Make that one and the last second pull-up shot from the left baseline is the game-winner. Aberdeen scored 15 points but had to take 27 shots – 10 threes, seven twos, 10 at the foul line – to get them. "I think he needs to be better. He was 3-17. He did not make a three, took 10 of them. I thought defensively he was good, not great. So, first game back, I'm sure there was a lot of emotions for him and just trying to get back comfortable. He'll play better moving forward." Tommy Haugh, who led the Gators with 19 points, was 4-13 from the field overall, 2-6 from three and 9-10 from the foul line. Two of his misses on threes were of the rim out variety. Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media Alex Condon (6-11 from the field, 0-2 from three) and Rueben Chinyelu (6-9 from the field) made most of their shots and scored on the inside. Chinyelu grabbed 15 rebounds and Condon pulled down nine. It was a physical game and it seemed they should have gotten to the foul line more than nine times combined, but they didn't take advantage of the opportunities they had. They were a combined 2-9 from the foul line, Condon 1-6 and Chinyelu 1-3. Boogie Fland scored 13 on 5-8 shooting overall, made his only three early in overtime, and finished with two rebounds, three assists, a blocked shot and a steal. What he couldn't do was push the tempo. Golden wanted a faster pace, but Baylor succeeded in keeping the Gators from getting the ball out in transition, successfully negating a speed advantage. A stronger rebounding effort – while the Gators outrebounded Baylor 46-41 overall, the Bears had a 28-21 advantage in the second half and overtime – might have helped the Gators push the pace. "Our team, I think, strives a lot this year in getting out of transition, and pushing the ball, getting into quick screens, and today we were walking the ball up, and it wasn't how we were going to play," Haugh said. "It was our fault. Yeah, it was us." And then there was the bench or to put it mildly a lack of production from the reserves. Golden went with a nine-man rotation, the bulk of the bench minutes going to Urban Klavzar, Isaiah Brown and AJ Brown. Viktor Mikic got in for one minute in the first half, committed a foul and then spent the rest of the game riding the pine. The others who got in the game were more productive but not by much. Klavzar, last year's SEC Sixth Man of the Year and a 40.6-percent shooter from beyond the arc last season, hung a bagel. He was 0-7 overall, 0-5 from three. Isaiah Brown, who has been having an exceptional preseason in practice, went 0-3, 0-2 from three. AJ Brown made one of his three attempts from beyond the arc. When the bench contributes three points and goes 1-14 from the field it isn't exactly conducive to winning. Golden admitted that he has to consider getting more of his bench involved. "We've got to look at some other guys, too, that didn't get an opportunity today that have been playing pretty well in practice," he said. Defense was an issue in the second half. The Gators did a good job defending and running the Bears off the three-point line in the first half when they shot 1-6. In the second half and overtime, however, Baylor went 6-11, and Kayden Mingo finished the game with a scorching 31 points. Photo by Chris Spears, GatorBait Media Held to five points in the first half, Mingo lit up the Gators for 17 in the second half when he hit one of his three three-point attempts and then in overtime when he went 1-1 from deep and had nine of Baylor's 14. It didn't matter who guarded him – at least five Gators gave it a go – because he was in a shooter's coma when anything and everything he threw up at the rim looked good. Another negative for the Gators was ball movement. "I thought we were pounding a little too much, unable to get side to side, which is something that we do really well," Golden said. There were a lot of negatives for the Gators, but nothing that can't be corrected. And, while the bad shooting was alarming, guys like Aberdeen and Klavzar have a history of making shots and the Gators have been good in the clutch at the foul line particularly the last two seasons. Finally, it can't be overlooked that this was an exhibition game. Just last year, eventual NCAA champ Michigan lost an exhibition game to Cincinnati. Cincinnati finished with an overall record of 18-15 and didn't make the NCAA Tournament. Michigan went 37-3, winning its six NCAA Tournament games by a combined 114 points.

The Gators got an unexpected win on the road in front of a crowd of over 103,000 fans mostly wearing burnt orange on Saturday with the first start by a backup QB. Coach Sumrall said they found a way to suck less on Saturday. Let's review some things that point to the fact that the Gators do suck and then move to the positive things that point to them sucking less. There were a handful of plays that were there for the making, but the Gators just couldn't get it done. Let's start with the punt that should have been down at the two except Kanye Clark knocked the ball to the goal line when it was stopped at the two. The Longhorns drove down the field for a FG. Maybe they would have anyway, but the chance to get the opponents pinned deep in their own end was missed due to an error. DJ Coleman had a chance to intercept an Arch Manning pass, but he dropped it instead. The Gators gave up a fourth and forever pass from Manning in the fourth quarter by being half a second too slow on the rush. Now that may have been due to an uncalled hold by an offensive lineman. Dallas Wilson had an opportunity to keep a drive alive with a difficult catch on a back shoulder fade that he got his hands on but couldn't hold onto it as he hit the ground. Florida was flagged for 7 penalties for a total of 55 yards. Two of those gave the Longhorns first downs and a couple made drives for the offense harder in a hostile environment. The Gators need to find a way to make those plays and avoid the penalties if they want to move from a good team to a great team. The defense sucked a little less this week. They kept the Longhorns to less than 100 yards rushing, although that is deceitful in some ways because the total reflects 46 yards lost in sacks and TFLs. They held the highly publicized Arch Manning to 173 yards on 14 completions and sacked him 5 times including the fumble that sealed the win with 2 minutes left in the game. The biggest improvement was that they allowed the Texas offense to only make 2 of 10 third downs and only 1 of 3 fourth down attempts. Photo courtesy UAA and Hannah White. The offensive line sucked less this week. They only gave up one sack to the nation's leading pass rusher. Jadan Baugh finished with 91 yards rushing on 25 carries. He averaged 3.6 yards per carry and had one touchdown. The offense netted 158 yards on the ground and gained 184 yards before deducting 26 yards lost in the one sack, one bad snap, and TFLs. They gave Tramell Jones Jr. enough time to go 22-35 for a total of 155 yards and two touchdowns to Lacota Dippre. The offense found a way to score 27 points on the vaunted Texas defense led by Will Muschamp. That was the key to the Gators having a chance to win the game. They proved that they could keep drives alive going 8-19 on third downs, most of those coming in the second half and going 2-2 on fourth downs. The biggest one of those was the pass from Jones to Wilson from the Texas 36-yard line on a fourth and twelve play. Because Florida sucked less this week, they have moved back into the top 25. There was a fire in the eyes of the Gator players that had been missing for the last two weeks. The game didn't start out well for the Gators. They didn't fold as they had in the previous two games. They fought back. They got off the deck, and they started landing punches of their own. The defense started to assert themselves up front. The offense looked like the balanced unit they need to be if they are going to be successful. Bailey Stockton found a way to return to the game when it looked like he was done for the day and maybe longer. Jadan Baugh looked like a man hungry to run through someone on every play again. Somewhere in the week leading up to the game or maybe at halftime they found a spark. We may never know what that spark was, was it something someone said or was it just a realization by the entire team that the game was right before them and all they needed to do was seize the moment. On a separate note, Texas has benefited from media bias and brand recognition. They still are as they are ranked ahead of the Gators in the polls. If you looked at their schedule and results and didn't put the name there, their record would not warrant a top 25 ranking. They looked like a mediocre team. The effects of the Media can be seen in the fact that Alabama didn't drop out of the top 25 after losing two straight games. Notre Dame should have dropped more after losing as would Georgia. The major networks want to keep those teams in the front runner positions for the College Football Playoffs. It's good for the ratings, it's good for the bottom line. It's just not fair to the teams that have better records. Would they be undefeated if they played the tougher schedules, probably not. The good news for Gator fans is that if the Gators can find a way to suck less in two weeks and the rest of the season, they would likely find themselves in that CFP discussion. There is a lot of football left to play, and time will tell if the Gators can learn to suck less each week and win each week. One thing is certain, on Saturday the Gators found a way to suck less and leave Austin with an incredible victory over the Longhorns. Photo courtesy UAA (University Athletic Association, FloridaGators.com) and Hannah White. See more of her work on Instagram, and the official Florida Gators photo galleries at FloridaGators.com.