Former Gator Xaivian Lee is seeking a fifth season of eligibility (Photo by Chris Spears) “Chaos, when left alone, tends to multiply.” – Stephen Hawking Even before this most recent slew of losses in court rooms across America the NCAA was taking ineptitude to unprecedented levels but in the aftermath of Friday’s ruling in Colorado by Federal Judge Charlotte Sweeney all hell has indeed broken loose. Hand it to the NCAA. They did predict this would happen. What they didn’t do, however, is take responsibility for the ensuing chaos since their many years of fallacious decisions got us to where we are today in the first place. Here we are on Sunday morning, less than 48 hours since Judge Sweeney’s decision ruled the exclusion of last year’s fourth-year seniors from a fifth year of eligibility as cruel and unusual punishment and it is a Titanic just struck the iceberg moment. The ship that is the NCAA hasn’t sunk just yet but the captain – Charlie Baker – is about to realize there aren’t enough lifeboats as widespread panic breaks out among coaches. For athletes who just completed their fourth year of eligibility in the 2025-26 athletic year and were looking at life on a G-League salary or making the rounds at NFL training camps as undrafted free agents, this is akin to Lazarus being called to life from the grave. Football and basketball coaches woke up today seeing players line up like it’s a cattle auction, ready to sell their skills to the highest bidder. For coaches with available scholarships and holes in their lineups that require filling, this is manna from heaven if they can summon the boosters to fork over some more cash to buy a player or two that can offer immediate help. For those with holes in the roster but no scholarships to give, this echoes you hear are the equal of the Sundance Kid leaping off the cliff into the churning river below. Florida’s basketball coach was quite confident all along that Denzel Aberdeen would get his fifth year whether through an NCAA waiver or the courts. The waiver never happened but Denzel got his eligibility restored without having to go to court thanks to Judge Sweeney. So it’s a good day to be Todd Golden. With or without Aberdeen, who transferred back to Florida after spending his senior season in exile at Kentucky, Golden knew he had a roster capable of competing for and winning a second national championship in three years. With Aberdeen now securely a Gator for the 2026-27 season, Florida will now field the deepest, most talented and most experienced roster since Kentucky’s 1995-96 NCAA championship team that eventually sent 11 of its 13 scholarship players to the NBA. For Xaivian Lee, whose year at Florida ended in Tampa with a bad pass rather than taking a shot that could have advanced the Gators past Iowa into the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Tournament, the ruling is a seat on the lifeboat. His season at Florida was a mixed bag of success and disappointments. There were games such as Florida’s win at Vanderbilt in which he looked every bit the stud who dominated play in the Ivy League at Princeton. There were too many others when he threw up so many bricks he could have qualified for a union card. Undrafted by the NBA, Lee played for Cleveland in the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. While he had a few encouraging games, his overall level of play made him a candidate for the G-League or overseas. The Colorado ruling assures Lee of a fifth season of college basketball. There is no room at inn at Casa Golden as the Gators have filled all 15 scholarships but there will be ample opportunities elsewhere. According to a Saturday tweet, Lee’s name will be in the NCAA transfer portal when it opens up Monday morning. Lee won’t be the only familiar face in the portal. Keyshawn Hall, who went into a shooter’s coma at the O-Dome while leading Auburn to a stunning upset of the Gators, put his name in the portal back on April 20. He played for Miami in the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas, but has not signed a pro contract. He averaged 19.3 points and 7.1 rebounds per game for the Tigers last year and has more than 1,800 points for a career that has seen four schools in four years. Despite his nomadic existence, there are plenty of coaches aching to find a scorer so don’t expect Hall to be unemployed long. Some other prominent names in the portal will be former Texas point guard Jordan Pope (13.1 per game, more than 1,800 career points), UCLA point Donovan Dent (13.3 points, 7.6 assists), Missouri second team All-SEC forward Mark Mitchell (18.3 points, 5.2 rebounds), Arizona State point guard Maurice Odum (11.1 points, 5.7 rebounds) and Ole Miss wing AJ Storr (15.5 points, 3.1 rebounds). Florida women’s coach Tammi Reiss could be in the market where Mia Nicastro (24.1 points, 9.8 rebounds) at Western Illinois and Sisi Eleko (17.6 points, 9.9 rebounds) at Eastern Michigan are expected to be available for a fifth year. There is a rather interesting situation brewing for Florida State football, where embattled head coach Mike Norvell faces the prospects of yet another losing season. With practice about to begin, his quarterback situation is murky with Ashton Daniels, whose years at Stanford and Auburn have been underwhelming. Last year’s QB, Tommy Castellano, who passed for 15 touchdowns and ran for nine more, said Saturday he is thinking seriously about returning to college football. He already knows the offense at FSU and he should be a far more attractive option for Norvell. Three other names in the portal who got the fifth year and who will be drawing plenty of interest are former Georgia safety JaCorey Thomas, former Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year Trent Hendrick and former Kentucky linebacker Alex Afari. Thomas, who prepped at Orlando Boone, was in on 45 tackles last season. Hendrick had 106 tackles for JMU in 2025. Afari could go back to Kentucky where he was in on 61 tackles and has 203 in his career, but his former defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at UK is Brad White, now the defensive coordinator at Florida.

(Photo by Chris Spears) There is this scene in the classic movie “Cool Hand Luke” in which chain gang inmates Luke Jackson (Paul Newman) and Dragline (George Kennedy) are forced into a boxing match to settle their differences. From the very beginning, Dragline is simply too big, too powerful. His punches keep knocking Luke to his knees, but Luke refuses to quit. Bloodied and severely beaten, he can’t get to his feet but keeps swinging weakly, hitting nothing but air. I thought about that movie Friday while contemplating the news that the NCAA had lost another case in court as I was driving home after a small reunion of our late 60s Gainesville High School basketball teammates (Eddie McAshan, John Dulaney, Darryl Tower, Mitch McCallum, Juddy Carter and me) at the Hilton. Stacked on top of a big loss in a chancery court in Nashville on Thursday, the NCAA took a crushing right to the jaw in Federal court Friday in Colorado when Judge Charlotte Sweeney issued a preliminary injunction that grants another year of eligibility to student-athletes who were part of the high school graduating class of 2022. The Colorado injunction, filed on behalf of 12 athletes, cancels a provision of the recently enacted NCAA 5-for-5 legislation that did not grandfather in fourth-year seniors from the 2025-26 athletic year while extending a fifth year of eligibility to those who graduated in 2022. The day before, Judge I’Ashea Myles issued an injunction in Nashville granting eligibility to 19 athletes who had sued the NCAA for another year. Judge Sweeney’s ruling read: "All persons in the United States who began to play in collegiate sports in the 2022-2023 season, competed in NCAA Division I sports, and completed four years of eligibility as defined by the NCAA's prior rules by the conclusion of the 2025-2026 season, and are therefore barred from playing a fifth season due to the NCAA's adoption and immediate implementation of the Five-Year Eligibility Rule." Further, Judge Sweeney ruled that without the injunction players “will suffer irreparable harm.” While not part of either case, the Florida Gators and Denzel Aberdeen emerged as high profile winners. Aberdeen, a 2022 high school graduate who played three years for the Gators and last season at Kentucky before transferring back to Florida in the spring, had petitioned for a waiver to play an additional year but was in limbo while waiting on an NCAA ruling. The Colorado case decided by Judge Sweeney took the power to decide out of the hands of the NCAA, meaning Aberdeen will play for the Gators, who are sure to begin the 2026-27 season as the No. 1 ranked team and odds-on favorites to win their second national championship in three years. The NCAA, of course, in its best impersonation of Paul Newman as Luke Jackson, will appeal both cases, another wild swing that will hit nothing and will be countered by one more devastating right from Dragline. Upon the Friday ruling that is a nationwide injunction, numerous athletes went immediately into the transfer portal seeking a new place to play while others like Aberdeen are already in school at the place where they will play in the 2026-27 athletic year. There are also other cases pending against the NCAA including one in North Carolina filed by attorneys Ryan Downton and Darren Heitner on behalf of 50 athletes. Will that case see the light of day or does the Sweeney ruling cover all 50? No matter, the NCAA has been rocked and its knees have buckled. Picture the NCAA as Luke Jackson, punch drunk, bloody and on its knees in a bare-dirt ring with everyone pleading to throw in the towel. Common sense says admit defeat to end the bludgeoning, but since when do common sense and the NCAA form an alliance? Not in the past and evidently not in the present but leave it to the NCAA to keep swinging wildly with no chance to connect nor with the power to do any damage. Also, leave it to Charlie Baker, the head buffoon in charge of the NCAA to exacerbate the situation with a lengthy statement that reads: “Without targeted intervention from Congress, college sports cannot set nationwide rules everyone can play by and without Congress, failed professionals will continue to use college sports as a fallback option – robbing the next class of young athletes of college scholarships. It is long past time leaders across college sports call for the immediate passage of the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act – a bill supported by student-athlete leaders, Democrats, Republicans and NCAA schools from all three divisions. Today’s rulings and the chaos they bring to college sports are exactly why it’s time to pass this bill.” How dumb. No 2026 freshmen are losing their scholarships because of this ruling and since the NCAA has already granted a fifth year to athletes whose high school graduation was 2023, no freshmen from 2027 and onward won’t be denied. Charlie Baker’s response is a futile attempt to sound like a compassionate tough guy whose only interest is the integrity of sports. Yeah. Right. If the NCAA actually had a shred of integrity it would admit defeat in the current eligibility cases and amend its 5-for-5 legislation to include last year’s fourth-year seniors who were part of the 2022 high school graduating class. Instead, it chooses to fight. The way the NCAA thinks things through, any admission of defeat is an admission of weakness. What the NCAA fails to understand is that running to Congress while praying for passage of the Protect College Sports Act is an admission that it is incapable of making rules then enforcing them fairly. Nor does the NCAA seem to understand that its losses in the courtrooms are almost always followed by more setbacks in the appeals process that only further the perception that the NCAA’s sell-by date expired long ago. There would not be a need for either these endless challenges in court or Congressional intervention if the NCAA had applied common sense and fairness during the previous decades. The problems facing college sports today exist in large part because the NCAA has habitually made the wrong choices on which hills it intends to dig in and fight. The NCAA wants to reel in out of control spending in college sports through implementation of the Protect College Sports Act. Whether it’s this bill or something else something has to be done but at the same time, what kind of signal does the NCAA send out by racking up millions in billable hours to lawyers who go to court where they lose, all the while burdened by the precedent of one inept decision after another? In the movie “Cool Hand Luke,” Luke Jackson wouldn’t give up and kept on fighting. When the simpler thing would have been to admit defeat, do the time and leave the chain gang camp as quickly as possible, Luke Jackson couldn’t help himself. He kept fighting, kept challenging and eventually was killed by the people in charge. In this modern day re-enactment of “Cool Hand Luke” which was filmed between Starke and Raiford, the NCAA has been beaten to a pulp in the courts but it refuses to give up. Rather than admitting defeat it fights on while hoping Congressional intervention will come to its rescue. Memo to the NCAA: The Protect College Sports Act won’t make it to the Senate floor before the August recess and when Congress reconvenes in September there won’t be enough time for the bill to be debated and voted on in both the Senate and the House of Representatives before adjourning for the campaign trail ahead of the November mid-term elections. Even if the Protect College Sports Act is passed this fall it will have no bearing on the cases that have granted injunctive relief for sports that begin in earnest in September when football, volleyball and soccer are in full swing followed by basketball tipping off November 2. Time can’t save the NCAA on this one, nor can the Congress. For Gators, this is good news since Denzel Aberdeen will have a chance to end his career where it started – suiting up for the University of Florida. You have to hand it to Denzel. He didn’t get the NCAA waiver which he requested but he won without going to court either. It was like winning at poker with bad cards and a good bluff. As Dragline said when Luke Jackson bluffed his way to a poker win with a handful of nothing, “Sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand.”

` If he stays healthy, Dallas Wilson could be a burner (UAA Photo) There are some talented receivers who’ve not gotten much attention so far, but will soon. It’s true we don’t know yet which quarterback will be launching the passes to them, but it looks like he will have a jolly good bunch to pick from. While all the hubub has been about Aaron Philo and Trammell Jones, the Gators have been stockpiling amazing receiver talent. With new offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner expected to make the Gators' offense more explosive, this most recent wave of weapons will boost those chances significantly. Rivals noted that 18 of the nation's top 20 wide receivers are already committed. Between Florida's impressive 2026 signings, which included a trio of highly-touted recruits in Davian Groce, Justin Williams and Marquez Daniel and the current room that is discussed amongst the conference's most explosive, featuring Vernell Brown III, Dallas Wilson and Eric Singleton Jr., the three incoming commitments at wideout prove the formula for restoring the Gators' allure is winning over top prospects. Securing pledges from the Sunshine State's most elite playmakers is how UF leaps back into national championship contention. There are also some talented players who’ve not gotten much attention so far, but will soon. Florida's under-the-radar wide receivers expected to contribute significant depth behind the main trio this season are Micah Mays Jr., TJ Abrams, and veteran Bailey Stockton. Sumrall and Faulkner's vision for the Florida offense is attracting some of the nation's best. Recruits are buying into the direction. Current Wide Receivers & Their Rankings Projected starters: 1. Eric Singleton Jr. (Sr., transfer via Auburn/Georgia Tech) — Entered the 2025 season as PFF’s No. 5-ranked wide receiver in all of college football and a projected NFL Draft pick before withdrawing his name; posted back-to-back 700-plus-yard seasons under Faulkner at Georgia Tech in 2023-24, then reunited with him at Florida. 2. Vernell Brown III (So.) — A former five-star recruit who earned Freshman All-SEC honors in 2025 after leading the Gators with 40 catches for 512 yards despite a struggling offense. 3. Dallas Wilson (R-Fr.) — A former five-star, top-50 national recruit who broke out with a six-catch, 111-yard, two-touchdown game in Florida’s upset of No. 9 Texas. Rotation depth: Bailey Stockton (Georgia Tech transfer), Micah Mays Jr. (Wake Forest transfer), Jaylen Lloyd (Oklahoma State transfer), TJ Abrams, Kahleil Jackson and Jaden Edgecombe. Unit ranking: A Texas beat writer ranked Florida’s room the No. 2 wide receiver group in the SEC this summer, behind only the Longhorns. Former Gators Shane Matthews and Chris Doering have called it potentially the program’s best receiving corps in decades. 2026 signing class (already on campus): • Davian Groce — Four-star; 247Sports’ No. 8 receiver nationally, ESPN’s No. 2 athlete; composite No. 47 overall, Florida’s first top-50 commit of the cycle, with a reported 4.39-second 40. • Justin Williams — Four-star; 247Sports’ No. 9 athlete nationally; a Gainesville (Buchholz) hometown signee. • Marquez Daniel — Four-star, 6-foot-5, 205 pounds, out of Tuskegee, Ala. — the biggest body in the room. Let’s see what these guys can do for OC Faulkner and a squad full of hot receiving prospects. Marcus Davis: Outside wide receivers coach, hired from Auburn where he held the same role. Trent McKnight: Inside wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator, previously at Georgia Tech. There is a lot that we still don’t know about this Gator passing game. But I do know this: Of all the coaches to leave I think the loss of Bill Gonzales hurt the most. He’s been a big factor in sustaining the passing game. I don’t know the new coaches or the new systems they’re going to run, but they’ve got a lot of good pieces to start with.

Will Stephen A Smith Become The Scapegoat? (Sorry Gator Fans: I Needed To Get This Off My Chest Before They Put The Ball Down On The Grass) Stephen A. Smith didn’t invent or build “Embrace Debate.” He just outlasted everybody who did. That’s worth remembering this week, because if you believe the reporting coming out of Bristol — and by all accounts you should — ESPN’s new sheriff, Mike Foss, stood in front of a room of a hundred nervous employees and told them the manufactured shouting match that built the network’s daytime schedule for two decades isn’t working anymore. He didn’t call out Stephen A. by name. He didn’t have to. Everybody in that room knew whose ratings they were talking about. I’ve been doing this long enough to know a corporate mea culpa when I see one, and this qualifies. Although I don't pretend to have any inside scuttlebutt. ESPN spent nineteen years teaching America that two guys yelling about LeBron’s legacy was appointment television, and now the exec in charge of sports news is standing up in a town hall quoting internal research that says, actually, folks are exhausted by it. Bless their hearts. It only took losing half their audience to cable-cutting and a generation raised on podcasts to figure that out. The Man Jamie Horowitz Built Understand something about Jamie Horowitz before you feel sorry for anybody in this story. He’s the fellow who took a perfectly reasonable morning show — Cold Pizza, then First Take with Dana Jacobsen and Jay Crawford doing a little bit of everything — and in August of 2011 turned it into two straight hours of professional arguing. Skip Bayless said it himself: People in the hallway told both he and partner Woody Paige it’d be career suicide. Instead it became the ratings model half the industry has been chasing ever since, right down to Horowitz trying to bottle the same lightning twice at Fox Sports and mostly proving that lightning, once caught, doesn’t strike the same barn again. Stephen A. Smith walked into that model in 2011 and never left it. He outlasted Bayless’s defection to Fox and Woody’s lengthy run on Around The Horn. He outlasted the Skip-and-Shannon marriage and its ugly divorce. He signed a five-year, $100 million deal last year that made him the highest-paid name at the network, and he did it by being the last man standing in a format everybody else eventually got tired of building — or tired of watching. Scapegoat or Coronation? Wrong Question You ask me whether Stephen A. becomes the scapegoat or ascends to some kind of throne? I’ll tell you what I think: He’s already both, and neither, which is the most Stephen A. outcome imaginable. He’s the scapegoat in the sense that “Embrace Debate” is now a phrase Bristol executives use the way a man uses his ex-wife’s name at a dinner party — carefully, and only when necessary. He’s the survivor in the sense that when ESPN pulled Ryan Clark off NFL Live mid-broadcast and laid off Cam Newton, Stephen A. pushed back to his bosses and lost, publicly, on his own YouTube show. Read that twice. The $100-million man couldn’t save the colleague from the very show that made him rich. That tells you everything about where the actual power sits in Bristol right now, and it isn’t with the debate guy. It’s with the audience research. He won’t be run out of town. He’s too valuable, First Take still moves a needle, and ESPN isn’t in the business of writing off $100 million just to make a philosophical point. But the growth in that building isn’t happening around him anymore — it’s happening around Pat McAfee, and now apparently around Josh Pate and the Bussin’ With The Boys boys building a college football show. Notice what those three have in common: They built their audiences on their own, on YouTube, before ESPN ever called. That’s the new model. Stephen A. built his audience inside the machine Horowitz built for him. Different currency entirely. What About the Rest of Us? Here’s my actual answer to the question you asked, the one about people who are just tired of conflict — because I hear from plenty of them, and they’re not wrong. Manufactured debate works like hot sauce. A little bit wakes up a bland dish. A steady diet of it and you can’t taste anything else, including the parts of sports that are actually good — the kid from a small Georgia town who worked his way onto an SEC two-deep, the coach who’s rebuilding a program without burning it down first, the box score that tells a story all by itself if you let it. ESPN spent so long pairing people up to disagree on command that it forgot some of its best television was never an argument at all — it was two guys who actually liked each other, like the Pardon the Interruption boys, or a guy behind a desk just showing you a great catch and letting the catch do the talking. That’s the show Foss says he wants back. SportsCenter as SportsCenter, not SportsCenter as a preamble to a screaming match. Or a promo for the next WWE fake event. Or telling us it’s not too late to get our bet down with Fan Duel. If you’re worn out on conflict, here’s my prescription, and it costs nothing: Change the channel to the folks being honest instead of combative. I dare you! Authenticity, it turns out, is actually a lot more interesting and better currency than manufactured outrage — Pat McAfee didn’t get rich yelling at Skip Bayless, he got rich being unmistakably himself. (Although I am suspicious of how McAfee bought his way in.) Support the shows and the writers who’ll tell you a coach is overmatched without needing a debate partner to disagree with them for effect. Vote with your remote and your clicks, because that’s the only language a $100-million industry actually speaks. Bristol didn’t get religion overnight. It got a spreadsheet. But even a corporate conversion is still a conversion. If ESPN really walks away from Embrace Debate and back toward just letting good broadcasters be good broadcasters, I won’t miss the shouting one bit — and neither, I suspect, will you.

Jon Sumrall insists he hasn’t made up his mind who will start at quarterback for Florida. At SEC Media Days in Tampa Sumrall said he “doesn’t have a timeline” to decide whether Georgia Tech transfer Aaron Philo or redshirt freshman Tramell Jones will get the opening game nod, adding, “Just because you start game one doesn’t mean you start game 12.” Due to his two years at Georgia Tech where he was coached up by Buster Faulkner, now the UF offensive coordinator, Philo seems to have an inside track on the job. Even though Sumrall said he might not decide a starter until “five minutes before the game” the media is almost unanimous in its belief that Philo will be the man. For a QB with limited experience – 938 passing yards, 2 TDPs; 95 rushing yards, 1 TD – Philo gets a lot of respect. In its ranking of all the power conference quarterbacks, Sports Illustrated ranked Philo No. 34, ahead of numerous multi-year starters. By that ranking, Philo will start the year as the No. 10 quarterback in the Southeastern Conference. Trinidad Chambliss of Ole Miss is not only the No. 1 QB in the SEC but SI ranks him No. 1 nationally. Here is what SI said about Philo: “As the prime test case for a small sample size, Philo’s singular 2025 performance against Gardner-Webb can’t be regarded as a reason that Florida will finally get back on the right track behind center. He boasts a very similar build to Haynes King, whom he backed up at Georgia Tech and also represents a clear continuation of the Jake Retzlaff–type quarterback that Jon Sumrall found success with last season at Tulane. And he’s sticking with his offensive coordinator from Georgia Tech, Buster Faulkner. Philo’s running ability should open things up for lead back Jadan Baugh, but we’ll have to wait and see if his explosiveness can translate to the SEC.” Here is a list of the Sports Illustrated quarterback rankings followed by my own commentary: THE TOP 10 BY SI 1. Trinidad Chambliss, Ole Miss: Outstanding at making in-game adjustments. Can throw and run, but this year has brand new receivers. Definite Heisman candidate. 2. Julian Sayin, Ohio State: He throws to Jeremiah Smith, which makes him seem better than he is. He stunk against Indiana and then Miami in the CFP. Ranked too high. 3. C.J. Carr, Notre Dame: Threw five of his six interceptions in the first four games last year, then torched a lot of bad teams the rest of the way. Jeremiyah Love is gone so Carr has to shoulder the load. Ranked too high. 4. Dante Moore, Oregon: Big arm, big play skills, but he hasn’t gotten it done in games against top notch opponents (see Indiana last year). He will get plenty of hype. 5. Darian Mensah, Miami: Started as a true freshman at Tulane, led Duke to the ACC title as a sophomore. Now he gets to throw to Malachi Toney and hand the ball off to Mark Fletcher. Heisman candidate who could get Miami to the national title game. 6. Arch Manning, Texas: Steve Sarkisian has surrounded Arch with big time talent such as Cam Coleman and Hollywood Smothers. Now we find out if all the hype was real. If it is, Texas could win the national championship. Heisman candidate. 7. Demond Williams Jr., Washington: He tried to break his contract and leave for greener pastures. That will resonate in the locker room. Shouldn’t be in the top 20. 8. Jayden Maiava, Southern Cal: He can beat the bad teams but has to show he can do it against the really good ones. Talented, but a product of Lincoln Riley’s system so he will always have big numbers. 9. Sam Leavitt, LSU: He has tremendous ability but has to stay healthy. He should put up Star Wars numbers in a Lane Kiffin offense with Charlie Weis Jr. calling the plays. If he lights it up, LSU is going to be a contender. 10. Josh Hoover, Indiana: He threw 42 interceptions in three years at TCU. Now he gets coached by the guy who turned Fernando Mendoza into a Heisman Trophy winner. He might need an exorcist. No. 11-25 11. Drew Mestemaker, Oklahoma State: He could lead the country in passing yards and TDPs. He’s only a sophomore and the perfect fit for an Eric Morris offense. If he played for a good team he could be on the Heisman podium. 12. Marcel Reed, Texas A&M: Which QB is he? The one who led Texas A&M to an 11-0 start last year or the one who crashed and burned against Texas and then Miami in the CFP? 13. Devon Dampier, Utah: Started at New Mexico, then transferred to Utah where he was very good in a conservative offense. 14. Noah Fifita, Arizona: Three-year starter who has 72 TDPs and more than 9,000 passing yards in his career. 15. Gunner Stockton, Georgia: Ranked way too low. All he does is avoid making mistakes and win games. Georgia could win it all. 16. Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, California: Everybody raves about him. Hawaiian kid (so were Marcus Mariota and McKenzie Milton) who had a great freshman year for a bad team. Should explode this year. 17. Byrum Brown, Auburn: He should be top 10. This will be his fourth year as a starter in an Alex Golesh offense. One of the better dual threat QBs in the country. 18. CJ Bailey, North Carolina State: Lights up the bad teams but has been bad against the good ones. Ranked too high. 19. Bear Bachmeier, BYU: Had a great true freshman season last year except for games against Texas Tech. 20. Kevin Jennings, SMU: Threw 13 interceptions last year, 11 the year before. Great against the bad teams, bad against the good ones. 21. John Mateer, Oklahoma: If he stays healthy he will be a Heisman candidate and Oklahoma will contend for the SEC and national championships. 22. LaNorris Sellers, South Carolina: One to watch because Kendal Briles will be coaching him now that Mike Shula has been sent to Siberia. 23. Bryce Underwood, Michigan: Barely a 50 percent passer against good teams. Way over-hyped. 24. Conner Weigman, Houston: Formerly of Texas A&M. Played brilliantly in Willie Fritz’s offense at Houston. If the Cougars contend for the Big 12 title he could creep into Heisman conversations. 25. Rocco Becht, Penn State: Fifth-year guy who transferred from Iowa State. Solid in the clutch. A Florida kid. How did Billy Napier miss out on this guy? No. 26-50 26. Nico Iamaleava, UCLA: He was supposed to be the second coming of Tom Brady when he arrived at Tennessee. Big arm but has never come within a light year or two of matching the hype. 27. Anthony Colandrea, Nebraska: Was bad at Virginia, good when coached by Dan Mullen at UNLV. Now he’s at Nebraska. Should have stayed with Dan but the money was too good in Nebraska. 28. Avery Johnson, Kansas State: He’s at his best when used as a dual threat. Average arm, great legs. 29. Alonza Barnett III, UCF: Threw 71 TDPs at James Madison. Now he gets to work in a Scott Frost offense with McKenzie Milton coaching him up. UCF will surprise in the Big 12. 30. Keelon Russell, Alabama: Redshirt freshman with lots of hype. Kaelin DeBoer’s job might hang on his ability to produce. 31. Beau Pribula, Virginia: Backup QB at Penn State who transferred to Missouri where he threw too many picks and fumbled a lot. Ranked way too high. 32. Ethan Grunkemeyer, Virginia Tech: Formerly of Penn State. Followed James Franklin to VaTech. High percentage passer but not very mobile. 33. Mason Heintschel, Pittsburgh: Coached up by Kerwin Bell’s kid, Cade. Was very good as a true freshman when he had protection. Pitt’s line was a sieve and he was sacked 34 times. Should be a Heisman candidate in a couple of years. 34. AARON PHILO, FLORIDA: He has to beat out Tramell Jones for the starting job but he’s got a leg up thanks to the three years under Buster Faulkner at Georgia Tech. From a potential standpoint, he has a high ceiling. 35. Steve Angeli, Syracuse: Coming back from an Achilles tear. Wait and see on this one. 36. Will Hammond, Texas Tech: Started two games last year, tore his ACL. Might miss the first couple of games as a result. He was supposed to sit this year while Brendan Sorsby took over, but Sorsby is out due to gambling issues. 37. Katin Houser, Illinois: Fifth year guy who spent two years at Michigan State and two at ECU. He can make the big play, but has to learn how to take the easy one when there is downfield coverage. 38. Austin Simmons, Missouri: If football had a Wally Pipp Award he would have won it. When he went down with an injury at Ole Miss last year, Trinidad Chambliss became the starter and Simmons rarely sniffed the field again. Lots of dual threat talent. 39. Drake Lindsey, Minnesota: Another one who lights it up against the bad teams then disappears against the good ones. Redshirt sophomore with a penchant for mistakes. 40. Kenny Minchey, Kentucky: Threw 29 passes in three years at Notre Dame, but he was a hot commodity in the portal. The Kentucky folks think he’s the real deal. 41. Lincoln Kienholz, Louisville: Three years on the bench at Ohio State where he threw 36 passes, now the starter at Louisville. Another wait and see. 42. Alberto Mendoza, Georgia Tech: Fernando Mendoza’s baby brother left big brother’s shadow at Indiana to forge his own path at Georgia Tech. Big shoes to fill in dual threat Haynes King. Alberto can run but can he fling it? 43. Cutter Boley, Arizona State: Big strong guy who threw a lot of interceptions (12) after taking over as the Kentucky starter in the third game of the season in 2025. He may find Big 12 defenses more forgiving. 44. Jayden Craig, TCU: If nothing more, this Harvard transfer will up the team GPA. Threw 48 TDPs in 21 starts. 45. Malik Washington, Maryland: Talented dual threat guy who has to produce big or else his head coach (Mike Locksley) will get pink slipped. 46. DJ Lagway, Baylor: When he’s on he’s very good. When he’s off (see Miami, see Kentucky) he’s an interception looking for a place to happen. Threw 23 in two seasons at UF. 47. Michael Hawkins Jr., West Virginia: Oklahoma transfer better known for his running than his passing. Third year guy who could thrive in the Rich Rod offense. 48. Jared Curtis, Vanderbilt: True freshman who chose Vandy over Georgia. He will find SEC defenses a teensy bit tougher than those in high school. Shouldn’t be ranked this high since he has never taken a collegiate snap. 49. Colton Joseph, Wisconsin: Old Dominion transfer with 32 TDPs in 21 college games. Third year guy with the task of saving Luke Fickell’s job. 50. Christopher Vizzina, Clemson: One start in two years but it was good for 317 yards and three touchdowns. If he’s good then Clemson will be an ACC contender. Everybody else 51. Aidan Chiles, Northwestern: Never lived up to the hype at Michigan State. Chip Kelly will be coaching him up at Northwestern. Might need an exorcist. Lots of talent but he’s been sacked 51 times and turned it over 21 in two years. 52. Faizon Brandon/George MacIntyre, Tennessee: Neither one has experience so who knows what Josh Heupel can get out of them. 53. JC French IV, Cincinnati: Formerly of Georgia Southern. Big arm, but has thrown 24 interceptions in two years. 54. Kamario Taylor, Mississippi State: Ranked way too low. Serious dual threat talent with a huge upside. Started four games late last year as a true freshman. 55. Gio Lopez, Wake Forest: Had a great redshirt freshman year at South Alabama then was a bust at North Carolina. Better runner than a passer. He needs to resurrect his career at Wake Forest Gump. 56. KJ Jackson, Arkansas: He’s got to beat out redshirt freshman AJ Hill who arrived in Fayette-Nam with new HBC Ryan Silverfield. Jackson has a big arm and very good wheels. 57. Jaylen Raynor, Iowa State: Three seasons at Arkansas State where his 52 TDPs were offset by 28 INTs and 80 sacks. 58. Julian Lewis, Colorado: He’s an 18-year-old redshirt freshman who was sacked 11 times in a loss to West Virginia last year. 59. Walker Eget, Duke: Redshirt senior transfer from San Jose State who threw 30 TDPs and 21 INTs his last two seasons. 60. Ashton Daniels, Florida State: In four years of college football he’s thrown 24 TDPs and 22 picks. Just what Mike Norvell needs to save his job. 61. Billy Edwards Jr., North Carolina: He threw two passes at Wisconsin last year and has 19 TDPs in four seasons (three at Maryland). Desperate times call for desperate measures. 62. Alessio Milivojevic, Michigan State: Got sacked a lot as a redshirt freshman but looked good throwing the ball when he was upright. 63. Cole Ballard/Isaiah Marshall, Kansas: Between the two of them, they’ve thrown 34 collegiate passes. 64. Mason McKenzie, Boston College: He comes to BC from Saginaw Valley State, the same school that prepped Trinidad Chambliss for Ole Miss. Runs well but lots of turnovers. 65. Dylan Lonergan, Rutgers: Third school in four years (Two at Alabama, one at BC) for Lonergan. Largely immobile pocket passer. 66. Ryan Browne, Purdue: Three years (two as a backup) have produced 13 TDPs and 14 INTs. 67. Jeremy Hecklinski/Hank Brown, Iowa: Brown spent two years at Auburn and one on the bench at Iowa. Hecklinski played in two games and took a redshirt last year. Iowa has the most boring offense in college football. 68. Davis Warren, Stanford: Sixth year guy whose career has been the equivalent of a blocked punt. Michigan transfer with seven TDPs and nine picks in his career.

A few thoughts to jump start your Thursday morning: Success on defense during the two most successful eras of Florida football – the Steve Spurrier years from 1990-2001 and Urban Meyer years from 2005-10 – began with the concept of stuffing the run to force opponents into a one-dimensional game. Never has there been a better example than the 41-14 national championship game win over Ohio State in 2006. Against Florida’s five-man defensive line rotation (Jarvis Moss, Derrick Harvey, Ray McDonald, Joe Cohen and Steven Harris) the Buckeyes couldn’t run the football (47 net yards). Without the threat of the run, Heisman Trophy QB Troy Smith was only 4-14 throwing the ball for 35 yards. Harvey and Moss sacked him five times. During the 12 Spurrier years, the worst defense against the run was 2000 when the Gators gave up 133.1 yards. In six of the seasons, opponents averaged fewer than 90.8 yards on the ground. During Meyer’s six years, the Gators posted three seasons allowing 99.8 or fewer yards and only one (2010, 133.6 yards allowed) in which opponents ran for more than 105 yards. Spurrier went 122-27-1 with six SEC titles and one national championship. Meyer went 65-15 with two SEC and two national titles. In the 15 years since Meyer, the Gators have had only one season (2012, 94.9 yards) in which they have allowed fewer than 100 yards per game. Only one other time in the last 15 years (2019, 104.6 yards allowed) have the Gators held opponents to fewer than 128.6 rushing yards per game. The best of Billy Napier’s defenses was 2024 when the Gators held opponents to 149.5 per game. There is a real correlation between stuffing the run and winning. The Gators are 110-79 in the last 15 years with no SEC titles and just three appearances (all losses) in the SEC Championship Game. The constant has been the inconsistency of the run defense. For the Gators to regain their status as one of the elite football programs not just in the Southeastern Conference but the entire country, Jon Sumrall has to make stuffing the run his first priority on defense. In three of his four seasons as a head coach, his teams have finished in the top 30 nationally against the run. The best the Gators have done in those same four years was 2024 (149.5 per game). FLORIDA FOOTBALL VALUED AT $1.16 BILLION The Athletic placed a value on all power conference teams plus Nore Dame. As expected, Texas was the highest ranked program, one of five from the Southeastern Conference to crack the top ten. Florida ranked 12th, a full $1.3 billion behind the Longhorns. The Big Ten placed 13 teams in the top 30 of this evaluation with the SEC placing 12. The ACC placed three and the Big 12 one. Factoring in the formula were brand, conferences, and financial statements by each school. Top 30 (SEC teams bold face): 1. Texas $2.46b; 2. Ohio State $2.3b; 3. Notre Dame $2.1b; 4. Michigan $2b; 5. Georgia $1.95b; 6. Alabama $1.8b; 7. (tie) Oklahoma and Southern Cal $1.6b; 9. Tennessee $1.57b; 10. Penn State $1.4b; 11. LSU $1.32b; 12. FLORIDA $1.16b; 13. Oregon $1.13b; 14. Auburn $1.11b; 15. (tie) Nebraska and Washington $1.06b; 17. Texas A&M $1.05b; 18. Miami $950m; 19. Wisconsin $922m; 20. Florida State $819m; 21. Iowa $806m; 22. Indiana $696m; 23. Arkansas $690m; 24. Michigan State $668m; 25. Clemson $674m; 26. Utah $638m; 27. Ole Miss $638m; 28. Minnesota $629m; 29. South Carolina $597m; 30. Illinois $568m Other SEC schools: 34. Missouri $500m; 40. Kentucky $400m; 59. Vanderbilt $250m; 60. Mississippi State $248m BARRING A MIRACLE, THE PROTECT COLLEGE SPORTS ACT IS DEAD FOR NOW Today is the deadline for the SEC and Big Ten to come to some sort of an agreement that will allow the Protect College Sports Act to move forward in the Senate. As of Wednesday night there was nothing to indicate that the two conferences have reconciled their differences with the bill in its current state. Even with the support of the SEC and Big Ten, it would be a rush to get this bill to a vote on the Senate floor before the August 7 recess. If the bill can’t get to the Senate floor prior to the recess, the earliest it will be debated and voted on is September. Even then the window to get the bill passed is open briefly. With midterm elections pending the first Tuesday in November, nothing of significance is going to take place in October. Essentially, barring a miracle of walking on water proportions, the Protect College Sports Act is months from being enacted. In other words, the current wild, wild west culture will continue indefinitely. MEANWHILE, THE NCAA DOING ITS FORREST GUMP … The NCAA just did a Forrest Gump – “Stupid is as stupid does” – when it suspended Tennessee linebacker Arion Carter two games for a $427 flight that was paid for by an agent. At the time of the flight, Carter was considering the NFL Draft, but he was injured in a workout, decided to stay in school and returned to Knoxville. The $427 was repaid and the agent was subsequently fired. No big deal so you would think in light of the out of control climate of college sports. Certainly, the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, has far greater issues to deal with than a no harm, no foul $427 flight. Right? Well, wrong. The NCAA claims this is an improper benefit. How could that be when we have kids getting $2 million NIL deals before they have even strapped on a jock to play their senior season in high school? Rather than take on a high profile case that involves thousands upon thousands of dollars, the NCAA chose to assert its authority in a case in which there was no measurable gain. The NCAA already has serious perception issues. Choosing to flex its muscles over $427 that was paid back only makes the NCAA look like a mean teacher at Romper Room. OLE MISS SUES TWO FORMER PLAYERS WHO TRANSFERRED TO LSU Ole Miss has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against former players Princely Umanmielen and Devin Harper, who followed Lane Kiffin to LSU. Umanmielen and Harper signed contracts with Ole Miss that included buyouts, then broke the contracts within 90 days, transferred to LSU and signed new deals. Ole Miss is suing the two for buyout money, a case it will probably win. Until there is legislation in place that regulates the transfer portal schools have very few options to protect their rosters. Enforceable contracts with buyout clauses do offer a measure of protection but there are no guarantees of success in court. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: You can’t blame Big Ten commissioner Tony Petiti for taking his shots at the Southeastern Conference. Three straight national championships by Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana have earned him that right. It’s like the late, great Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up” and right now the Big Ten can back it up. Petiti isn’t the only one railing on the SEC. Bret Bielema, the Illinois coach who was such a disaster when he piloted Arkansas (29-34 overall, 11-29 SEC in five years) told the folks at Big Ten Media Days that the “SEC wants to live in 2005 forever.” Nico Iamalaeava, touted to be the second coming of Peyton Manning by the Tennessee faithful but now toiling at UCLA, even got into the act with an offhand challenge to the notion that the SEC is better top to bottom because there are no easy weeks. He said, “I think there’s definitely a lot of tough SEC teams that every week it’s going to be a game, but I feel the same way in the Big Ten. Yeah, I think strength of schedule can matter at times, but I think we all pretty much have similar strengths of schedule.” Translation: Our schedules are every bit as tough as yours.” In Tampa last week, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey offered five College Football Playoff teams from the league in 2025 as proof the league is not in a state of decline. Sankey reeled off impressive numbers such as the SEC leading every league on the planet in any sport in attendance per game (80,000) and the SEC claiming 40 percent of the television viewership for all four of the power conferences. Those 13 SEC national championship teams since Florida kicked Ohio State to the curb, 41-14, in 2006 matter not to the Big Ten, which is using Big Ten Media Days as a what have you done for me lately platform. SEC purists can talk all they want about how these things go in cycles but the folks from the Big Ten were saying the same thing about the SEC during that remarkable run of seven straight from 2006-12. For the SEC to reclaim bragging rights it has to stop the Big Ten cycle in its tracks starting this year, which is easier said than done. “The SEC is not the best until it wins the title again,” Paul Finebaum said Wednesday on ESPN. A week ago, Mr. College Football Tony Barnhart, said he sees the SEC with a lot of good teams but questioned are one or two great teams? That’s a fair question. Texas has assembled a roster that seems capable of running the CFP table and as long as Kirby Smart is the coach at Georgia, the Bulldogs will likely be on everyone’s short list as a potential national champ. Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, LSU and Alabama look good on paper but are any of them as good as Texas or Georgia? Can any of them – Texas and Georgia included – make the leap from good to great? The only way the SEC is going to stick a sock in the mouth of its many Big Ten critics is for one or more of its teams to prove it on the field by navigating through the College Football Playoff field to win it all. Until that happens, talk of SEC superiority is meaningless.

Florida's Jadan Baugh (13) is a truly elite running back (Photo by Chris Spears) Recently, the Tennessee Vols secured a commitment for 2027 from running back David Gabriel Georges (5-11, 220, Quebec, Canada/Chattanooga, TN Baylor Prep). He didn’t come cheap. There are reports it took a $2 million NIL commitment from the Vols to outbid Ohio State to secure Georges. He is an instant millionaire who hasn’t played a single snap at a position where high school success habitually fails to replicate at the collegiate level where very fast tacklers hit with runaway train impact. It can easily be argued that the best three running backs in the country for 2026 all ply their trade in the Southeastern Conference – Ahmad Hardy (Missouri), Kewan Lacy (Ole Miss) and Jadan Baugh (Florida). None of them were ranked among the top 10 backs out of high school but they have proven their worth on the field. Each of them will earn $1 million or more in NIL money this year, money that was earned with blood, sweat, tears and serious contact. Proof that this is as tough a position as there is in all of football is at the NFL level where the average back lasts 2.5-3 years. Hardy, Lacy and Baugh are proven commodities who strap it on and get the job done, often spectacularly. Georges has yet to play a college football game and he's going to play in the SEC where very fast defenses arrive at whoever has the football in the nastiest of moods. Georges will be paid as if he is the second coming of Herschel Walker. If he isn't the next Herschel or even the equal of Hardy, Lacy or Baugh then someone in Tennessee has more money than brains. Georges will arrive at Tennessee with a can't miss label. Hardy, Lacy and Baugh arrived without anything close to the hype. Hardy was a 3-star recruit out of Lawrence County, Mississippi where he was ranked the No. 107 running back in the country. He signed with Louisiana-Monroe where he gained 1,351 yards as a freshman then transferred to Missouri where he gained 1,651 yards and finished second in the country in rushing last year. His two years of college football have produced 3,000 yards and 29 touchdowns. Lacy originally signed with Missouri out of Lancaster, Texas where he was the No. 16 high school running back. After being sparingly used at Mizzou, he transferred to Ole Miss where he gained 1,567 yards and scored 24 touchdowns last season. Jadan Baugh was ranked No. 24 nationally out of Columbia High School in Decatur, Georgia. He has led the Gators in rushing each of the last two seasons, cracking the 1,000-yard mark as a sophomore last season, the first UF back to do that since Kelvin Taylor did it in 2015. In two seasons he has 1,843 rushing yards for 15 touchdowns, 37 receptions for 243 yards and three more TDs. Hardy, Lacy and Baugh are the most distinctive backs from the recruiting class of 2024. Here is a look at the top ten running backs for each year in the recruiting classes from 2018-24. Of the 60 running backs who made up the top 10 in each class that were NFL draft eligible from 2018-23, only 18 were selected and just four were taken in the first round. 2018 Top 10 1. Zamir White (Georgia): 2,043 yards in three seasons; drafted fourth round in 2021 by Las Vegas Raiders 2. Lorenzo Lingard (Miami): Started at Miami, three seasons at Florida, finished at Akron. 3. Ricky Slade (Penn State): Two subpar seasons at Penn State. 4. Jaelin Gill (Ohio State): Moved to wide receiver, transferred to Boston College, then to Fresno State. 5. James Cook (Georgia): Gained more than 1,500 yards and caught 67 passes. Drafted second round by Buffalo. 6. Brian Snead (Ohio State): One season at Ohio State, two unremarkable years at Arkansas State. 7. T.J. Pledger (Oklahoma): Gained more than 1,300 yards, three seasons at Oklahoma, one at Utah. 8. Ricky Person Jr. (NC State): Gained 1,922 yards in four seasons. 9. Harold Joiner (Auburn): Six unremarkable seasons, three at Auburn, three at Michigan State. 10. Keaontay Ingram (Texas): Gained 2,722 rushing and caught 67 passes in three seasons at Texas, one at Southern Cal. Drafted 6th round by Arizona. Other top 50 backs from 2018: 22. Dameon Pierce (Florida) gained 1,806 yards and caught 45 passes. Drafted in the fourth round by Houston. 2019 Top 10 1. Trey Sanders (Alabama): Three seasons at Alabama, two at TCU produced 750 rushing yards. 2. John Emery Jr. (LSU): Five seasons at LSU, one at Texas-San Antonio produced 1,127 rushing yards. 3. Jerrion Ealy (Ole Miss): Gained 2,235 yards and caught 67 passes in three seasons. 4. Zach Charbonnet (Michigan): Blossomed at UCLA after two seasons at Michigan. Finished with 3,346 yards and 75 catches. Drafted second round by Seattle. 5. Devyn Ford (Penn State): Four seasons at Penn State, two at Notre Dame, 751 rushing yards. 6. Mark-Antony Richards (Auburn): One season at Auburn, three at UCF, 418 rushing yards. 7. Noah Cain (Penn State): Gained 1,396 yards and caught 46 passes in three seasons at Penn State, two at LSU. 8. Tyrion Davis-Price (LSU): Gained 1,744 yards in three seasons at LSU; drafted third round by San Francisco. 9. Austin Jones (Stanford): Gained 2,337 yards and caught 105 passes in three seasons at Stanford, two at Southern Cal. 10. Isaiah Spiller (Texas A&M): Gained 2,993 yards and caught 74 passes in three years at A&M; drafted fourth round by the Los Angeles Chargers. Other top 50 backs from 2019: Nay’Quan Wright (No. 23) gained 2,060 yards and caught 67 pasess in six seasons, four at Florida and two at South Florida .... The best running back in 2019 was Breece Hall (No. 31), who gained 3,933 yards and caught 82 passes in three seasons at Iowa State. Drafted in the second round by the New York Jets. 2020 Top 10 1. Zach Evans (TCU): Gained 1,999 yards in three seasons, two at TCU, one at Ole Miss. Drafted in the sixth round by the Los Angeles Rams. 2. Bijan Robinson (Texas): Gained 3,410 yards and caught 60 passes in three seasons. Drafted in the first round by the Atlanta Falcons. 3. Demarkcus Bowman (Clemson): Three uneventful seasons, one at Clemson, one at Florida, one at UCF produced 175 rushing yards. 4. Tank Bigsby (Auburn): Gained 2,906 yards and caught 62 passes in three seasons. Drafted in the third round by Jacksonville. 5. MarShawn Lloyd (South Carolina): Gained 1,621 yards, two seasons at South Carolina and one at Southern Cal. Drafted third round by the Green Bay Packers. 6. Jase McClellan (Alabama): Gained 1,891 yards and caught 40 passes in four years at Bama. Drafted sixth round by Atlanta. 7. Kendall Milton (Georgia): Gained 1,839 yards in four years. 8. Chris Tyree (Notre Dame): Four seasons at running back at Notre Dame and one season at wide receiver at Virginia produced 1,204 rushing yards and 106 receptions. 9. Jahmyr Gibbs (Georgia Tech): On the shortest of lists for best back from 2020. Two seasons at Georgia Tech and one at Alabama produced 2,132 rushing yards and 104 receptions. Drafted first round by Detroit. 10. Roydell Williams (Alabama): Played four years at Alabama, two at Florida State, gaining 1,264 yards. Other top 50 running backs from 2020: Blake Corum (No. 11) led Michigan to the 2023 national championship. Ran for 3,738 yards and scored 58 touchdowns. Drafted third round by the Los Angeles Rams … EJ Smith (son of Emmitt, No. 15) played six seasons, four at Stanford, two at Texas A&M, gaining 969 yards. Devon Achane (No. 16) ran for 2,376 yards and caught 65 passes in three years. Drafted third round by Miami. 2021 Top 10 1. TreVeyon Henderson (Ohio State): Ran for 3,761 yards and caught 77 passes in four seasons. Drafted second round by New England. 2. Donovan Edwards (Michigan): Gained 2,251 yards and caught 86 passes in four seasons. 3. Will Shipley (Clemson): Ran for 2,747 yards and caught 85 passes in three years. Drafted fourth round by Philadelphia. 4. Camar Wheaton (Alabama): Redshirt one year at Alabama, two at SMU produced 732 rushing yards. 5. L.J. Johnson (Texas A&M): Ran for 1,111 yards in two seasons at A&M, two at SMU and one at California. 6. Evan Pryor (Ohio State): He’s at Florida now after two seasons at Ohio State and two at Cincinnati that produced 1,087 rushing yard and 28 receptions. 7. Armoni Goodwin (LSU): In two seasons at LSU and one at UAB ran for 420 yards. 8. AJ Green (Arkansas): He is at Oklahoma State now after running for 964 yards in four years at Arkansas. 9. Corey Kiner (LSU): Spent one season at LSU, then three at Cincinnati. Gained 2,882 yards and caught 32 passes. 10. Prophet Brown (Southern Cal): Moved to corner where he played four seasons. Other top 50 running backs from 2021: Phil Mafah (No. 11) gained 2,887 yards and caught 58 passes in four years at Clemson. Drafted seventh round by Dallas. 2022 Top 10 1. Nick Singleton (Penn State): Ran for 3,461 yards and caught 102 passes in four seasons. Drafted fifth round by Tennessee. 2. Branson Robinson (Georgia): Spent two seasons at Georgia, one at Georgia State where he gained 555 yards. 3. Le’Veon Moss (Texas A&M): Ran for 1,767 yards in four seasons at Texas A&M. 4. Jam Miller (Alabama): Ran for 1,596 yards and caught 40 passes in four seasons. Drafted seventh round by New England. 5. TreVonte Citizen (Miami): Played one game in 2023. 6. Jovantae Barnes (Oklahoma): Transferred to Kentucky after four years and 1,281 rushing yards at Oklahoma. 7. George Pettaway (North Carolina): Transferred to James Madison after two years at UNC. Has run for 1,268 yards and caught 39 passes. Will be Billy Napier’s lead back in 2026. 8. Kaytron Allen (Penn State): Ran for 4,180 yards and caught 70 passes in four years at PSU. Drafted sixth round by Washington. 9. Omarion Hampton (North Carolina): Ran for 3,565 yards and caught 73 passes in three seasons. Drafted first round by the Los Angeles Chargers. 10. Gavin Sawchuk (Oklahoma): In three seasons at Oklahoma and one at Florida State he ran for 1,463 yards and caught 36 passes. Transferred to Northwestern. Other top 50 running backs from 2022: Ollie Gordon (No. 15) ran for 2,920 yards and caught 80 passes in three seasons. Drafted sixth round by Miami … Trevor Etienne (No. 20) began at Florida then transferred to Georgia after two seasons. Gained 2,081 yards and caught 62 passes. Drafted fourth round by Carolina … Dylan Sampson (No. 31) ran for 2,492 yards and caught 40 passes in three years. Drafted fourth round by Cleveland … Quinshon Judkins (No. 31) spent two years at Ole Miss, one at Ohio State. Ran for 3,785 yards and caught 59 passes. Drafted second round by Cleveland … Anthony Hankerson (No. 45) spent two years at Colorado and two at Oregon State. Ran for 2,721 yards and caught 70 passes. 2023 Top 10 1. CJ Baxter (Texas): Transferred to Kentucky after three years, 855 rushing yards and 36 catches at Texas. 2. Justice Haynes (Alabama): Now at Georgia Tech after two seasons at Alabama and one at Michigan which produced 1,473 rushing yards and 30 receptions. 3. Rueben Owens (Texas A&M): A redshirt junior in 2026, he has run for 1,090 yards and caught 26 passes. 4. Richard Young (Alabama): Transferred to Colorado as a redshirt junior after 234 rushing yards at Alabama. 5. Jeremiyah Love (Notre Dame): Ran for 2,882 yards and caught 63 passes in three seasons at Notre Dame. Drafted first round by Arizona. 6. Jeremiah Cobb (Auburn): Back for his senior season at Auburn. Has 1,283 rushing yards in three seasons. 7. Kedrick Reescano (Ole Miss): Senior at Arizona. Two seasons at Ole Miss and two at Arizona have produced 755 rushing yards. 8. Dante Dowdell (Oregon): Started at Oregon, transferred to Nebraska and then to Kentucky. Now he’s at Georgia with 1,264 rushing yards in his career. 9. Mark Fletcher (Miami): Senior at Miami. Three previous seasons have produced 2,313 rushing yards and 34 receptions. 10. Roderick Robinson II (Georgia): Transferred to UAB as a redshirt junior after 234 rushing yards at Georgia. Other top 50 running backs from 2023: Cam Cook (No. 20) spent two seasons at TCU then transferred to Jacksonville State where he gained 1,659 yards in 2025. Transferred to West Virginia … Treyaun Webb (No. 23) transferred to Appalachian State after three injury-filled years at Florida in which he gained 256 yards … Hollywood Smothers (No. 26) transferred to Texas after gaining 1,552 yards and catching 47 passes in three years, first at Oklahoma, last two at North Carolina State … London Montgomery (No. 36) transferred to East Carolina after a redshirt year at Penn State. Gained 1,101 yards in two seasons at ECU. 2024 Top 10 1. Taylor Tatum (Oklahoma): Transferred to Michigan where he will play DB. Ran for 277 yards in two seasons at Oklahoma. 2. Nate Frazier (Georgia): Has 1,618 rushing yards and 28 receptions in two years. 3. Kevin Riley (Alabama): Redshirt sophomore at Alabama with 254 rushing yards and 21 catches to his credit. 4. Jordan Marshall (Michigan): Ran for 952 yards last year and has 1,052 for his career. Third year junior at Michigan. 5. Caden Durham (LSU): Third year junior with 1,258 rushing yards and 44 receptions. 6. Jordan Lyle (Miami): Third year junior with 508 career rushing yards. 7. Jerrick Gibson (Texas): Transferred to Purdue after two seasons and 529 yards at Texas. 8. James Peoples (Ohio State): Transferred to Penn State after two years and 541 rushing yards at Ohio State. 9. Kedren Young (Notre Dame): Injured last year. Ran for 116 yards in 2024. 10. Peyton Lewis (Tennessee): Transferred to Virginia after two seasons and 629 rushing yards at Tennessee. Other top 50 running backs from 2024: 13. Daniel Hill (No. 13) has run for 345 yards in two seasons at Alabama … K.D. Daniels (No. 15) spent two years at Florida (197 rushing yards) then transferred to Wake Forest … Kewan Lacey (No. 16) spent one year at Missouri then transferred to Ole Miss where he gained 1,671 yards (24 touchdowns) and caught 31 passes last year … Dwight Phillips (No. 19) has gained 243 yards in two years at Georgia … Chauncey Bowens (No. 22) has run for 584 yards in two seasons at Georgia … Jadan Baugh (No. 24) has run for 1,843 yards with 37 receptions in two years at Florida … Isaac Brown (No. 42) has run for 1,104 yards and caught 45 passes in two seasons at Louisville.

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning: There is such a thing as paralysis by analysis, which some football experts translate to mean you can manipulate the numbers to say anything you want. In the case of the Florida Gators, the numbers are quite revealing. The last 15 years have produced only nine winning seasons and six losers. Florida has posted four losing seasons in its last five, cratering in 2025 when the 4-8 Gators ranked near the bottom in the SEC in most significant statistical categories. Here is a look at what the Gators did but for comparison’s sake, offensive numbers of both Georgia Tech (former GT offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner is now the Florida OC) and Tulane (formerly coached by Jon Sumrall, now Florida’s head honcho), plus the defensive numbers of Kentucky (DC Brad White now Florida’s DC) and Tulane. 110: That is the total number of wins for the Gators in the 15 years since 2011 under head coaches Will Muschamp (2011-14), Jim McElwain (2015-17), Dan Mullen (2018-21) and Billy Napier (2022-25). In the 21 years prior to Muschamp, the Gators won 210 games, more than any team in the country. Steve Spurrier (122 wins, 12 years), Ron Zook (23 wins, 3 years) and Urban Meyer (65 wins, 6 years). 79: That’s the total number of losses for the Gators since 2011. During that stretch the Gators posted six losing seasons. From 1980-2012 the Gators never had a sub-.500 season. Spurrier, Zook and Meyer lost a combined 57 games in their 21 years at the helm. 6: That is the number of losing seasons for the Gators since 2013. Muschamp, McElwain and Mullen each had one losing season while Napier had three in his four years on the job. Prior to 2013 you have to go back to 1979 to find the last sub-.500 season (0-10-1). 6.6: That is the average yards per pass attempt for the Gators in 2025 with DJ Lagway at quarterback and Billy Napier calling the plays. Anything less than 7.0 yards per attempt is a combination of too conservative and lack of offensive imagination. As the offensive coordinator at Georgia Tech last year, Buster Faulkner had a passing game that averaged 8.7 yards per attempt. Jon Sumrall’s Tulane offense averaged 8.1 per attempt. 14: That is the number of interceptions thrown last year by Lagway. At Georgia Tech, Faulkner’s two quarterbacks (Haynes King and Aaron Philo) threw seven. In 14 games at Tulane, Sumrall’s quarterbacks threw nine picks. 4.27: That is Florida’s yards per rushing attempt even with Jadan Baugh averaging 5.32 for his 220 carries that produced 1,170 yards. The rest of the Gators gained 471 yards on 164 carries, a dismal 2.94 per carry. As a team, the Gators scored 10 rushing touchdowns with Baugh accounting for eight of them. Faulkner’s Georgia Tech offense averaged 5.54 per carry while scoring 31 touchdowns. At Tulane, Sumrall’s offense average 4.52 per carry but scored 26 touchdowns on the ground. 10.49: That is the average per catch by all of Florida’s pass receivers last year, a very pedestrian number. At Georgia Tech, Faulkner’s receivers averaged 12.41 yards per catch. Sumrall’s Tulane receivers averaged 13.1 per catch. 148: That is the number of offensive plays that went for 10 or more yards for Florida in 2025, 14th in the Southeastern Conference. There were seven plays that went for 40 or more yards. Faulker’s Georgia Tech offense produced 195 plays or 10 or more yards with 18 that went for more than 40. At Tulane, Sumrall’s offense produced 220 plays that covered 10 or more yards with 11 going for more than 40. 341.3: That is Florida’s average yards per game in 2025, 13th in the SEC and 104th in the nation. Georgia Tech averaged 460 yards per game, 11th in the nation. Tulane averaged 411.4, 38th nationally. 21.6: That is the average points per game by the 2025 Gators, dead last in the SEC and tied for 111th nationally. Georgia Tech averaged 32.2 per game (26th nationally) while winning nine games. Tulane won 11 games while averaging 27.8 per game (68th nationally) with a quarterback who didn’t show up on campus until August. 34.21: The 2025 Gators converted 34.21 percent of their third downs, 15th in the SEC and 116th nationally. Georgia Tech converted 46.1 percent of its third downs, good for 23rd nationally, while Tulane turned 42.1 percent of its third downs into first downs, 43rd in the nation. 20: Florida gave up 20 sacks for -106 yards, a tribute to the leadership of All-American center Jake Slaughter in the middle of the O-line. Georgia Tech gave up nine sacks for -61 yards, the third best total in the nation. Center Harrison Moore followed Buster Faulkner to Florida. At Tulane, Sumrall’s Green Wave allowed 12 sacks (tied for 7th nationally) for -80 yards. 153.92: That’s the number of rushing yards the Florida defense gave up per game in 2025 (14th in the SEC and 77thnationally). Brad White’s Kentucky defense gave up 134.25 yards per game, which ranked 10th in the SEC and 45thnationally. Tulane allowed 122.57 per game on the ground, 29th nationally. The Gators gave up 47 running plays that covered at least 10 yards (5th in the SEC, 26th nationally). Kentucky gave up 49 (8th in the SEC and tied for 26thnationally). Tulane gave up 61 long rushing plays (80th nationally). 3.99: Florida gave up 3.99 yards per carry (54th nationally) and 21 rushing touchdowns. Kentucky allowed 3.66 per rush attempt (31st nationally) and 20 touchdowns. Tulane allowed 3.58 per attempt and 18 touchdowns. 8.0: Florida allowed opponents to average 8.0 yards per pass attempt, 115th nationally. Opponents threw 13 TDPs. Kentucky also gave up 8.0 per pass attempt and 16 TDPs. Tulane gave up 7.7 per attempt (106th nationally) and 23 TDPs. The Gators gave up 106 pass plays of 10 or more yards, 68th nationally. Kentucky allowed 108 of 10 yards or more (76th). Tulane gave up 153 pass plays of 10 or more yards, 7th nationally. 10: The Gators intercepted 10 passes (62nd nationally). Kentucky intercepted 12 (42nd nationally) and Tulane 15 (tied for 14th nationally). 44.38: The Gators allowed opponents to convert 44.38 percent of their third downs, 15th in the SEC and 119th in the nation. Kentucky gave up 40.13 percent of its third down conversions (77th in the country) while Tulane got off the field 39.57 percent (67th nationally) of the time. 26: The Gators sacked quarterbacks 26 times for -141 yards, 11th in the SEC and 68th nationally. Kentucky had 25 sacks (74th nationally) for -177 yards. Tulane’s defense got to opposing quarterbacks 36 times (14th nationally) for -266 yards. 17: The Gator defense forced 17 turnovers last season (7th in the SEC, 59th nationally). Kentucky forced 14 turnovers (11th in the SEC, 91st nationally). Tulane forced 25 turnovers (9th nationally). 153: That is the number of opponent plays good for 10 or more yards in 2025, ranking 6th in the SEC and 42ndnationally. Kentucky gave up 157 plays of 10 or more yards, 8th in the SEC and 46th nationally. Tulane gave up 201 plays of 10 or more yards, tied for 129th nationally. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Kyle Whittingham, who was Urban Meyer’s defensive coordinator at Utah before becoming the Utes head coach for 21 years (177-88 including a 13-0 in 2008), is the 66-year-old head coach hired to restore a measure of integrity to Michigan. Whittingham made a name for himself as a coach who would make the best of what he had rather than take short cuts. He is a wise voice in a time when college football seems to be spiraling out of control. At Big Ten Media Days Monday, Whittingham offered the following suggestions: (1) A super league of 48-60 top college football teams; (2) make college football a minor league of the NFL; (3) players become employees; (4) salary cap; and (5) a commissioner with absolute authority to enforce the rules. Speaking to Rich Eisen of ESPN, Whittingham said that on its current trajectory, college football as we know it today is unsustainable. His suggestions might seem a bit radical overall, but a number of them make absolute good sense, such as points 3-5. The only way to get costs under control is to make players employees so that a salary cap can be implemented. A commissioner with absolute authority and unmatched integrity is a necessity because the NCAA do it by committee approach is a total disaster. A super league sounds very good on paper but it will take away too many rivalries and end traditions that are part of the fall fabric of college football. While it is true more than half the Division I programs have zero chance to ever win a national championship, a super league will go a long way toward many of them giving up football altogether. Since the big boys of college football are already relying heavily on talent developed by the lesser programs, it’s not worth taking the chance of putting any of them out of business.

Florida expects to nearly double The Swamp’s annual revenue, from $75 million to $145 million, largely by doubling its premium seating from roughly 8% of capacity to somewhere north of that. By Buddy Martin GatorBaitMedia.com Back in 1992, when Steve Spurrier was still just the wise-cracking quarterback-turned-coach that nobody in the SEC could out-talk, he cooked up a phrase that did more for Florida football than any offensive coordinator ever could. “The Swamp is a place where only Gators get out alive,” he said, and just like that, the ugliest little concrete bowl in Gainesville had a personality — hot, sticky, dangerous, and proud. Now Florida wants to spend $1.45 billion finding out if that swagger survives contact with an architectural rendering. The university spent nearly a decade — a decade! — deciding whether to tear the old girl down or fix her up before finally announcing this summer it’ll renovate rather than replace. Ben Hill Griffin Stadium turns 100 in 2030, which in stadium years is somewhere between “historic landmark” and “somebody call a structural engineer,” and it’ll get exactly that kind of attention: $500 million just to catch up on deferred maintenance, plus a full modernization, ADA compliance work, and — because nothing in college athletics happens anymore without a revenue angle — a fresh crop of premium seats to sell to the highest bidder. That makes it the most expensive college football stadium project in history, officially vaulting The Swamp into the billion-dollar neighborhood that used to be reserved for NFL owners with nothing better to do with their money. Here’s the part that’ll make old-timers wince: Adding handrails to the aisles, which the lawyers say is non-negotiable, means widening every aisle in the building, which means yanking out lower-bowl seats that have held three generations of Gator backsides. You can’t so much as make the place wheelchair-accessible without reshuffling the whole seating bowl. That’s not construction — that’s surgery. Athletic Director Scott Stricklin, to his credit, understands what’s actually at stake here isn’t just plumbing and premium boxes. “We did not want to come up with a plan that when you looked at the stadium, you weren’t sure where it was,” he said. “We think it’s one of the most unique venues in college football.” He’s right. Say “The Swamp” and everybody from Baton Rouge to Boise knows exactly which orange wing walls you’re picturing. That’s worth protecting, and to Florida’s credit, the plan keeps the shell — the bones, the identity, the postcard — while gutting the guts. So no, this isn’t LSU’s Death Valley getting bulldozed for a shopping mall. It’s more like your grandmother’s house getting a $1.45 billion kitchen remodel while somebody promises the front porch will look exactly the same. Wider concourses. More bathrooms — a genuine miracle, if you’ve ever stood in a Swamp restroom line during a TV timeout. Hot food for the first time, which means Gator fans can finally eat something besides a hot dog that’s been sweating since the National Anthem. New video boards, new audio-visual tech, the works. And then there’s the real headline hiding under all the construction jargon: Florida expects to nearly double The Swamp’s annual revenue, from $75 million to $145 million, largely by doubling its premium seating from roughly 8% of capacity to somewhere north of that — likely more than a thousand new club seats and suites stacked in a new two-story structure perched right on top of the existing bowl. Stricklin didn’t dress it up much. Florida could’ve done a cut-rate, code-compliant refresh for half the money, he said, or gone all-in on revenue and skipped the fan-experience stuff. Instead: “It’s either a go big or go home kind of moment for The Swamp.” They went big. Naturally — this is the SEC, where “go home” isn’t in the vocabulary. Which brings us back to Spurrier’s old line, because that’s really the only question that matters here. The Swamp got its menace from being uncomfortable — for everybody. Eighty-eight thousand people packed into a sweatbox with no mercy for opposing teams or, frankly, for the home folks either. Now you’re adding a two-story luxury deck with climate control and better food than most of Gainesville’s restaurants. You’re smoothing out the rough edges that made the place feel like a threat instead of a venue. There’s a real chance the loudest sound in the new Swamp on a Saturday afternoon isn’t 90,000 voices — it’s a suite full of donors clinking wine glasses over the shrimp cocktail while Georgia drives down the field. Here’s my answer, for what it’s worth: The Swamp isn’t dying, it’s just getting a little bit of Botox. The bones — the orange wing walls, the sunken bowl, the fact that visiting quarterbacks still have to walk out of that tunnel into a wall of noise — none of that is going anywhere. The suits upstairs will pay their money and sip their cocktails, sure, but there’s still 80-some-thousand people in that lower bowl who didn’t get the memo that football’s supposed to be polite now. If the board of governors signs off this fall like everybody expects, Florida will spend three years and a billion and a half dollars proving that tradition and modernization can share a blueprint. But let’s be honest about one thing, Gator Nation — with those aisles widened, those handrails installed, and a country club bolted onto the roof, getting out alive from The New Swamp might just mean surviving the concession line for a craft cocktail. The visiting team, though? They’ll still have to get through the fourth quarter first.

I have never been a fan of Congressional intervention into college sports, but considering the futility and ineptitude of the NCAA I’ve come to the conclusion that like it or not, Congress has to be involved. The NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, hasn’t the faintest idea what to do to reform college sports before they implode so it has turned to our elected officials in Washington to come up with solutions. To their credit, senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) have mustered up support on both sides of the aisle for a bill that takes a stab at regaining control. The Protect College Sports Act is an attempt to halt an impending disaster by injecting practical, common sense rules and regulations. The bill in its current form won't go before a Senate vote until September at the earliest and then it will have to be approved by the House of Representatives and sent to the president for signing into law. Months are almost sure to go by before the bill becomes reality. The bill has its share of flaws, which is why the Southeastern Conference is opposed to the legislation in its current form. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has responded with 10 tweaks to the bill that if implemented would result in the full scale support of the most powerful conference in all of collegiate athletics. Sankey and the SEC have made it perfectly clear they are willing to go it alone if their suggestions are ignored. This was considered nothing more than saber rattling by many in the national media attending SEC Media Days in Tampa last week. They think the idea of the SEC breaking away is preposterous and that this is simply an attempt to bully Congress into favorable legislation. After his state of the SEC speech a week ago, Sankey spent the next three days denying that the SEC is on the verge of declaring independence from the NCAA. The Commish knows that leaving the NCAA is impractical at the moment since there are no what to do next plans in place offering guidelines in the event further there is escalation of the problems currently kneecapping college sports. Every revolution begins with an idea. Ideas evolve into debates in which grow into a movement leading to consensus agreement that radical steps for change are necessary. Leading up to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, writers such as Thomas Paine called for revolution. Delegates from the 13 British Colonies met and sent envoys to England to ask King George to compromise what they believed to be harsh and unfair taxation. The compromise request bought time for planning what next in the event the king refused. When the king responded negatively, independence declared and with it came a plan to fight. This is not all that dissimilar to what the Southeastern Conference is doing. If nothing else, Sankey’s 10 suggestions buy time. Once Congress returns from its August recess it will have to decide whether to reword the bill to accommodate the SEC or reject the suggestions altogether. Either way, it gives the SEC time to plan out what is next. If there is compromise and the SEC accepts the provisions of the Protect College Sports Act there is time to see how the new rules are enforced and/or if they impede the league from doing business. If there is no compromise, things will drag on, again allowing the SEC enough time to plan for the next move. The Protect College Sports Act may be just what the NCAA needs, but given its history for choosing poorly and selectively enforcing rules, this legislation is probably just a band-aid when a tourniquet is required to stop the bleeding. The NCAA desperately tries to hang on to the notion of the student-athlete. That concept probably works down in Divisions II and III where scholarships are limited (Division II, non-existent Division III) and there is zero in the way of NIL money. Athletes can be held accountable for their work in the classroom, but sports in Division I are a full-time job. This is professional sports, something for which the NCAA was never prepared. It is also a multi-billion dollar enterprise that requires shrewd business people making decisions. The academic people who lead the NCAA are mostly clueless when it comes to sports and even less savvy when it comes to business. Although Sankey spent last week insisting that the SEC is committed to remaining in the NCAA he is smart enough to read the tea leaves. The NCAA and college sports as we know them are incompatible but leaving the NCAA is a rather complicated proposition. To its credit, the NCAA runs outstanding championship tournaments and events (college football is not one of them). The NCAA also has television contracts for the multi-billion dollar NCAA basketball tournament. For the non-football playing Division I schools, the basketball money is vital to their existence. There are leadership and timeline questions that have to be answered. Is there a leader with the business savvy and the sports knowledge capable of being the CEO? Who would pay for setting up the new organization? How long would it take to set up a new organization so it could operate efficiently from day one? Would the non-football schools be willing to join a football-centric organization? These are only a few of the questions that will have to be answered before the NCAA is put out of its misery. A more practical solution would be to make this a step-by-step process that starts with football being granted autonomy to operate completely outside the web of the NCAA. Let football establish its own organization with its own rules, a plan for enforcement and a commissioner with absolute authority. Send this up as a trial balloon to work out the kinks while turning it into an organizational model that can be replicated if and when all the other sports elect to jump the NCAA ship. There is also the possibility that an organization is the long term solution for football while the other sports remain under the NCAA umbrella, but this has its own set of complications. Football would probably bring in record amounts of revenue but would fair shares of the football money be spent to support the other sports that can’t make it on their own? Whenever the NCAA tries to defend itself after it gets caught doing something stupid it is quick to point out that membership is voluntary. However true that may be, those voluntary members have to know that an organization that continues to fight losing battles in court eventually will go belly up. At the moment there is no Plan B in place for that moment when the NCAA collapses. Right now all we have is Greg Sankey and the SEC serving as a voice in the wilderness. There has not been a call for an all-out revolution just yet. Revolutions are never spur of the moment overnight occurrences. They begin with a single voice crying out while circulating brand new ideas. At SEC Media Days last week, Greg Sankey was the voice in the wilderness. He didn’t call for the abolishment of the NCAA nor did he confirm the SEC is in the midst of making plans to become a self-governing model. He is too shrewd to tip his hand but the hint was loud and clear. When it comes to international business there is this old saying that if America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. When it comes to college sports, Greg Sankey has that same effect. Last week in Tampa he tossed a rock into the water. The ripples reached everyone from the networks to the conference commissioners to the school administrators, putting them all on alert that change is in the works. It’s not a matter of if but when.

Rueben Chinyelu a reason Gators are preseason No. 1 (Photo by Chris Spears) If the late, great Al McGuire were alive today and able to evaluate the rosters of the teams that seem to have the best chance of winning the 2027 NCAA basketball championship, his no-brainer pick would be Florida for one specific reason – the Gators have the aircraft carriers. In Al-speak, aircraft carriers are big, strong guys who control the paint, protect the rim and limit the other team to one-and-done possessions. The Gators have three of them, all returning starters who would have been drafted if they had chosen the NBA Draft rather than return for a chance to win a second national title in three years. Depth comes in the form of four who measure out at 7-0, 6-11, 6-10 and 6-9. If he were still around, Al McGuire would call that an entire fleet. Nearly every media outlet that covers college basketball seriously has the Gators on top of their preseason rankings with good reason. No one in the country can match Florida’s size, talent and experience up front. Lots of teams have good guards but guards can only take you so far. If you don’t have the aircraft carriers who can dominate in the paint, the road to glory is very, very difficult. You can have a bad day shooting the three if you have big guys who dominate the offensive glass. Because the Gators were the No. 1 offensive rebounding team in the country a year ago, they were able to cover for a lot of sins on the nights when shooters couldn’t find the ocean from the end of the pier. Florida has finished top six nationally in defensive efficiency each of the last two seasons per the kenpom.com analytics. Florida’s big guys limit scoring in the paint and if the opponent isn’t lighting it up from beyond the arc, there are a lot of one-and-done possessions. That’s not the way to beat the Gators. There are a few schools with more size than Florida’s starting threesome of Tommy Haugh, Alex Condon and Rueben Chinyelu, but no team can match the productivity and experience. That sets the Gators apart. The three of them have combined to play 317 games with 198 starts. Combined, they have 3,077 points, 2,177 rebounds, 485 assists, 202 steals and 345 blocked shots. Haugh (17.1 points, 6.1 rebounds) was a first team All-SEC and second team All-America selection in 2025-26. Condon (15.1 points, 7.5 rebounds) is a two-time All-SEC second team selection. Chinyelu (10.9 points, 11.2 rebounds) was a first team All-SEC last year when he won the SEC Defensive Player of the Year and the Naismith National Defensive Player of the Year Awards. Condon and Chinyelu were starters on Florida’s 2025 NCAA championship team, while Haugh was an invaluable sub off the bench capable of playing all three front court positions. Haugh showed his versatility last season when he moved to the wing, but in a typical game he will play outside plus do a stretch at the high post and also down low. Condon struggled with his outside shot a year ago, but he developed a little push shot that was effective from 10 feet in to become a dominant force in the second half of the season. Chinyelu is a physical presence defensively whose offensive game continues to evolve. The possibility of injuries and foul trouble led Todd Golden to add depth in the offseason. With only Viktor Mikic returning as a backup, Golden signed international blue-chippers Domen Petrovic and Arturas Butajevas plus true freshman Jones Lay. Mikic has only played 21 games in his career and Lay is that unknown freshman quantity, so Petrovic and Butajevas were critical additions in the offseason. Petrovic averaged 16.1 points and 6.1 rebounds while shooting 36.3 percent on 3-pointers last year in Slovenia while Butajevas averaged 13.9 points and 6.8 rebounds while playing in Spain. Florida was also very big last year, but Golden didn’t have the depth nor the versatility that he will have this year when the four big guys off the bench are added into the equation. Size and front court production were rarely a problem in a 27-8 season in which six of the eight losses were by a combined 18 points. Most of the issues a year ago had everything to do with guard play, and in particular, shooting from the 3-point line. After losing one of the great backcourts in recent college basketball memory – Walter Clayton Jr., Alijah Martin and Will Richard, who all play in the NBA, and sixth man Denzel Aberdeen, who transferred to Kentucky – Golden started transfers Boogie Fland (from Arkansas) and Xaivian Lee (from Princeton) with Urban Klavzar and Isaiah Brown as the chief backups. Fland and Lee both had big moments, but they never provided 3-point shooting with any consistency and they never seemed to be an exact fit. Fland shot 24 percent from three while Lee shot 29.2 percent, both well below their pre-Gator levels. Klavzar won SEC Sixth Man of the Year, averaging 9.6 points while shooting 40.6 percent from three. Brown, a highlight reel dunker, shot a streaky 34.6 percent from three. Fland will be back this year as the lead guard. He is an elite defender and is expected to regain his lost shooting touch. He will be paired with Aberdeen, who has transferred back to UF from Kentucky. Aberdeen’s request for a waiver to play a fifth year of college basketball is pending, but bet the farm that either the NCAA grants his request or else he will win in the courts. Aberdeen is most comfortable as the off guard who can do a spell at the point several minutes per game. He is an excellent defender who played critical minutes in Florida’s run to the 2025 national championship. Klavzar and Isaiah Brown are back proving experienced depth and production. AJ Brown, Isaiah’s older brother, spent the 2026 season rehabbing from shoulder surgery. He brings experience plus firepower to the table as both a shooter and driver. CJ Ingram is an X-factor. He’s still growing and can legitimately play three positions (both wings and the high post). He will see a lot of action as Haugh’s stunt double and in full court press situations. Reports are that Alex Lloyd and the first year jitters are a thing of the past. He is a point who is also a microwave shooter capable of going off on serious streaks. Alex Kovatchev got in late last year after transferring from Sacramento so he spent the year learning the offense and defense. Minutes will be hard to come by but he brings size and experience to the wing. A key word in all this evaluation is experience. Florida’s starting five will have a combined 492 games played with 291 starts. If the Gators don’t have the most experienced starting five in the country, then they certainly are on the short list. Off the bench the Gators have 299 games of college basketball experience with another 131 games (98 starts) of international experience. That is 791 college basketball games with 361 starts, plus there is the international experience. On paper, this is the deepest and most experienced college basketball roster since Kentucky’s 1996 national championship team that eventually sent nine players to the NBA. That team’s top 11 combined to play in 898 games through that season with a collective 388 starts. In building this year’s Florida roster, Todd Golden has put together a team with so many interchangeable parts that it can adjust to any style of play by opponents and survive a case of happy whistles by SEC zebra crews. The Gators are loaded. Probably the only fair description is scary good. THE 2026-27 FLORIDA ROSTER Starters Tommy Haugh (6-9, 215, SR): 100 games played, 41 starts; career 1,111 points, 586 rebounds. Alex Condon (6-11, 236, SR): 107 games played, 70 starts; career 1,181 points, 762 rebounds. Rueben Chinyelu (6-10, 260, SR): 110 games played, 87 starts; career 785 points, 829 rebounds. Boogie Fland (6-3, 185, JR): 56 games played, 53 starts; career 689 points, 229 assists. Denzel Aberdeen (6-5, 200, SR): 119 games played, 40 starts; 911 points, 203 assists. The bench Urban Klavzar (6-1, 190, SR): 61 games played; career 418 points, 39.1 percent 3-pointers Isaiah Brown (6-5, 210, JR): 52 games played; career 217 points, 101 rebounds. CJ Ingram (6-7, 210, SO): 21 games played; career 46 points, 50 percent 3-pointers. Viktor Mikic (6-11, 260, JR): 21 games played; career 22 points, 16 rebounds. Alex Lloyd (6-4, 190, SO): 17 games played; career 21 points, 13 rebounds. Alex Kovatchev (6-5, 200, RJR): 52 games played, 16 starts; career 206 points, 147 rebounds. AJ Brown (6-4, 210, RSR): 65 games played, 46 starts; career 731 points, 37.1 percent 3-pointers Domen Petrovic (6-9, 225, JR): 94 international games played, 70 starts; 1,041 points, 491 rebounds Arturas Butajevas (6-10, 220, FR): 37 international games played, 28 starts; 482 points, 254 rebounds Jones Lay (7-0, 240, FR): True freshman

The oldest truth in coaching: Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. “I think fear. I hate to say that. I wish I could control it, but there’s still a piece of me,” he said. “Fear of failure. Fear of letting people down. That drove me in my career." By Buddy Martin GatorBaitMedia.com Urban Meyer won three national championships doing what nobody could really see. He pulled scholarships as threats. He told kids they were too soft. He built dynasties on the back of fear — his own, and the fear he planted in twenty-year-olds who wanted to be great badly enough to let him plant it there. He said as much himself, sitting across from an interviewer this past summer, sounding less like a coach defending his legacy and more like a man finally telling the truth about how the sausage got made. “The strongest forms of motivation are love, fear and hate,” Meyer said. “Only one is sustainable. “Fear and hate are powerful motivators. Powerful. Have I used those? Oh, hell yeah. “‘I’m going to pull your scholarship. You’re too soft. You can’t do this.’ I would try to motivate that person toward greatness,” he admitted, describing the fourth-and-one version of himself that most of us watched from the press box and some never fully understood. “Is fear and hate a great motivator? It’s about as good as it gets,” Meyer said. “But it’s not sustainable. Love is the only sustainable motivator.” A coach basically comes from the word “stagecoach” — Jim Tressel’s word, from The Winners Manual — hauling folks from where they are to where they want to be. The methods, though, vary wildly. As we are going to see with new Gator coach Jon Sumrall, methodology TBD — although Urban has admitted he sees a lot of a younger version of himself in Sumrall. They all do it differently, if not similarly. Lou Holtz drove with fear: “You eliminate those who are not motivated.” Dabo Swinney handed Clemson players poker chips in 2015 and told them to push them to the middle — All In, literally. Steve Spurrrier once got himself arrested and cuffed at South Carolina practice just to make a point about mistaken identity. Corny? Sure. Effective? Also sure. But Urban Meyer and Pete Carroll cracked the real code: Competition. Meyer opened Florida practices hot and fast to spike the pulse. Carroll made everything at USC a contest, because — unlike homework — competition is fun. At clinics, it works better than any speech. Still, none of it beats the oldest truth in coaching: Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. The flip side of that is pseudo rejection and using fear as a weapon. That’s the coach’s confession. Here’s the cost of it. Ask Meyer today which one still runs his engine and he doesn’t reach for the poetic answer. “I think fear. I hate to say that. I wish I could control it, but there’s still a piece of me,” he said. “Fear of failure. Fear of letting people down. That drove me in my career. “It’s probably why I had the shelf life. Some coaches are coaching until they’re 75 years old. I could never have done that,” Meyer said. “My body couldn’t take it.” That’s the part people miss about Urban Meyer’s career, and about coaching in general. Fear wins championships. Fear also collapses a man twice on a sideline in Gainesville and sends him to a hospital in the middle of a season he’s supposed to be winning. Fear built the machine and fear is what finally shut it down. Meyer knows it now the way you only know these things looking backward — that the very thing that made him great is the same thing his own body eventually rejected like a bad transplant. But love. Love doesn’t come with a shelf life. Which brings us to the guy who played quarterback for Meyer at Florida and never once, as far as I can tell, ran from the truest word in that whole equation — even when using it cost him something. Tim Tebow has spent more than a decade being asked to explain Aaron Hernandez, his old Gator teammate turned murderer turned tragedy, and for years Tebow gave the company answer: heartbreaking, sad, prayers to the families. Safe. Understandable. This past November, on Andrew Schulz’s podcast, something cracked open instead. “It’s so hard for me to talk about it for a lot of reasons,” Tebow said, visibly emotional. “One, because we loved him very much.” Pressed further, he didn’t walk it back. “He’s family, you know, it’s tough. I loved him very much.” Think about what that actually is. Not nostalgia. Not a highlight-reel memory of a tight end who could run like a wide receiver. Tebow is describing present-tense love for a man who did unspeakable things, who broke a family in Boston beyond repair, who left behind a trail of pain that a Heisman-winning quarterback’s compassion cannot undo and was never going to undo. And still — love. Still family. Still, as Tebow put it in a separate interview with Graham Bensinger, an obligation to “paint him accurately” rather than let the world reduce a complicated, struggling young man to a headline. That’s not a soft answer. That’s the hardest answer there is. It would be far easier for Tebow to disown the association, to let Hernandez become somebody else’s tragedy. Instead he carries a version of the weight Meyer talked about — “I think there’s a weight that I probably feel,” Tebow admitted, wondering aloud whether he could have done something more. That’s love refusing to check out even when the story gives it every excuse to. And here’s where Meyer’s whole thesis snaps into focus. Fear and hate are transactional. They work only as long as the threat is live — the scholarship still hangs in the balance, the coach is still standing on the sideline glaring at you. The minute the threat is gone, so is the motivation. That’s why Meyer’s body finally said no more at 55, while old rivals kept grinding into their seventies on a gentler fuel. Love doesn’t need the threat to still exist. Aaron Hernandez has been dead since 2017. The national championship they won together is nearly two decades old. There is no scholarship left to pull, no fear left to leverage, no reason on paper for Tim Tebow to still feel anything for a convicted murderer except relief that the chapter is closed. And yet the love is still operating, present tense, all these years later — which is precisely the definition Meyer gave it. Sustainable. The one that doesn’t run out. Urban Meyer coached with fear because it worked, and it worked right up until it didn’t — until his own body cashed the check fear had been writing for twenty years. Tim Tebow, meanwhile, has spent his whole post-football life proving the other half of his old coach’s equation, whether he set out to or not: That love for a broken teammate, for a broken world, doesn’t have a shelf life at all. That’s the real lesson buried in all that championship hardware from Gainesville and Columbus. The trophies came from fear. But the thing that actually lasted — the thing that’s still standing on a podcast couch fighting back tears over a guy who can’t say thank you for it anymore — that came from love. Urban Meyer figured that out the hard way, with his body as the receipt. Tim Tebow never needed the lesson. He was living it the whole time.