“You wouldn’t know you’re going against a pro until you go against O’Cyrus (Torrence). He does it the right way.” – Gervon Dexter. By KYLE CURTIS GatorBaitMedia.com The biggest thing O’Cyrus Torrence had to endure since moving from Louisiana to Florida wasn’t necessarily blocking 312-pound Gervon Dexter, or even the heat you’re thinking of. Torrence claims the biggest difference between Gainesville and his old hometown of Lafayette, LA is people here don’t like spicy food. Other than that, football has been football for Torrence as he has been a standout to the staff during offseason preparation. Torrence approaches every day as a pro and just another opportunity to get better. “He’s big, he’s twitchy,” said offensive line coach Rob Sale. “Football comes easy to O’Cyrus.” Torrence’s stats speak for themselves as he has yet to give up a sack in his collegiate career of over 1,000 snaps. Torrence credits his success to his time at dedicating to correct technique and continuing to work on his craft. While receiving a lot of preseason recognition, Torrence is not getting caught up in the media and continues to keep his head down and work. “It feels good,” said Torrence on his preseason recognition during recent UF Media Day. “But it makes me want to work harder to make me deserve it. I still feel like I got more to unlock to be at my best.” With Torrence, Ethan White and Michael Tarquin all holding the trenches for the Gators, the sky is the limit for this group. The constant theme of everyone who spoke at media day was the attention to detail Napier adheres to, similar to what Torrence referred to when discussing his habits with technique and work ethic. One of Napier’s standards that he has set is that all players wear the same color socks. An emphasis this offseason was for the team to become one unit rather than offense, defense and special teams. Napier emphasized that in order to be a well-oiled machine, all the parts must be working to complement each other. “Complementary football,” is a common term around the team. “He’s going to work you hard. But he’s going to love you too,” said Torrence. “It’s more than just football. It’s like a family deal.” Napier has instilled these thoughts not only into Torrence onto the whole team. When practice first began under Napier, fights broke out and it wasn’t uncommon for teammates to have to break each other up. Now, as Torrence referred to, teammates are willing to compete against each other but also want to help each other get better with the same end goal in mind. “I have seen so many changes from the first practice to now,” said Torrence. “Now we can practice together, and it is smooth.” Back to the socks. While it may seem like a small, irrelevant detail, it symbolizes more. It symbolizes this team becoming one unit that moves in unison. “You won’t see a blue sock out there,” said Gervon Dexter. Napier likes white socks. Sure enough, on the first day of Fall camp, all players were in their white socks like what was said just 24 hours before by his players. Torrence embodies the sock symbol of what it is like to take each rep and every little detail seriously. This is what separates good teams from great teams, he says. “You love playing for coaches like him (Billy Napier). He’s calm but very stern in his approach and pays attention to detail,” said Torrence. “He makes you want to play as hard as you can for him.”

A few thoughts to jump start your Friday morning: PHIL STEELE HAS UF NO. 2 MOST IMPROVED TEAM FOR 2022 Although he has Florida ranked 32nd in his preseason top 40 poll, Phil Steele has the Gators are his No. 2 most improved team for 2022. His No. 1 is Southern California, which, considering it plays in the Pac-12 and has what Steele rates as the 49th toughest schedule, should have very little problem surpassing last year’s 4-8 record. In Steele’s evaluation, Billy Napier “steps into a pretty good situation with talent to fit his schemes.” There are a lot of folks who are revered as college football experts who would believe otherwise but Steele’s position ratings make a pretty good case for Napier. Here is how Steele rates Florida’s talent position by position in the Southeastern Conference: Quarterbacks 5; Running Backs 10; Receivers 9; O-line 6; D-line 6; Linebackers 3; Defensive backs 4; Special Teams 9 Nationally here are Steele’s position rankings for the Gators: Quarterback 21; Running Back 49; Receivers 38; O-line 21; D-line 36; Linebackers 25; Defensive backs 11; Special Teams 40 At this point, the Gators are a mystery team. Steele’s No. 32 national ranking fits right in with those of Lindy’s (31) and Athlon (33). That’s not a bad place to start a season with a new coach and coming off a losing year. With a front loaded schedule that includes six of the first seven games in The Swamp and the only roadie against Tennessee, which has figured out all sorts of creative ways to lose to the Gators 16 times in the last 17 years, a 6-1 or even 7-0 start isn’t beyond question. That kind of start would lend itself to an eight or nine win season, perhaps even better if a break or two is caught along the way. Since the Gators went 6-7 last year an improvement of two or three wins would be a nice place to start a new coaching era, and it doesn’t exactly make Steele’s second most improved prediction seem outrageous. Meanwhile Matt Hayes thinks UF has some issues After pointing out that Florida’s best running back is transfer Montrell Johnson; the best O-lineman is transfer O’Cyrus Torrence and the best wide receiver is transfer Ricky Pearsall, Hayes writes in Saturday Down South, “Stop me when you think this is a healthy SEC program.” Citing a source close to the Florida football program, Hayes says Florida’s first level of players “can win games,” but beyond that “there are guys that shouldn’t even be [on the roster].” No doubt a lot of Florida fans will take offense to those observations but then again, there are Florida fans who take offense to any criticism of the Gators. None of us like disparaging remarks about our team, but there is a time when we have to face the cold, hard facts. The Florida program has been dysfunctional for years and a good bit of the dysfunction centers around recruiting. Talk until you are blue in the face about how you can forget all those stars given out by recruiting services once a kid gets on campus, but if your team isn’t recruiting at a high level, then odds are you aren’t winning at a high level. Urban Meyer left behind a stacked roster for Will Muschamp but four years later Muschamp was gone. For one thing, he didn’t win enough, but you can point to these two things as the biggest reasons he didn’t: (1) Poor choice of assistant coaches on the offensive side of the ball and (2) poor recruiting of offensive players. Muschamp left behind an NFL defense for Old Yeller, but Jim McElwain’s rotten choice of assistant coaches and bad recruiting did him in after three years. When Muschamp’s defenders left for the NFL, the cupboard was bare. The assistant coaches were bad and so was the recruiting. What Dan Mullen did his first three years – 29 wins and three New Year’s Six bowl games – has everything to do with brilliant offensive schemes, but recruiting suffered, in large part, because Mullen never pushed the recruiting envelope and he had bad assistant coaches. Bad assistants. Bad recruiting. That’s the recurring theme since 2011. Enter Billy Napier. His coaching staff has all the earmarks of the best from top to bottom of any Florida staff since 2008. He’s made recruiting a priority but he’s not taking players just because they have a certain number of stars after their names or because they’ll jack up the team ratings for the recruiting services. He’s prioritized those who fit what he wants to be the profile of every UF player: Kids who go to class and do their assignments, kids committed to earning a college degree, kids committed to being the best possible teammate and friend to everyone on the roster, and kids who are willing to do all the small things, knowing that if you master the small things, you’ll likely do very well in the larger things. Hayes may be a bit off in his evaluation of the transfer portal, which is here to stay. The portal should never be the foundation of a football program, but there is a time and a place for plug and play types who can provide experience and talent where experience and talent are lacking. Alabama, which is predicted by nearly every expert to win the 2022 national championship, will feature Georgia Tech running back transfer Jahmyr Gibbs, Georgia wide receiver transfer Jermaine Burton, Louisville wide receiver transfer Tyrell Harrell and Vanderbilt transfer left tackle Tyler Steen. All four will start for Alabama as will linebacker Henry To’oTo’o, the leading returning tackler who transferred in last year from Tennessee. Lest we forget, Alabama’s recruiting classes have never dipped outside the top three, so the assessment that Florida having three top players who came in via the portal is a teensy bit harsh. But it’s understandable the point Hayes is trying to make: Without the players from the portal Florida football might be in dire straits this season and perhaps for a couple more years. Napier is making recruiting high school kids a priority, but he won’t neglect the portal either. He’s going to do whatever is necessary for the Florida Gators to match talent with the best teams in the Southeastern Conference. From a pure talent standpoint, the Gators aren’t in the top third of the SEC this year. That doesn’t mean the Gators can’t or won’t win football games in 2022. It just means there are more speed bumps on the road the Gators will be taking than there are at schools like Alabama, Georgia and a couple others. SEC football/basketball/baseball news Alabama : Cameron Latu, Bama’s only experienced tight end, will miss some of training camp with an undisclosed injury. Alabama has three freshman tight ends on the roster. Arkansas: Tight end Dax Courtney is retiring from football after repeated injuries ... The Razorbacks will play Louisville in their first game of the Maui Invitational in November. Also in the tournament are Arizona, Cincinnati, Creighton, Ohio State, San Diego State and Texas Tech. Auburn: Quarterback TJ Finley was arrested and charged with attempting to elude police who were trying to stop him for failing to wear a helmet while driving his moped … On their trip to Israel, the Auburn basketball team beat Israel’s under-20 national team 117-56. Georgia: Former Georgia offensive lineman Clay Webb has transferred to Jacksonville State. Webb was the No. 1 center in the nation in 2019 ... Former Georgia running back Lars Tate has passed away. Tate, who gained 3,017 yards in his career at UGa, was 56 years old. Kentucky: Kentucky’s basketball trip to The Bahamas will include games against the Dominican Republic National Select team, Tec Monterrey, Carleton University and The Bahamas National Select Team … $1.2 million for flood relief in the state was raised when UK basketball held an open practice with an instrasquad scrimmage. LSU: Veteran running back Kevontre Bradford is no longer listed on the roster. Mississippi State: Relief pitcher KC Hunt, the 12th round pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates, rejected the Pirates off and will return to Mississippi State for the 2023 season. Missouri: Buffalo transfer offensive lineman has been ruled ineligible for the 2022 season by the NCAA. Ole Miss: Wide receiver Jonathan Mingo calls Southern Cal transfer tight end Michael Trigg the next Kyle Pitts. To that HBC Lane Kiffin said, “Mingo’s not exactly a personnel director. I wouldn’t call him [Trigg] Kyle Pitts now. He’s got a lot of talent. He does have height, weight, speed, hand combination to be a great player but he’s got a long ways to go.” South Carolina: HBC Shane Beamer says running back MarShawn Lloyd is “on a mission and has really stepped up his game this summer.” Lloyd gained 228 yards and scored one touchdown in 2021. Tennessee: Former Clemson running back Lyn-J Dixon has transferred to Tennessee. In four years at Clemson, Dixon ran for 1,420 yards 13 touchdowns, caught 20 passes for 190 yards and one TD … Tennessee has sold 58,871 season tickets for the 2022 season. Texas A&M: Jimbo Fisher says in year five he has the Aggies “right where we want to be.” The Aggies are expected to start the season ranked somewhere between fifth and eighth nationally … Former Aggie edge rusher Jahzion Harris is transferring to Rutgers. Harris will need a waiver from the NCAA to play in 2022. Vanderbilt: HBC Clark Lea says the Commodores are further along in 2022 than they were last year, and even further along than they were in spring practice. Where SEC schools rank among Phil Steele’s toughest schedules for 2022 1. Auburn; 2. Mississippi State; 4. Arkansas; 5. Vanderbilt; 6. LSU; 11. Texas A&M; 17. South Carolina; 19. FLORIDA; 27. Tennessee; 29. Alabama; 30. Ole Miss; 35. Kentucky; 37. Missouri; 58. Georgia Broadcast news … Former Florida coaches will be staying busy this fall. Dan Mullen will be working as a studio analyst for ESPN while Urban Meyer will be working once again with Fox Sports. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Senator Tommy Tuberville, formerly the head football coach at Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech and Cincinnati, wants to introduce federal legislation to reel in NIL. Tubs is right about one thing: NIL is totally out of control and something should be done. Should the feds do something about it? I trust our congress to do something sensible about like I trust the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, to come up with anything that resembles a good plan. So what should be done? Maybe the better question is what can be done? I don’t have the answer to either of those questions, but it is my belief that the first place to start is for the Division I football schools to secede from the NCAA to start their own organization complete with a commissioner who has broad powers to run the sport like a business. That will probably ruffle the feathers of a lot of academics but it’s my experience that for every John Lombardi who actually understood college sports there are several dozen Kent Fuchs or Charles Youngs who know nothing at all. Let someone who knows and understands business get with other businessmen and legal minds to figure out a set of rules that will make NIL work the right way for everyone. And, while he’s about it, let the commish reduce the ridiculous NCAA rules about recruiting and eligibility that require every school to have a mountain of compliance people. Make the rules simple enough for everyone to understand and the consequences for breaking the rules harsh enough that no one will do it twice. I have no faith in our federal government to do anything but gum up the works. I gave up on the NCAA not long after I learned there was no such thing as the Easter Bunny.

“I was taught as a child, anybody can talk and say they are a leader,” Gervon Dexter emphasized. “I like to lead by example and if I’m doing it the right way, they (teammates) have no choice but to do it the right way. So that’s how I like to go about it.” (Chris Spears photo) By LOREN MEADOWS GatorBaitMedia.com Football Analyst Gervon Dexter is looking at here and now. A stalwart on the Gator team that one would expect from a veteran player in the SEC. With team success being the ultimate goal, Dexter most wants to let his attitude and play on the field to resonate and influence his teammates. As the Billy Napier Era begins, Gervon has bought into the philosophy of his new head coach and staff and is looking forward to a new mindset for himself and his teammates. Looking to become more of a leader, Dexter credits Napier for allowing each individual player to find their space on the team. “He (Napier) teaches each individual to be a leader in his own way, no matter who the guy is, because anyone can lead,” said Dexter. By his pure massive size, he can get your attention. Standing 6-foot-6 at 312 pounds, Dexter’s stature alone should command the respect of most of his Gator teammates. However, with the arrival of Napier, Gervon has chosen to let the path he walks guide his mates to the common goal. “I was taught as a child, anybody can talk and say they are a leader,” Dexter emphasized. “I like to lead by example and if I’m doing it the right way, they (teammates) have no choice but to do it the right way. So that’s how I like to go about it.” In his first two seasons as a Gator, Dexter has accounted for 70 total tackles, 6.5 tackles for loss, three sacks and one interception. While he has improved each year, Dexter is looking to take a huge leap forward in 2022. The arrival of Sean Spencer as the defensive line coach is one reason. Spencer has worked with several star NFL defensive lineman, including Leonard Williams and Dexter Lawrence for the New York Giants. Under Spencer, Williams and Lawrence accounted for over one-fourth of the Giants total sacks (40) last season. Their highest sack total since 2014. Dexter says that Spencer has “affected my game in a month, (so) imagine what four or five months will do.” Dexter added, “He has tuned me up like a car, just helped my overall game” Along with a new tune-up, Gervon Dexter will also carry added responsibility of being a new father in 2022. Gervon Dexter Jr. arrived on May 9, 2022. Weighing in at 7 pounds. 4 ounces, the younger Dexter outweighed his father at birth. Gervon Sr. was born three weeks premature weighing only 4 pounds. His father is extremely grounded and understands what this new addition means to him as a player and a person. “Everything I do now is trying to set his life up for the better,” said the proud new daddy. “I can’t explain how good it’s been for me to be a father.” Dexter added that one of the hardest things for him to do as a father so far was leaving his young son for fall camp. But daddy’s got to work, because junior needs a new pair of shoes. As important as fatherhood is to Gervon Dexter Sr. his time as a Florida Gator has meant a lot to him as well. The Lake Wales native chose Florida over Georgia, Texas A&M, and Alabama. As the state of Florida’s top recruit in 2020, the opportunity to stay close to his home in Polk County was a major reason for his commitment to the Gators. “Just to represent the state of Florida – it meant a lot for me to be able to come here,” Dexter continued, “It means a lot for me to get to wear that logo every Saturday, it’s a big reason why I am here.” Gervon Dexter Sr. will take the next three weeks or so to work and improve to a point that could see him gain the attention of NFL coaches and executives by season’s end. Pro Football Focus rates Dexter as the fifth best lineman and a possible high draft pick should he chose to enter the 2023 NFL Draft. Gervon Dexter, however, prefers to ignore the talk, focus on his team and work to get better. “It’s a blessing but I don’t pay much attention to it.”

Here are some other guys who not a lot of people are talking about but can be key contributors for the Gators come gameday. By KYLE CURTIS GatorBaitMedia.com We are coming to the end of a hectic offseason for Florida football. Amidst all the noise and media coverage of what Billy Napier has described as like an “NFL East team in the South,” the Gators have had a successful offseason in securing one of the top head coaching targets in Napier while also producing a lot of hope on the recruiting trail. A lot of the media has also been talking about players such as Anthony Richardson, Brenton Cox and Gervon Dexter to name a few, and rightfully so, but here are some other guys who not a lot of people are talking about but can be a key contributor for the Gators come gameday. Jalen Lee, Defensive Lineman Gervon Dexter stated at media day that he may line up more on the end of this year in Patrick Toney’s scheme. That must mean one thing, Toney must be confident with who they have lined up at tackle and nose. That is where Jalen Lee enters the conversation. A 6-foot-2, 299-pound defensive lineman out of Watson, LA, Lee has real potential to see his role grow this year. A four-star recruit coming out of high school, Lee is now entering his junior year with a total of 11 career tackles. Look for that number to grow this year as Lee showcases what he is capable of while holding down a spot in the trenches. Coach Sean Spencer (Aka Coach Chaos) also praised Lee’s work ethic and technique at media day when asked about someone who is going to make an impact. “I think Jalen Lee is a technician … we expect him to ascend from the Spring,” said Spencer. Princely Umanmielen A bit more experienced than Lee, Princely Umanmielen appeared in all 13 games at defensive end last season while collecting 17 tackles, 1.5 sacks and 1 forced fumble. The 6-foot-5, 245-pound product from Manor, Texas, has mainly seen action at the defensive end position. He has the ability to thrive in Patrick Toney’s scheme that will highlight his ability to pass rush and get quarterback hurries. “Both these guys had really good springs,” said Spencer said about Lee and Umanmielen. “I think Princely has not even reached the ceiling on where he can go.” Expect both Umanmielen and Lee to come on in a big way for the Gators this year. Michael Tarquin Ocala native Michael Tarquin has been turning heads this offseason. He was praised by his offensive line coach, Rob Sale, for his consistent work ethic and attitude towards getting better and working on his craft this offseason. “Name a player that does it the right way and Michael Tarquin comes to mind,” said Sale. “I expect big things from him this year.” This is high praise from Sale who has had a history of working in the National Football League with the best lineman in the country. The 6-foot-5, 320-pound Tarquin is going into his redshirt-sophomore season. He started in two of the 12 games he appeared in last season while primarily playing left and right tackle. After an impressive offseason for Tarquin, expect him to be a focal point and one of the leaders of this offensive line. “He’s going to answer the bell, he’s a stud when it comes to attitude,” said Sale. “I’ll take 20 Michael Tarquin’s every day.” Expect Tarquin along with O’Cyrus Torrence and the rest of the Gator's big guys to establish themselves early in the season en route to Billy Napier’s run-based offense. “If you can’t win the trenches, you can’t win in this league,” said Sale. With star players in Richardson, Cox, Dexter and others, the Gators are also hoping to fill out the rest of the roster. It’s no secret they need depth. Look for these guys’ names in the midst of an Anthony Richardson backflip celebration.

“It's one thing to know.It's another thing to do. I think we've got to take the hearing, and we've got to do the doing.” -- Billy Napier. By BUDDY MARTIN GatorBaitMedia.com Editor This is the time of year when we amateur shrinks in the media attempt to psychoanalyze head football coaches based on a 20-minute conversation with 30 people, a dozen questions and bag of chips. Sometimes I think we’d be better off with just a copy of Gen. Bob Neyland’s handbook of Seven Maxims, a palm reading and a GPS pointing to Tuscaloosa. There have been 29 coaches at Florida. We media people feel compelled to go and kick the tires. I’ve kicked a lot of them, having attended 11 previous first-day introductions. So I asked myself, how much difference has there been? In words, declarations and intentions, not that much. Moods and behavior have been similar. Messages about the same. The three most impactful I remember were Ray Graves in 1960, Steve Spurrier in 1989 and Urban Meyer in 2004. What I remember I liked most about them: --Graves’ promise to improve the offense and make Florida competitive again. And win more. --Spurrier’s intention to rip up the Astroturf, bring back the blue jerseys and put Miami back on the schedule. (And win.) --Urban Meyer’s grasp of Florida’s tradition, especially under Spurrier, and a commitment to build on it. (And The Plan To Win). I think we see a theme here. I felt a connection with Graves, Spurrier and Meyer – energy, a sense of freshness and excitement. So what do we have now in Billy Napier? I’m still trying to get a handle on what I saw and heard Tuesday. To paraphrase the captain in Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a success to communicate.” Not a failure, but success. And BTW, the rest of that quote by actor Strother Martin in the chain gang scene of the 1967 classic, was: “Some men you just can’t reach.” In my opinion, aside from the Neyland Maxims about fundamentals -- mistakes, breaks, tackling, the kicking game, etc. – I think the new head coaches’ job is to lay out a plan, sell hope and communicate like they were the Phi Beta Kappa in Strother Martin’s leadership class on chain gangs. On those counts, Billy Napier came up aces. Especially in communication. It seems like Napier has already reached the vast majority of his team – at least 20 of the 21 I’ve interviewed. He has told the players what to expect. Now he must tell the fans and supporters, using the media as his conduit. And beginning Sept. 3 he must start showing everybody. There is a lot to like about Napier and, in time, I hope we can eventually sense that total connection. There are good signs, such as the student body tickets being sold out and the recruiting uptick that occurred last week. Yet a tiny bit of reluctance hovers over The Swamp. Part of it may because many of us who prematurely anointed Dan Mullen as statue-worthy fell prey to our own hype and ignored the time-worn mandate: “Don’t fall in love on the first date.” Thus there is guarded optimism. However, there is also every reason to wax optimistic about Napier’s long-term future. He is a bold leader, very much in charge, and as one of his assistant coaches said, “speaking wisdom into his players every day.” And we thought Urban Meyer had a Plan. Billy Napier apparently doesn’t take a breath without thinking about it first. “He has a plan for every second of the day,” said one of his assistant coaches. We shan’t start breaking down the offense, defense, three-deep roster, etc. just yet. As Napier proceeds with his final 20 or so days of fall camp, new names will emerge and a few nicks and dings will no doubt surface in what he promises will be “a hard camp for everybody” with “designed difficulty.” He bragged on his squad’s intentional manner, willingness to learn and ability to adapt to a new system and new ways. Now it’s time to walk the walk. “It's one thing to know,” he emphasized. “It's another thing to do. I think we've got to take the hearing, and we've got to do the doing.” Watching Billy Napier shape his team physically, emotionally, sociologically and intelligently has been quite fascinating – almost like a new dad mentoring his kids in post-puberty, about to let them flee the coup. You’ve heard the old adage “it takes a village” to raise a child? Apparently, it “takes an army” to coach Napier’s football team. Almost, it seems, one person for every player. That could turn out to be a huge asset. Among those stirring the fires is Strength & Conditioning Coach Mark Hocke, who makes the Energizer Bunny look like a piker. He’s actually had access to the squad longer than Napier because of off-season training. And as one person said (favorably), “He never had a bad day and when he wakes up it’s like he’s had eight cups of coffee and four Red Bulls.” Hocke is also an eternal fountain of metaphors, similes and homilies, including the one about toughness: “You can’t train gladiators with pillow-fighting.” It’s not just about strength, or even speed, he says, and he calls his style more “holistic.” And, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” The little things become the big things. Like how you put on your socks. And what color they are. By now you’ve probably heard about the death of blue socks among Gator football players. They gotta be white. Everybody’s! This is the new directive on discipline about detail which mandates uniformity on Billy Napier’s team. The new coach wants his players to close ranks as people as well. “Propinquity,” he said as a challenge to the media. “Look it up.” We did. MERRIAM-WEBSTER: The state of being close to someone or something; proximity. "he kept his distance as though afraid propinquity might lead him into temptation" But I think the one he liked better meant “nearness, closeness or kinship.” I did not see any references to the prohibition of blue or white socks promoting that cause, but no doubt it does. Three minor points of assessment for Coach Napier. 1.) Get used to the idea that you’ll need to feed the media monster regularly to keep from getting eaten alive yourself. Remember there is a short shelf-life for coaches at Florida. And one reason is that many of them failed to grasp the true function of the working press. They also failed to realize this is one of the biggest and most competitive media contingents of any state. And they NEVER go away. Also, I would heed you to never lie or purposely mislead the press. But you don’t need that, Coach Napier, because they say you are a man of character, integrity and honesty. 2.) When trouble starts brewing, step up and address it to the media ASAP before it festers. It may become painful, but the pain won’t last as long. 3) And one more thing: Although you didn't specifically mention your goal of winning, as did Graves, Spurrier and Meyer, we can figure out that's the desired end result of your brilliant scheme and detailed plan. Maybe you might want to throw that in the convo for emphasis now and again. Also this piece of advice: Even though you were raised close to Athens and grew up watching Georgia, please don’t use that term of endearment (to them) “Dawgs” around Gator fans, as you did at SEC Media Days. It’s nauseating to them. That’s not the kind of propinquity they’re looking for, coach.

By FRANZ BEARD GatorBaitMedia.com To the casual observer, Billy Napier is probably the ultimate control freak. He’s got every second of his every day planned out. He has a purpose in everything he does, in everyone he has hired, in every interaction with one of his players. There is a right way of doing things and there is a wrong way to do things. Players are expected to do the right thing all the time. There is no gray area. “The gray area is the enemy,” Napier said Tuesday at Florida’s media day prior to the opening of fall camp. “That’s what I would tell you. We want to have very structured routine process for our players. I think players develop confidence from that. I think routine and great preparation, that breeds confidence. When I know what to expect, I execute my plan.” There is a reason for eliminating the gray areas. He doesn’t want players in limbo. He wants them to see things clearly so they can make the right decision. Right decisions, Napier believes, make for better people. Better people make better football players. In simplistic terms, Napier sets the following standard for his players: (1) Committed to being good students who go to class and do the work assigned to them; (2) have an unwavering goal of earning a meaningful college degree; (3) make it a point to become better every day in every way; (4) be a better teammate; (5) be a better friend to your teammates. That is a blueprint for being a better person. It is also a foundation for being a better football player. If the hearts and minds of the players are won, it will carry over to football and the players will put in the hard work to be the best football player possible. Shrinks and analysts might say this is a tough love approach. Offensive line coach Rob Sale says it’s an approach that works. “A player will run through a wall for you if they know that you care about him,” Sale says. Care begins with discipline. It could be argued that the previous coaching staff cared about the players, but for reasons unknown there was no demand for discipline, and it showed in the loss column. Go back to 2020. There was “Shoe-gate” when the LSU game turned on a dime when Marco Wilson picked up the shoe of an LSU player and heaved it. The ensuing 15-yard penalty extended the drive that led to a game-winning 57-yard field goal. A week later in the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta, an offside penalty helped Alabama score its first touchdown of the game. On a play in which the defense got an incomplete pass on third down there was a personal foul that gave Bama a first down that led to a touchdown. Bama went up 28-10 in the first half because Kyree Campbell eased up before he got to the sideline. There was a substitution infraction that nullified a good play by the defense on third and eight. Instead of forcing a long field goal, Bama had third and three which it converted to extend a TD drive. Florida ended up losing the game 52-46. Last year against Alabama, a missed extra point forced the Gators to go for two in an attempt to tie the game at 31-31. On the two-point attempt, a blown assignment resulted in a missed block and a failed conversion. Florida lost 31-29. Two weeks later against Kentucky, the Gators were assessed 15 penalties, the worst of which was a hold that nullified a 10-yard run by Dameon Pierce that would have given UF a first down on the UK 14. UF had to settle for a field goal attempt that was blocked due to a blown assignment. UK ran it back for what proved to be the game-winning TD. Florida lost 20-13, a game that the defense only gave up one TD. Things got worse as the season progressed and nearly all of Florida’s problems could be rooted in a lack of discipline. That has to change. “You got to hold them to a standard and if they don’t do it, if they don’t do what you ask ‘em to do, there’s got to be a consequence,” Florida co-defensive coordinator Sean Spencer said. “The consequence has got to be one such that they don’t want to do it again. “What you want to try to do is you want to make them try to not want to let their teammates down by failing discipline. I think peer pressure is one of the tougher things that we can do.” Consequences for a lack of discipline. Peer pressure that results in players being conscientious enough that they refuse to let their teammates down. That’s what happens with championship-level programs. When it doesn’t happen, you wind up with 6-7 records that cost not only the head coach but all his assistants and much of the program infrastructure their jobs. Mark Hocke, the new strength and conditioning coordinator who is also Florida’s associate head coach, has more contact with the players than any position coach or even Napier. In the time and space between football season and spring practice, then from spring practice until the opening of fall camp, Hocke and his staff become the coaches who have more personal interaction with the players. They push, they prod, they work the players hard to become bigger, stronger, faster, but it’s more than just transforming their bodies. There is serious discipline involved. Leaders have to be identified and encouraged to set the example for teammates, especially the younger ones who come to the University of Florida essentially clueless about that to expect now that they’ve graduated high school. Hocke tries to educate players to the fact that their actions are being watched and imitated by teammates. Everyone, Hocke believes, sets an example. The question is whether it’s the right example or the wrong one. Remember, Napier says it’s got to be one or the other because the gray area is the enemy. “At the end of the day it really comes down to one’s example,” Hocke said. “Every player can ask themselves – you can ask yourself – is my example worth following? … And, it’s about educating big brother and, really educating ‘em all so that they have a good example to follow and how they really communicate with each other.” Communication has a real place in discipline matters. We hear all the time the old adage that actions speak louder than words and while there is a measure of truth to it, it downplays the effect words have on individual players and on a team. Words do matter. “Players are going to model leadership,” Sale said. “We have a great example in Coach Napier, and then he hired the right people to model that for their individual position rooms. Once players see that, you see how coaches interact with each other, then coaches to players, players to players … you want ‘em to speak the right things, choose your words wisely so they’re going to model the example that we give them.” In the seven months since Napier took over the Florida program, everything that has been done has led up to this moment in time when preparation begins in earnest for a season that begins in The Swamp on September 3 against 2021 Pac-12 champion Utah. There are questions galore about this Florida football team. The schedule is brutal. The Gators have 44 good players but in the SEC 44 is barely adequate. Is there enough depth? Can the Gators avoid the injury bug? They’ll have to avoid a string of debilitating injuries if they want to improve on last year’s 6-7 record. During his first couple of years at Louisiana where Napier went 18-10 by winning some games he had no business winning, the key was staying on point with discipline. If the other team was simply better, that was a matter that could be resolved by recruiting better players. The critical element was avoiding the on-field discipline issues that prevented winning games. The process has been fine-tuned since those first two years. In 2020-21, the Ragin Cajuns went 23-2. Now, no one is expecting the Gators to match those numbers in year one of Napier’s reign, but Napier has a team that may exceed expectations of a 6-6 or 7-5 team if the Gators can master the details. Little things, Napier believes, add up to big things. The team that has control over the little things is going to do well in handling the big things, and it begins with having the discipline to make each moment count in August. “As we get going here, I think in training camp it’s almost as if you’ve got to stay present,” Napier said. “You’ve got to treat each opportunity throughout training camp as a very competitive event, whether that’s sleep, what you eat, hydration, each lift opportunity, each recovery opportunity, each meeting, each walk-through, each practice. There are lots of opportunities to improve, to put yourself out there, to get feedback, to make the necessary adjustments.” Notice how the emphasis was on things that we consider non-football related like sleep, food, staying hydrated, paying attention to absorb everything being discussed in meetings. Improve on the little things, what may seem to be the minor little details, and it will pay off with better performance in practice. Hocke, for example, wears an Oura ring, which measures sleep quality. All the Gators wear one now. “They say the best growth hormone is God’s given growth hormone and that’s sleep,” Hocke said. So you have athletes and people who say, ‘What supplement can I take? Hey what protein should I take? All this. And, it’s like, well have you gotten eight hours of sleep? Let’s start there, and then we’ve talked about how hard they’re going to work. Sleep’s going to be really important to recover so you can wake up the next day and push the gas again.” That’s just a small example of how Napier wants players to control the things they can control. Once again, it’s a matter of discipline, a necessity because during the next 30 days, Napier and his staff have to know who they can count on when foot meets football on September 3. Players on the team also have to know who they will be able to count on and it goes far beyond what goes on during practice in the hot Florida sun. “They can improve their fundamentals,” Napier said. “They can improve their techniques. Really big focus for me in terms of galvanizing our team and being a great teammate. What do your peers say about you relative to your role on the team?” Yes, what do teammates say about other teammates? Do they see a brother out there competing to make the whole team better or do they see someone who has a serious need to replace I and me with we and us? Better people make better football players and better people in a team setting have a real relationship with their teammates. It can’t be one of these situations that when practice ends, players hearts and minds drift off to other places, leaving teammates behind. There is a bond with good teams, a brotherly bond with the great ones. Nick Saban raved about his 2020 team that went unbeaten and won a national championship in a COVID year that made everything from workouts to relationships complicated. It was the closeness developed by the team that made the winning so special. This is what Napier wants to achieve at Florida and it starts with making certain his players are more than just someone who shares a locker room and then pound away at each other on a practice field leading up to games. That’s why he puts such emphasis on teammates bonding with each other. That envelope is being pushed now that Camp Napier has begun and the countdown to kickoff has begun. “When you have a relationship with the people that you are competing with, when you know their story, when you’ve had in-depth conversations, when you know what to say to motivate, you can push a button,” Napier said. “I think it’s critical for the leadership on our team going out of your way to connect, to sit with someone you don’t know. We make everybody on the team learn everybody’s name, their hometown. We’ve got little things that we do. We shuffle the deck in the locker room. We pair them. Their roommate for training camp will be somebody that they really don’t know.” The goal is that when training camp ends and the season begins, there will be a real connection between every player on the team. Starters and non-starters, scholarship players and walk-ons, he hopes, will see each other in a different light and instead of 120-125 individuals they will see each other as parts of something bigger – a real team. Football is the ultimate team game. In baseball, for example, it’s mano-a-mano when a hitter steps into the batters box. Teammates can’t help him see the pitch nor can they help him drive the ball. If the hitter launches a 425-foot home run to win the game, he did it on his own. In basketball, there is no defense for someone standing at the foul line with a tenth of a second showing on the clock. Make the shot and maybe the team wins. Miss and maybe the team loses. In either case, teammates can’t help. That’s not so in football. The quarterback who throws the game-winning touchdown pass will get praised in the Sunday morning newspapers and all over the internet, but the QB is useless if the right guard misses his block, or the running back didn’t hear the audible or the wide receiver ran the wrong route. It takes 11 players, all of them focused and carrying out their assignments for that TD to be scored. Sure, one or two players may get all the glory for the big play, but it takes 11 players to make it all happen. That’s why all the little things count. That’s why Billy Napier seems so obsessed with all the small details. Napier isn’t so much a control freak as he is a coach who has broken down the game into its smallest segments and then figured out how to piece them all together into a formula to turn 120-125 kids into a functioning, capable team that can win football games. Along the way, Napier does understand that there is a bigger picture. Some might call it the method to his madness. It’s called what happens when football comes to an end. “I think these things carry over into life after football, too,” Napier said. “That’s one of the great things about the game of football. These things apply in a lot of different settings. It will be a big part of what we do and certainly a big part of our success.” There are no guarantees for success in football, but having the discipline to eliminate mistakes, to turn players into better people that become better teammates and better football players, makes winning a real possibility. Billy Napier may not win nine or ten games this year no matter how much the fans want it and no matter how hard the Gators work. There could be injuries. Some teams may just have too much talent to overcome. There are hundreds of things that factor into whether the Gator win or lose, but one thing for certain, the foundation for success is being put in place. Where there is discipline and a team that embraces the hard work and effort, good things can happen. “They come here to play football,” Hocke said. “They don't always come here to do the conditioning, running, the sprints, the heavy lifting, waking up really early. They don't have a problem waking up and playing in front of 90,000 on Saturday night, but what about at 6 a.m. on Monday morning after the weekend, that's a little bit different waking up for that. But it's doing what you don't necessarily love to do like you love it. And that's what I can say about this team. They're learning to love it and the second you learn to love the hard work is the second you got a chance to separate …”

A few thoughts to jump start your Thursday morning: JEEPERS, CREEPERS WHERE’D THAT BLITZER COME FROM It is called “The Creeper” defense, attributed to Ron Roberts, the one-time head coach at Delta State and Southeastern Louisiana, who spent a couple of years as Billy Napier’s defensive coordinator at Louisiana before he went to work for Dave Aranda at Baylor. At SLU and Louisiana, Roberts mentored Patrick Toney, now Florida’s co-defensive coordinator. “The Creeper” or a version of it will be a staple of a Florida defense that is attempting to rebound after two sub-par seasons under the previous head coach and coordinator. While it sounds rather exotic, Toney says it’s not all that complicated. “Really all you're saying is you are blitzing an unknown rusher and dropping a known rusher to replace him, right?” Toney said Tuesday at Florida’s version of media days. “It's still a four-man rush. Just a different way to create pressure.” Spread offenses more or less dictated the need to find a way to get the same amount of pressure with a four-man rush as teams were getting with five. “I think you’ve kind of seen football evolve where early on if you blitzed it was man, and there was a lot of high risk/high reward to that,” Toney said. “Then it became zone blitz where you still rushed five but were able to play with zone integrity and zone eyes. Then it’s kind of come full circle with the advent of spread. And, really the passing game is become more sophisticated where you don’t always want to sacrifice coverage, right, to send another rusher, but you can create the same amount of pressure by blitzing a second level, third level defender to replace him with a first level defender.” Translation: You drop a defender that is expected to rush the passer with a blitzer who comes from out of nowhere. It’s not all that complicated for the defense, but if it is carefully disguised it’s very confusing for the quarterback who has to determine which of your typical four pass rushers is dropping and where the fourth pass rusher is coming from. “You haven’t sacrificed anything in coverage and you are just doing something to affect the protection by sending someone they may not be prepared for or asking the running back to have to block in protection rather than the five-down,” Toney said. “That’s the way I see it.” Got it? A question for each SEC team as fall camps begin Alabama: We associate every Nick Saban-coached team with big, physical guys on both sides of the line yet last year the Crimson Tide gave up 41 sacks and the last time the running game was this unproductive was 2007, Saban’s first year at Bama. Everyone expects Alabama to win the national championship but even experts are nervous about the offensive line. Bryce Young won the Heisman Trophy last year. Georgia Tech transfer running back Jaymyr Gibbs is supposed to be the greatest thing since Gaylord Perry discovered how slippery elm makes a baseball dip, but can the Bama O-line keep Young’s jersey clean and open up gaping holes for Gibbs? Arkansas: Which is the bigger issue for Sam Pittman: Who will catch the ball for KJ Jefferson or can the Razorbacks stop the run? Matt Landers, who played two years at Georgia, caught 20 passes for 514 yards and five TDs last year at Toledo, not to be confused with the SEC. He’s expected to be the stud. At Georgia, Landers caught 12 passes in two years. The Hogs return only one starter on the D-line and one at LB from a unit that allowed 151 yards a game last year. Auburn: It only took one year for those zany Auburn boosters to decide they had enough with head coach Bryan Harsin. Somehow he survived an attempted coup and he’s back for a second year minus Bo Nix, a good place to start when looking for a place to improve the team. The Tigers should be better than last year’s 6-7 but can they get to eight wins? That’s what it will take to keep those boosters with more money than brains from running Harsin out of town. FLORIDA: So much of the preseason focus seems to be on quarterback Anthony Richardson. Everyone admits he may be the most physically gifted QB in the SEC, maybe even the nation. For Richardson to be all that and more in 2023, someone is going to have to stretch defenses. If Florida can’t prevent opponents from loading the box to stop the run, then the Gators are going to struggle offensively. You really need two fast wide receivers to do that. If UF can find a pair of receivers who can back the safeties out of the box, then Richardson becomes an absolute wrecking crew. Can the Gators find two receivers who can stretch the field? Georgia: The Bulldogs ended their 41-year national championship drought last year. Eight starters are gone from probably the best defensive unit we’ve seen in college football since Alabama’s 2011 unit that gave up 183 yards and 8.2 points per game. But, Kirby Smart has recruited lights out and there will be plenty of talent on that side of the ball in 2022. The question has nothing to do with talent, but can Kirby instill the kind of hunger it takes to overcome the natural instinct to let down after a big championship season? After all, only Nebraska (1994-95) and Alabama (2011-12) have gone back-to-back since 1990. Kentucky: NFL scouts are enamored with quarterback Will Levis, but who is he going to throw to now that Wan’Dale Robinson and Josh Alli are gone? The fine folks up in Lexington are hoping that Virginia Tech transfer Tayvion Robinson (113 career catches for 1,555 yards and 9 touchdowns) is the answer, but he seems more of a possession type and not the field stretcher the Wildcats will need to keep teams from loading the box to stuff Chris Rodriguez. Finding someone opposite Robinson seems to be an issue as well. LSU: Quarterback is unsettled, but whether it’s Jayden Daniels, Myles Brennan or Garrett Nussmeier, someone better be able to block, but who? Left tackle Cameron Wire has 20 career starts and Tre’Mond Shorts, a D1AA All-American at East Tennessee State, is projected as a starter at guard, but beyond those two there is a ton of inexperience. Mississippi State: Third-year starters at QB tend to have monster seasons in Mike Leach’s offense so everyone believes Will Rogers (4,739 yards last year, 36 TDPs) will set SEC passing records in 2022. Throwing it isn’t the problem. Can the Bulldogs run the ball when they get inside the five? They averaged only 63 rushing yards per game last year and just 3.04 per carry. Missouri: The good news is there are eight returning starters on defense. That’s also the bad news. The Tigers allowed 33 points and 227 rushing yards per game last year. The Tigers gave up four or more touchdowns in nine of their 13 games. The Vols hung 62 on them. Can they stop anyone this year? If they can’t it will be a long season. Ole Miss: Don’t worry at all about the offense as long as Lane Kiffin is in charge. The Rebels reloaded through the transfer market and they’ll score plenty of points this year. Can they actually stop anyone, particularly on the ground? Ole Miss gave up 190 yards per game and 25 rushing touchdowns last year. Fortunately for them they could outscore people. They may have to win shootouts again this year if they can’t lop off about 50 yards per game from opponents’ running stats. South Carolina: Spencer Rattler is a monstrous upgrade at QB from the three who played QB last year – Zeb Noland, Jason Brown and Luke Doty. The Gamecocks have people who can catch it and they think Wake Forest Gump transfer running back Christian Beal-Smith is the real deal. They’re going to score some points, but can they stop anyone, particularly from running the ball down their throats? The Gamecocks gave up 175 yards per game and 18 rushing TDs last year. Other than Zach Pickens, everybody else is inexperienced up front. Tennessee: You figure that with Hendon Hooker back at QB after a season that he threw for 31 touchdowns and ran for five more, that the Vols will do just fine when they’ve got the football. The problem is can they stop anyone, particularly since that unit that gave up 29 points and 273 passing yards per game last year? One year older doesn’t necessarily make you one year better. Texas A&M: Jimbo Fisher has won a national championship (FSU 2013) and he’s shown his recruiting chops with a 2022 class that had eight 5-stars in it. The Aggies don’t lack for talent, but they don’t have a lot of experience at key positions. They also have a brutal schedule that includes an October 8 “payback” game in Tuscaloosa. If he goes 9-3 – or worse – in 2023, will Aggie alums, who have ponied up $95 million to give him a fully-guaranteed contract, be patient or will they start the kind of rumbles that will have Jimbo looking for the next greener pasture? Vanderbilt: Name a position and there is a real question mark. Clark Lea says his goal is to make Vanderbilt the best football program in the country. It’s a noble idea, but donkeys might fly first. The Commodores are going to lose nine or ten games this season. The big question is how many years will the alums and boosters give Lea to put a winning program on the field? James Franklin he isn’t. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: The passing of Vin Scully had me thinking all day about putting together a top ten list of the greatest sports radio broadcasters I’ve ever heard. So, here goes: 1. Vin Scully: Every game was like a personal conversation with his listening audience. You should hear his call of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965. 2. Cawood Ledford: He had the ability to make you feel like you were at center court for Kentucky basketball broadcasts. 3. Woody Durham: His finest moments were calling Carolina basketball games when Dean Smith was the coach. 4. Jack Buck: He could give you chills describing Bob Gibson staring down a batter. 5. John Ferguson: I got hooked on him when I was 12 years old. My little radio would pick up WWL in New Orleans and I would listen to LSU football games with Ferguson capturing the emotion of the crowd when the Chinese Bandits took the field. 6. Jon Miller: I got hooked on him in 1983. I was teaching in Taiwan and my radio picked up the Armed Forces Network in The Philippines with his broadcast of the Baltimore Orioles winning the World Series. 7. John Ward: You didn’t have to be a Tennessee fan (I wasn’t and never will be) to appreciate how thorough he was calling the Vols. His signature line was “It’s football time in Tennessee.” 8. John Forney: You should hear him call the goal line stand Alabama had to win the 1979 national championship game with Penn State. 9. David Steele: I’m sitting on the 50 watching the 1984 Florida-Georgia game in Jacksonville, earphones on, listening through my earphones to David Steele call the game on radio. His call of UF’s goal line stand followed by Kerwin Bell to Ricky Nattiel for 96 yards was classic. 10. Mick Hubert: You didn’t think I was going to put Larry Munson here did you? Everybody remembers “Doering’s got a touchdown” or Mick describing the heave to Cleave in 2017, but my favorite Mick moments were in 2010 when he described Chandler Parsons’ 75-footer to beat North Carolina State then three weeks later Chandler’s three to beat South Carolina in the O-Dome.

A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning: “Changes in latitudes, chances in attitudes, nothing remains quite the same” – Jimmy Buffett The attitudes are changing. Seven months after implementing Billy Napier’s version of “The Process,” the basics of which can be traced to two different stints on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama, football is less a me thing and more of a we thing for the Florida Gators. Defensive line coach Sean Spencer noticed the changes in latitudes and attitudes during spring practice when Justus Boone, a redshirt freshman, offered a lesson in accountability. “One of the great things I saw in the end of spring was Justus Boone got on one of the players before I did,” Spencer said Tuesday morning at what amounts to Florida’s media day. “He turned around and said, ‘That’s not what we do. We expect more.’ And when you start to get that, you start to get them talking like that, man, it can be special.” Special. Spencer isn’t necessarily talking about wins and losses here because too many things can happen in the weeks ahead that can affect outcomes. Things like fluke plays – see “The Heave to Cleve” that turned a surefire loss to Tennessee into as improbable a win the Gators have had in years – or injuries to key personnel can derail even the most promising of seasons. When the hearts and minds are in the right place, however, and a team is totally bought in to the way things have to be done, it is special and wins will eventually take care of themselves. Associate head coach Mark Hocke, who is Florida’s strength and conditioning coordinator, tends to echo Napier’s core value that better people make better football players. Better people go to class. Better people are committed to getting a college degree because they know and understand that eventually, all good things including football must come to an end. Better people are committed to being better friends and teammates to everyone on the roster. And, like Justus Boone showed on that spring day, better people are accountable and they hold their teammates accountable. It wasn’t always like this. Before Napier and his staff arrived on the Florida scene, the Gators had morphed into a dysfunctional basket case. Discipline, in short supply dating back to the pandemic season of 2020, evaporated in 2021. Winnable games like Alabama and Kentucky were lost, setting the stage for a meltdown of epic proportions, so much so that it was better to bite the bullet on a $12 million buyout than continue to allow Dan Mullen to coach the Gators. We may never know what went wrong, but the Gators went from a team that went to three consecutive New Year’s Six Bowl games to one that got its doors blown off by 23 points to a South Carolina team with perhaps half the talent as UF. So, along comes Napier and his version of “The Process.” Life didn’t exactly change overnight because he still had to convince the team he inherited that it would be worth it to eliminate the barriers of selfishness and replace them with a total team-first makeover attitude. Seven months into the gig, apparently it’s working, perhaps better than anyone expected. “I think it all starts with believing, right?” Hocke said. “Belief is so important and we believe that belief is developed through preparation. Coach Napier is a firm believer in the work, right? And that's why I love him and I think that's why his process works. The work is what we believe in. You can't train gladiators pillow fighting.” The work means enough self-discipline to turn yourself into a better person, which, in turn, will make you a better teammate, friend and football player. The work means embracing the physical pain, the emotional stress and the violence. Lest, we forget, football is a violent game played by young men who are modern day gladiators. They have to want the violence and all the effort it takes to have a chance to take out all the pent up energy and frustration on a field while thousands upon thousands watch in person and millions watch on television. The only time we see the team is on any given Saturday in the fall when the Gators take the field, whether it’s at The Swamp where 90,000 fans will endure blast furnace heat and humidity that could be cut with a chainsaw for four hours or in some other venue in the SEC. What we don’t see is all the hard work and preparation that got the Gators to that point. We don’t see the hours in the weight room, the mat drills where trash cans fill up with vomit at 6 a.m. in February, the summer afternoons on the practice field where teams bond in weather best suited for heat stroke. “They come here to play football,” Hocke said. “They don't always come here to do the conditioning, running, the sprints, the heavy lifting, waking up really early. They don't have a problem waking up and playing in front of 90,000 on Saturday night, but what about at 6 a.m. on Monday morning after the weekend? That’s a little bit different waking up for that, but it’s doing what you don't necessarily love to do like you love it. And that's what I can say about this team. They're learning to love it and the second you learn to love the hard work is the second you got a chance to separate because at the end of the day, you can't play in the SEC unless you've been blessed ability-wise.” Doing things you hate to do like you love it is an old Mike Tyson adage. For Tyson it was all about one-on-one combat in a boxing ring. He only had to be accountable to himself. For the Gators, it’s about 85 scholarship players and another 30-40 walk-ons electing to be accountable to each other and in the process of accountability bonding together as a team. Even the hard work that it takes to win football games begins between the ears. Changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes. Nothing remains quite the same. Change the mind to think the right way and the body will follow. When more than 100 kids adapt that kind of attitude, a team forges an identity. If it’s the right identity, it’s entirely possible that winning will follow. “At the end of the day growth comes at the point of resistance, skills come from struggle,” Hocke said. “That's the purpose of what we do. That's the purpose of training.” A couple of good quotes from the press conference Gervon Dexter: “Coach Napier is a big guy on everybody looking the same, everybody doing the same. Just all the little things as far as jumping offsides or extra activity after the plays and just big on stuff like that. He came in letting us know that's not going to happen, or consequences. Like I said, that's been his big thing. It's just the small stuff that come people may know that can cause you to lose a game, he's been really impacting on that.” O-line coach Rob Sale: “Hey, name a player that you think does it the right way. And Michael Tarquin's the first one that comes into mind. Man, you're just talking about a guy that approaches everything the right way. It doesn't matter if it's film study, prehab, rehab, how you take the field and practice, it's everything's 110 percent. I'm very pleased with Michael. Obviously we're expecting big things from him this year, but he's going to answer the bell. He's a stud when it comes to his attitude and his daily approach how he does everything. Sometimes just kind of crack jokes with him a little bit to see the other side, because he's so straightlaced. But, hey, I'll take 20 of Michael Tarquins every day all day.” The daily dumb, AKA George Kliavkoff speaks A day without something dumb muttered by Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff seems like a Florida summer afternoon without humidity. Here is his latest gem: “It’s clear that UCLA and USC made a decision for short-term financial gain at the expense of their student-athletes, Kliavkoff told The Athletic. “It’s 100 percent clear to me. It’s really unfortunate and I think they are already regretting it, given the pushback that they’ve gotten from almost every corner of their communities. I think they will regret it more as time goes on.” Let’s see. The UCLA athletic department is more than $110 million in the red. Boosters have known all about the mountain of debt but haven’t exactly ponied up the cash to even make a dent in it. Along comes the Big Ten, which UCLA will join in 2024. By then the Big Ten will have a new media rights deal that nearly every financial expert agrees will pay out $100 million a year. Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren has already said UCLA and USC will get a full payment starting in year one. A degree in advanced mathematics isn’t required to see that UCLA will have its debt wiped out in no time. Sure, maybe they’ll miss some of those old Pac-12 rivalries, but weighed against being debt-free those old rivalries can take a hike. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Vin Scully passed away. The former radio voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, a job he held for 67 years, was 94. He began his broadcasting career in 1950. In 1953, he became the youngest man (age 25) to ever call a World Series game between the Dodgers and the New York Yankees. Scully wasn’t your traditional broadcaster. Rather than bore you with mundane details to pass the time away or allow dead time between pitches, Scully made his broadcast seem like he was carrying on a conversation with the radio audience. He had this natural elegance and smooth delivery that made fans feel as if they were sitting beside Scully behind home plate. He would describe the fans, talk about the beautiful purple hues as the sun set behind the San Gabriel Mountains, discuss the menu in the concession stands and while he was about it, described the game. Perfectly. Listen to Scully for nine innings and you knew exactly what was going on both on the field and in the stadium. Scully’s passing is just another radio icon of a bygone era that has departed. I grew up listening to Otis Boggs call Florida football games. I still remember Otis calling a Hagoode Clark punt “a high, lazy spiral.” What made it lazy? I still want to know. Late night on Saturdays, I tuned in my radio to WWL in New Orleans to catch John Ferguson calling LSU games – “It never rains in Death Valley” he told us. John Ward’s signature line was, “It’s football time in Tennessee.” I never heard anyone call a basketball game better than Kentucky’s Cawood Ledford although North Carolina’s Woody Durham came close.

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning: COLLEGE FOOTBALL IS ABOUT TO BEGIN AGAIN BOYS AND GIRLS The Gators will hold what amounts to their own version of media days today. Some players and assistant coaches will be meeting media from around the state and then, sometime around noon, Billy Napier will offer his state of the program address after which it can be said fall camp has officially begun. Napier isn’t going to offer a whole lot more than he did at SEC Media Days a couple of weeks ago. He’ll be thoughtful, thorough and on script. He carries note cards with him everywhere and he makes it a point to stay within the parameters that are on those cards. Some may think of it as a robotic or canned performance, but if nothing else, it is consistent. Billy Napier knows what he wants to say and he’s not going to go off the rails. Here are six questions I hope Napier will address today: 1. We know Anthony Richardson is the clear No. 1 quarterback but what progress did you see over the summer from Jack Miller III and Jalen Kitna? How comfortable are you that Miller and Kitna can run the offense? 2. There are experienced players for four of the five offensive line positions. The question mark is at right tackle. Is there confidence that Michael Tarquin can hold his own against SEC defensive linemen? How much thought has been given to sliding O’Cyrus Torrence out to right tackle? Or to Josh Braun moving outside since he has lost 20 pounds and is bound to be quicker? 3. Who, other than Gervon Dexter, has impressed you on the defensive line? Do you feel comfortable that the Gators have the size and physicality in the trenches to stop the run? 4. When you were coaching at Alabama, you were in charge of the wide receivers. Do you think Florida’s wide receivers are a good enough unit to keep opponents from going eight in the box to stuff the run while taking their chances one-on-one on the outside? Is Ricky Pearsall a field stretcher? Can Justin Shorter be the breakout guy who lives up to his former 5-star potential? 5. Who are three or four players whose work ethic since spring practice ended has stood out? 6. Are you seeing real team chemistry starting to develop? Kelly Rae can also recruit It didn’t take long for Kelly Rae Finley to prove she knew how to coach. Taking over as the interim when Cam Newbauer was fired during the summer, Kelly Rae directed the Gators to a 21-11 record that included five wins over ranked teams and an NCAA Tournament berth. She was so impressive that Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin ripped the interim title off and named her Florida’s head women’s basketball coach. Since then, Kelly Rae has proven that she’s going to be here for the long haul by bringing in a tremendous recruiting class of two high school signees and four transfers. The latest transfer is Aliyah Matharu, who averaged 12 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.8 steals and 1.4 assists last season at Texas while hitting 77 3-pointers. Matharu was the No. 28 high school player in the country when she signed with Mississippi State. She averaged 7.1 points per game for Mississippi State as a true freshman in 2019-20 and 10.2 points and 3.5 rebounds per game as a sophomore in 2020-21. Due to the COVID year (2019-20), Matharu has two seasons of eligibility remaining. Here is the full recruiting class for UF: Frieda Buhner (6-3, FR, Onsabruck, Germany); Myka Perry (6-1, FR, Norman, OK); Leilani Correa (6-0, SR, Manchester, NJ, St. John’s transfer, averaged 17.5 points per game); KK Deans (5-8, SR, Greensboro, NC, West Virginia transfer, averaged 14.5 points per game); Ra Shaya Kyle (6-6, JR, Marion, IN, Purdue transfer, averaged 11.5 points, 5.7 rebounds per game); Aliyah Matharu (5-7, SR, Washington, DC, Texas transfer, averaged 12 points, 3.4 rebounds per game) The rest of the UF roster: Taliyah Wyche (6-3, SO); Tatyana Wyche (6-2, SO); Zippy Broughton (5-7, GR); Alberte Rimdal (5-9, SO); Jordyn Merritt (6-3, JR); Nina Rickards (5-9, SR); Jeriah Warren (6-0, SO); Faith Dut (6-4, SR) Jenny Rowland can also recruit The Gators might wind up with the most stacked roster in NCAA gymnastics history next season because Jenny Rowland has been setting the world on fire with her recruiting, starting with getting Trinity Thomas and Nya Reed to come back for their COVID year of eligibility. Thomas is the NCAA gymnast of the year and the winner of the Honda Award for gymnastics after a season in which she posted 12 perfect 10s and one of the three highest all-around scores ever at the NCAA Gymnastics Championships. Reed is an All-American who posted a pair of 10s last year. She and Thomas are a lethal 1-2 punch on floor at the end of a meet. Meanwhile, Rowland has brought in a pair of transfers from Georgia: Victoria Nguyen and Rachel Baumann. Nguyen is a former member of the US Senior National team while Baumann, the younger sister of former Gator All-American Alyssa Baumann, posted a 10 on floor last year and had Georgia’s highest scores during the season on vault, balance beam and floor. Those two will be joining a recruiting class that includes freshman Kayla DiCello, another former member of the US Senior National team, and vault specialist Lori Brubach. DiCello won gold on floor and a silver medal with the US National team at the recently concluded Pan American Games in Rio. DiCello and UF freshman All-American Leanne Wong will be competing in the US Gymnastics Championships in Tampa in three weeks. Wong won the vault, balance beam and all-around golds at the recently concluded US Classic. Wong is a former silver medalist in the all-around and bronze medalist in floor at the World Championships. Among the returning Gators are: Thomas (20 career 10s, 2022 NCAA all-around, bars and floor champ, 2020 and 2022 SEC Gymnast of the Year); Reed (All-American two 10s); Sloane Blakely (All-American, perfect 10, former US Senior National team member); Savannah Schoenherr (All-American); Riley McCusker (former US Senior National team member); Morgan Hurd (former all-around gold at the World Championships); Ellie Lazzari (All-American and 2021 SEC balance beam champ); Wong (All-American, two perfect 10s, 2022 SEC balance beam champ). There is also the possibility that All-American Leah Clapper (one perfect 10) will be returning for her COVID year. Sproat, Tejada didn’t sign Florida’s baseball team got a serious boost on Monday when the Major League Baseball Draft signing deadline passed and neither Brandon Sproat or Yoel Tejada Jr. signed. Sproat, drafted by the New York Mets in the third round, became Florida’s ace last season after Hunter Barco went down with season-ending Tommy John surgery. He throws consistently in the high 90s and has been clocked regularly at 99. Tejada, drafted in the 19th round by the Pittsburgh Pirates, is a two-way player who plays outfield/first base plus pitches, where he’s been clocked at 97. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Writing for Saturday Down South, Matt Hayes points out the absolute hypocrisy of the Three Stooges, also known as the commissioners of the ill-fated “Alliance” that shot down expanding the College Football Playoff to 12 teams. A year after the Stooges lit up Sankey verbally then banded together to destroy expanding the playoff, using among other excuses that a 12-team playoff might be too stressful on the players, Kevin Warren (Big Ten), Little Jimmy Phillips (ACC) and George (of the Jungle) Kliavkoff (Pac-12) are clamoring for not a 12-team playoff, but 16 teams. Hayes writes, “Now the Alliance wants 16 teams. Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff, whose conference was left to die on the vine by the Big Ten, says that it could happen before the contract expires after the 2025 season.” Not if Greg Sankey has anything to do with it … and he does. But, that doesn’t stop Kliavkoff from going with the “If I throw enough stuff against the wall maybe some of it will stick” theory of wishful, out-loud thinking. Kliavkoff is hoping that the promise to expand the playoff to 16 teams will help him keep the Pac-12 from disintegrating completely. Meanwhile, Oregon, Washington, California and Stanford are begging the Big Ten to take them in and Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah are smart enough to realize that the Big 12 has more potential than a Pac-12 led by Kliavkoff. Kliavkoff is in a 30-day negotiating window with ESPN, which gave a lowball offer that would mean the Pac-12 is distributing $24 million a year. Phillips needs a 16-team playoff because the possibility of adding $200-250 million a year in revenue to his league might appease its disgruntled members, who are rather dissatisfied with a longterm ESPN agreement that will keep the ACC in the poorhouse until 2036, that is, if the league still exists by then. The ACC won’t hit the $40 million per school payout until 2025, about the same time the SEC will be retooling its agreement with ESPN to include Texas and Oklahoma. Hayes writes, “The SEC has a new, exclusive media rights deal with ESPN beginning in 2024 that will – after it’s adjusted to add Texas and Oklahoma – guarantee each school nearly $100 million annually.” Imagine this: Miami and FSU trying to compete financially with Florida. Two chances that is going to happen – no way and no how. Warren wants 16 teams because he thinks that with the additions of UCLA and Southern Cal to the Big Ten to go with Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin, he might get five or six teams in. Warren was the darling of last week’s media days because some in the national media are awestruck because the Big Ten added the two California schools, but while he may have proven he’s far more powerful than buddies Curley and Moe in the Alliance, he still can’t hold a candle to Sankey. Sankey does hold all the cards here. He’s already thrown out the notion that the SEC is more than willing to go it alone. Hayes writes, “If they [Sankey and the SEC presidents] don’t get what they want, they can walk away and hold their own Playoff.” Could the SEC do it? Hayes seems to think so: “Which Playoff will demand more revenue and generate more ratings, you ask? The one whose conference has produced 12 of the last 16 national champions.” This is the part that a lot of folks in the national media are missing. You can have a college football playoff without the Big Ten, ACC or Pac-12. We’ve done it before and the playoff didn’t suffer. You can’t have a playoff without the SEC. Period. If Sankey wants SEC only, that’s what it will be. Whatever Sankey wants he’s going to get and there isn’t one damn thing the Three Stooges and their lackes at the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 can do about it.

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning: SELLING HOPE AND A VISION; WINNING WILL TAKE CARE OF THE REST Until the Friday Nights Lights weekend, quite a few Gator fans were questioning the choice of Billy Napier as Florida’s football coach. Can’t recruit seemed to be the label they were giving Napier, who essentially told them all to stick a sock in it when he beat out some of the best known coaches in college football for commitments from four highly coveted rising high school seniors. Only a couple of weeks ago, Florida’s 2023 recruiting class wasn’t even top 20. Now it’s ranked 12th by 247, 13th by On3 after Napier sold hope and his vision for the future to these four guys: Aidan Mizell, WR (6-2, 180, Orlando, FL Boone): One of the faster wide receivers in the entire country and son of a former Gator sprinter. The Gators beat out Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee for his commitment. Jordan Castell, S (6-2, 190, Winter Garden, FL West Orange: A fast, physical safety, Florida out-recruited Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Penn State, Ohio State and Texas A&M. Andy Jean, WR (6-1, Miami, FL Northwestern): He’s a fast, surehanded receiver from one of Miami’s traditional powerhouses. He chose the Gators over Miami, Georgia, Texas A&M, Alabama and LSU. Ja’Keem Jackson, CB (6-1, 180, Kissimmee, FL Osceola): He is a former wide receiver with sprinter’s speed but plays corner like a natural. He had offers from Georgia, Alabama, Miami and Tennessee among others, but chose the Gators. These four aren’t the only ones who seem to be buying into the hope and vision that Napier is selling. Cormani McClain (6-2, 170, Lakeland, FL) is the top corner in the country who seems destined to be a Gator. Dijon Johnson (6-1, 190, Tampa, FL Wharton) just decommitted Ohio State and most of the recruiting experts anticipate he will also be a Gator. Defensive tackle Will Norman (6-5, 300, Bradenton, FL IMG Academy) seems likely to choose the Gators over LSU, Texas A&M and Penn State. And there will be others, particularly if the Gators get off to a tremendous start as well they could with six home games out of their first seven. Right now, Napier can only sell hope and vision. Add winning to that equation and Napier can get the kind of momentum that will result in a recruiting class that might crack the top eight nationally. Nothing solidifies hope and vision quite like winning. Napier won at Louisiana but you can know that many of the top-ranked kids are waiting to see how he does in the Southeastern Conference. When they see the Gators winning, they will view the University of Florida as a far more palatable landing spot. One other thing that should be understood. At his very first press conference in Gainesville and subsequently at others, Napier has emphasized that not everyone can be a Gator. He’s not going to settle for players who he doesn’t believe are as committed to earning a college degree and personal development as they are in developing their football skills. He is a firm believer that better people make better football players. Brandon Sproat may be back Brandon Sproat knows how to say no. He was drafted in the seventh round by the Texas Rangers out of Pace High School back in 2019 when he was the highest drafted player who didn’t sign a minor league contract. He was taken in the third round by the New York Mets in the most recent Major League Baseball Draft and right now he’s one of just a handful of high draft picks who have yet to sign. The signing deadline for drafted players is 5 p.m. today and right now, it seems Sproat might be coming back rather than sign with the Mets. Writes Jim Callis of MLB.com: “The highest-drafted player who appears unlikely to sign is Florida right-hander Brandon Sproat, a third-round pick by the Mets. After struggling earlier in the college season, he allowed a total of seven earned runs in his final six starts while running his fastball up to 99 mph and his slider up to 91.” If Sproat declines the Mets’ offer – it was slotted for $691,000 – he will still have two seasons of eligibility remaining at UF. It would also mean Kevin O’Sullivan could have the top weekend pitching rotation in the country with Sproat on Friday night, Southern Miss All-American transfer Hudson Waldrep on Saturday and Brandon Neely, Tyler Nesbitt or Jac Caglianone on Sunday. Florida also returns Fisher Jameson, Anthony Ursitti, Carsten Finnvold, Nick Ficarrotta, Phil Abner and relievers Ryan Slater, Blake Purnell and Phil Abner in what will easily be one of the most talented and deepest pitching staffs in the country. And, lest we forget, the incoming freshman class includes highly regarded Jake Clemente, Cade Fisher, Yoel Tejada Jr. and Chris Arroyo along with juco transfer Clete Herzog. The high cost of doing business The following coaches were hired by Division I schools after the 2017 season ended: Dan Mullen (Florida), Scott Frost (Nebraska), Jimbo Fisher (Texas A&M), Chip Kelly (UCLA), Willie Taggart (Florida State), Kevin Sumlin (Arizona), Jonathan Smith (Oregon State), Herm Edwards (Arizona State), Joe Moorhead (Mississippi State), Jeremy Pruitt (Tennessee), Chad Morris (Arkansas), Mario Cristobal (Oregon) and Matt Luke (Ole Miss). Connor O’Gara of Saturday Down South points out that only Kelly, Frost, Fisher, Edwards and Smith are still coaching at the same place that hired them after 2017. Frost could be fired this year if he doesn’t win seven or more games at Nebraska, which seems more likely after starting offensive lineman Nouredin Nouili was suspended by the NCAA for the entire season for failing a drug test. Edwards could be dropped like a hot potato if Arizona State (a) doesn’t win and (b) the NCAA drops lack of institutional control on the Sun Devils. Cristobal left Oregon for Miami. Here is what it cost to get rid of these coaches: Taggart $18 million; Mullen $12 million; Morris $10 million; Luke $9.6 million; Moorhead $7 million. Tennessee wanted to be rid of Pruitt so badly that it chose to turn itself in to the NCAA – 18 Level I violations – rather than pay him $12.6 million in buyout money. O’Gara points out that if Aggie fans decided to pink slip Jimbo if he goes in the tank this season, it would only cost $86 million. Fisher is 34-14 coaching the Aggies. Dan Mullen went 34-15 at Florida and he was fired. Meanwhile, among the have nots We’ll start with the Pac-12 where commissioner George Kliavkoff confidently touted an expanded College Football Playoff prior to 2025. The only problem with that prediction is that Greg Sankey doesn’t anticipate any such move and why should he? He has all the cards, the SEC doesn’t need the money and there is no need to bail out a Pac-12 that probably isn’t going to exist in another two years. In particular, why bail out Kliavkoff in any way since he’s one of the three who torpedoed the expansion from four to 12 teams. If “the alliance” had any brains it would have approved the deal and the ACC and Pac-12 would have had perhaps a couple hundred million each in added revenue from the playoff. Kliavkoff also said he anticipates the remaining 10 schools in the Pac-12 will happily sign a grant of rights deal to remain in the Pac-12. Oh, right. As if Oregon and Washington aren’t begging the Big Ten to please take them in with Stanford and California also holding their hats out. Kliavkoff thinks Fox and ESPN will be happy to do business with the Pac-12 Minus Two but ESPN has already lowballed Kliavkoff and the only thing Fox will be interested in is having Oregon, Washington, Stanford and Cal join the Big Ten. Almost as dumb as Kliavkoff is ACC commish Little Jimmy Phillips, who actually said this about “the alliance” that prevented the College Football Playoff from expanding to 12 teams: “I’m proud of the work we did in the alliance.” Really? The ACC won’t distribute $40 million a year before 2025. Meanwhile the SEC will be paying out something like $90 million when Texas and Oklahoma join the league and with its new deal with Fox the Big Ten anticipates a payout in the range of $100 million per school. Yes, there is so much to be proud of. The Big 12, whose media deal with Fox and ESPN expires in 2025, probably will get an offer from ESPN that is decent in exchange for allowing Texas and Oklahoma to leave early for the SEC. ESPN takes over as the SEC’s media partner in 2024 so it would be highly beneficial to have Texas and Oklahoma in the fold a year earlier. Expect a deal prior to Christmas. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: My love of basketball can be traced back to Sunday afternoons in the winter in the 1960s. The NFL season ended the last Sunday in December. The college season ended on January 1. College basketball on television hadn’t caught on yet, but ABC, which was a distant third to CBS and NBC in programming for everything, had the NBA on Sunday afternoons. There were only nine teams in the league so there was every good chance that the Sunday game would feature the Boston Celtics, Philadelphia Warriors, Cincinnati Royals or Los Angeles Lakers. The Warriors had Wilt Chamberlain. The Royals had Oscar Robertson. The Lakers had Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. The Celtics were my favorite team then and have remained the only NBA team that has always held my attention, largely because of Bill Russell. In the minds of nearly everyone who got a chance to see him play, Russell is the greatest defensive player of all time. He was 6-10, tremendously agile and with a sense of anticipation like no one I’ve ever seen. He just knew when to block a shot and when to back off. Blocked shots didn’t become an NBA stat until the 1970s after Russell had retired, but I believe no one has ever blocked as many as he did in his career. Russell probably altered twice as many shots as he blocked, often without leaving his feet. Opponents were so certain that Russell was going to try to block their shot that they would look foolish by heaving up something wild only to see Russell flatfooted, staring them down. When he did block a shot, he didn’t swat it into the stands but tried to keep it in play so the Celtics could retrieve the ball and get out on the break. They were such a beautiful team to watch. A couple of years after he retired, I listened to a rare Russell interview in which he talked about the art of blocking shots. “I would pick and choose when I would actually block a shot, but I wanted opponents to assume I was going to go after every one,” Russell said. “I wanted to get in their heads. If they think I’ll block every shot, they’ll make mistakes and I don’t risk a foul.” Russell won 11 championships playing for Red Auerbach, then won another two as the Celtics’ player-coach. He averaged 22.5 rebounds per game and was the NBA most valuable player five times. He also won two state championships in Oakland, California at McClymonds High School, two NCAA titles at San Francisco and an Olympic Gold Medal in 1956.

GRAPHIC BY UAA By KYLE CURTIS GatorBaitMedia.com What a difference a weekend, good food and a night under the lights can make, as the Florida Gators found out. They landed four prized four-star recruits. Here is what you need to know about the four additional commitments scored by Billy Napier and his staff. Ja’Keem Jackson, Four-Star Cornerback The first commit of the weekend, Jackson joined fellow commits Sharif Denson and Aaron Gates as the third four-star corner committed to the Gators. Jackson was drawn to Florida because of Coach Corey Raymond his resume of turning his defensive backs into NFL talent. His resume speaks for itself. “He’s developed good DBs in the league and he’s willing to coach for the future,” Jackson told AllGators.com, “So, very excited about that.” The 6-foot-2, 185-pound Jackson is the 19th cornerback in the nation and will look to contribute to a stacked defensive back room. Aidan Mizell, Four-Star Wide Receiver An electric wide receiver, 6-foot-2, 180 pounds from Orlando, Mizell made his commitment in style. In one of the more memorable ways in recent history, Mizell chose the orange and blue by bringing out a pair of real-life baby gators to help support his decision. It brought life to the weekend, some badly needed hype around the Gator Nation culture and huge social media boost. Both of Mizell’s parents ran track at UF, therefore he grew up as a Gator fan. “It’s really just the coaching staff,” Mizell said to 247 Sports. “They are all really cool and they have created a great environment. I really like what Coach Napier is doing and I can see him getting the program back to competing for national championships.” With Mizell’s commitment, the Gators began putting together one of the strongest wide receiver classes in the country. Jordan Castell, Four-Star Safety Jordan Castell, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound safety from Winter Garden committed to Florida Saturday morning over the likes of Alabama and Auburn. Like Jackson, Castell was impressed with the coaching staff and what they bring to the table. “It was great, they’re great dudes,” Castell said. “You know their history and what they did at their other programs. Especially Coach Raymond, DBU.” Castell’s mom even commented on the commitment of her son. “I’m down like four flat tires,” Castell’s mom told 247Sports. There was one more: Andy Jean Running back commit Treyaun Webb tweeted Saturday morning after the commitment of Castell, “What if I told y’all there is more?” On that note, four-star wide receiver target Andy Jean of Miami Northwestern, currently in Gainesville, announced his commitment to the Gators. With the addition of those four, the Gators have now 16 commits in the class of 2023 -- 14 of them 4-stars -- and are now ranked #12 nationally with hopes of moving into that top 10 by the end of the weekend.

By FRANZ BEARD GatorBaitMedia.com We have been down this road before. Three times in fact since Urban Meyer abruptly “retired” after suffering the first and only five-loss season of an otherwise brilliant coaching career. Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen were all met with enthusiasm. Each had pockets of success but each of them hit a speed bump that earned a pink slip. Muschamp lost to Georgia Southern in 2013 and when he didn’t respond with at least eight wins in 2014 he was terminated. Jim McElwain inherited what amounts to an NFL defense from Muschamp that produced 19 wins and two SEC East titles in 2015-16, but when Muschamp’s defense graduated to the pros and he was left to his own devices, he concocted a story that he and his family had been recipients of death threats. When he failed to back up his accusations with any measure of truth, he lost his job. Dan Mullen did three straight New Year’s Six bowls but at some point in the 2021 season he completely lost his bearings and became a casualty. Now Billy Napier takes over. In a little more than five weeks, he will coach his first game at Florida against a Utah team that will arrive in Gainesville ranked in everybody’s top ten with the expectation of a repeat Pac-12 championship. There is no shortage of enthusiasm for Napier. Since arriving on campus back in December after leading Louisiana to a Sun Belt championship that is the crown jewel of a four-year, 40-12 resume, Napier has said all the right things and done all the right things in a quiet, efficient manner that lends itself to confidence. Maybe it’s the quiet demeanor or perhaps the way Napier stands in front of the podium with note cards in hand to ensure he delivers his message without any slips of the lip. He is careful to offer praise without heaping it on the Gators. It’s not one of those Lou Holtz I don’t know if we stand a chance against Western Walla Walla Technical Institute and Catering School when we play them at homecoming assessments. It's just efficient. Organized. Straight to the point. No frills. Billy Napier sounds like someone who knows exactly where he’s going and how long it’s going to take to get there. The experts who write for the preseason magazines as well as the throngs of media who descended upon Atlanta for SEC Media Days last week seem to think this Florida team is destined to go 6-6 or 7-5 and yet they concede that it’s possible the Gators might win eight. The schedule is brutal, but with the way it’s front loaded with home games it doesn’t take an eternal optimist to see the possibility that the Gators might just prove the experts wrong. It is the schedule that might be the gift that will keep on giving provided, of course, the Gators get off to a surprising start and avoid the injury bug. Take a look at those first seven games. Six will be played in The Swamp. Should the Gators make it through those first seven relatively healthy and catch a break or two along the way, they may already have hit the six-win threshold by the time the UF buses reach the crest of the Hart Bridge on their way to the stadium in Jacksonville for the Georgia game. Here are Florida’s first seven games: September 3, Utah The Utes went 10-4 last year, won the Pac-12 championship by beating Oregon, and then lost to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. They return 12 starters (7 offense, 5 defense) including quarterback Cameron Rising (2,493 passing yards, 20 TDs; 499 rushing yards, 6 TDs) and tailback Tavion Thomas (1,108 rushing yards, 21 TDs). Everybody and his brother has the Utes repeating as Pac-12 champs. They will certainly be top ten when they arrive in Gainesville. Here is a stat worth remembering: Since 2009, Utah has played five games east of the Mississippi River, none of them in the South. Temperature at game time expected to be between 88-90, humidity somewhere in the 80-85 percent range. The Swamp will be a sauna and there is no way for Utah to prepare for it in the dry Utah heat (9 percent humidity on July 27). This is a game the Gators could win, perhaps very big. September 10, Kentucky The Wildcats went 10-3 last year and beat the Gators in Lexington, a game UF gave away with 15 penalties and a blocked field goal that was returned for the game-winning TD. Florida had a bad defense last year yet the Gators held Kentucky to one offensive touchdown and just 224 total yards, less than 150 after UK’s only TD drive. Kentucky touts QB Will Levis (2,812 yards, 24 TDs but 13 picks) as a potential first round NFL draft choice. Running back Chris Rodriguez (1,379 yards, 9 TDs) is a grinder who must be stopped. The Wildcats return nine starters (4 offense, 5 defense). UK is predicted to finish second in the SEC but with so many newbies in the lineup and playing the Gators in Gainesville the second week of the season, this is a game that UF could steal. Heat and humidity will factor in this game, too. September 17, South Florida After consecutive games against teams that will arrive at The Swamp ranked, the Gators will get a break against South Florida, which is 3-18 in the last two seasons. The Gators hammered USF in Tampa last year, 42-20, a game in which Anthony Richardson passed for 152 yards and two TDs while running for 115 on four carries, one for a TD. The Bulls return 16 starters (8 offense, 8 defense) so they should be improved, but they’re at least two recruiting classes from being able to hold their own with even the SEC bottom feeders. September 24, at Tennessee Optimism is through the roof in Knoxville after Josh Heupel guided the Vols to a 7-6 record in his first year on the job. The Vols return 13 starters, the most important of which is QB Hendon Hooker (2,945 passing yards, 31 TDs; 613 rushing yards, 5 TDs), who some experts believe will be the second best QB in the SEC behind Bryce Young of Alabama, who won the Heisman Trophy in 2021. The Vols scored 39.1 points per game last year, but they managed only 14 in a blowout loss to the Gators. This game is circled on every UT calendar as Vol fans believe they can challenge Georgia for the SEC East title. Two big red flags: (1) The possibility the NCAA will drop the hammer on the UT program for 18 Level I violations under the Jeremy Pruitt regime; and (2) only two of their seven wins last year came against teams that finished with a winning record. This will be Florida’s only road game among its first seven. It’s a game most experts have the Gators losing, but it should be noted that Florida is 16-1 against Tennessee since 2004. October 1, Eastern Washington This is a game that was scheduled as a favor to former UF coach Jim McElwain, who played football at Eastern Washington. The D1AA Eagles of the Big Sky Conference went 10-3 last season when they lost in the second round of the NCAA playoffs. Quarterback Eric Barriere graduated, taking his 46 touchdown passes with him. He will be replaced by Gunner Talkington, who has thrown 64 passes in his career. This game will be played in the hottest stadium and the biggest crowd Eastern Washington has faced since the Eagles lost to Texas Tech before a crowd of 54,000 in 2017. Florida should win this by 20 or more points. October 8, Missouri Missouri sprung the upset on the Gators in Dan Mullen’s final game as the UF head coach last season in Columbia. This year the Tigers come to Gainesville without an experienced QB and without stud running back Tyler Batie. The Tigers, who went 6-7 in 2021, return 12 starters (5 offense, 7 defense) from a team that is the preseason consensus No. 6 team out of seven in the SEC East. It’s a rebuilding year for HBC Eli Drinkwitz, who pulled off a recruiting coup when he landed Luther Burden, the No. 1 high school receiver in the country last year. The question is who will throw it to him? Brady Cook who threw 58 passes and two TDPs last year emerged in the spring as the likely starting QB. Mizzou will arrive at The Swamp after back-to-back games against Auburn and Georgia. October 15, LSU Florida’s season has gone south the last two years after losing to LSU. The Gators lost to the Tigers 37-34 in The Swamp in 2020 in the infamous “Shoe-gate” game and last year the Tigers pounded the Gators between the tackles for 321 yards and a 49-42 win. After losing in 2020, the Gators lost the SEC Championship Game to Alabama a week later and to Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl. After the loss to LSU last year, the Gators lost four of their last six games to finish with a losing season. Coach O has been replaced at LSU by Brian Kelly, formerly of Notre Dame. He brought in more than 15 transfers to bolster both sides of the ball as the Tigers return only five starters (2 offense, 3 defense) from last year’s 6-7 team. The QB is likely to be Arizona State transfer Jayden Daniels, who threw for 6,205 yards and 32 TDs while running for 1,288 and 13 TDs at ASU. Daniels will have one of the SEC’s most dangerous receivers in Kayshon Boutte, who caught 38 passes for 509 yards and nine TDs last year in only six games before he was injured. Before the Tigers make it to Gainesville, they have to play Auburn on the road and Tennessee. Those first seven games will be the key to Florida’s entire season. This is the kind of schedule that could see the Gators going 3-4 if they get off to a bad start against Utah and Kentucky, but if UF goes 2-0 out of the gate, a 6-1 or even 7-0 start is conceivable. And, if the Gators start out with six or seven wins they will have momentum heading into that two-game gauntlet of Georgia and Texas A&M (in College Station). Playing at home will certainly be a key factor for UF, particularly for the development of quarterback Anthony Richardson. Richardson may have more raw talent than any quarterback in the Southeastern Conference. He is a Body by God physical specimen who has an NFL arm and elite speed when he tucks and runs. The question is consistency. Can he harness all that ability to become the dual threat QB that nobody in the SEC wants to face? As talented as Richardson is, he won’t have to go it alone. Florida has one of the more underrated stables of running backs in the SEC in Louisiana transfer Montrell Johnson along with Nay’Quan Wright, Lorenzo Lingard and true freshman Trevor Etienne, younger brother of former Clemson All-American running back Travis Etienne. They will be running behind what is probably Florida’s best offensive line since 2009 when the Gators featured Mike and Maurkice Pouncey, Marcus Gilbert, Mo Hurt and Xavier Nixon, all of whom made it to the NFL. Florida returns five linemen with starting experience – LT Richard Gouraige (6-5, 308), LG Ethan White (6-4, 331), C Kingsley Eguakun (6-3, 301), RG Josh Braun (6-6, 351) and RT Michael Tarquin (6-5, 295) – and they’ll be joined by Louisiana transfer O’Cyrus Torrence (6-5, 347), who has made some preseason All-America lists, Louisiana transfer Kamryn Waites (6-8, 373) and juco transfer Jordan Herman (6-8, 370). There is plenty of talent but do the Gators have the depth? O-line coaches Rob Sale and Darnell Stapleton have to find at least two more ready to go players to have the kind of depth it takes to survive in the SEC. Receiver has been a question mark mostly because none of the returnees has shown elite speed in the past. Justin Shorter has caught 66 passes for 818 yards (12.4 per catch) and six TDS in two seasons while Xzavier Henderson has 35 catches for 425 yards (12.2 per catch) and three TDs while Trent Whittemore has 29 catches for 338 yards (11.7 per catch) and two TDs. Those aren’t exactly the kind of stats that keep defensive coordinators up at night. Florida added Arizona State transfer Ricky Pearsall, who caught 61 passes for 794 yards (13.0) and five touchdowns in three seasons. The question on everybody’s mind is were these guys handicapped by a system that rarely launched deep passes or was it a case that they couldn’t get open deep? If they can stretch defenses, then Florida’s running game is going to be hugely successful. Tight end Dante Zanders was a real find in the spring when he lit up defenses. He will have to be a factor in the middle of the field. There is reason to believe that if the Gators can find some tackles the defense will be the best it has been since the 2016 season when the Gators finished fifth nationally. Patrick Toney brings the creeper defense to the Gators. That’s the invention of Ron Roberts, who taught it to Dave Aranda (Baylor head coach and former LSU DC) and Toney when the two were on Napier’s Louisiana staff. Toney has an all-star staff with D-line coach Sean Spence, inside linebackers coach Jay Bateman, outside linebackers coach and former Gator All-American Mike Peterson, and corners coach Corey Raymond. This will be the best coached Florida defense in years. The concern at DT is because Gervon Dexter is Florida’s only proven commodity. Help has to be found in the trenches if the Gators are going to hold their own in the first two games (Utah and Kentucky), both of which prefer ground and pound style. If Desmond Watson (6-5, 415) can hold his own in the middle, the Gators should be good against the run. The Gators have an exceptional edge rusher in Brenton Cox Jr. (12.5 career sacks), who can have a monster season if he can stay healthy. It's the back seven that raises expectations for this defense. Getting Ventrell Miller (166 career tackles) for one more season at inside linebacker may have been Napier’s best recruiting job. The secondary will be exceptional with Jason Marshall at one corner and either Avery Helm or Georgia transfer Jalen Kimber at the other. Trey Dean III is expected to have an excellent season. There will be reason for great optimism if the Gators can establish themselves in the first seven games and avoid injuries. Every team in the SEC has 22-30 players. The teams that win 4-5 games have 30-36 players. Teams that win 6-8 games have at least 44 good players, but they have a small margin for error. One or two injuries can prove costly. Florida has at least 44 players. Can Napier find at least 6-8 more who can contribute in August? If he can, then the Gators might just get off to a faster start than anyone might have dared predict. The Gators have what it takes to be a better than average team. Do they have what it takes to be a very good team? A team capable of challenging for at least second place in the SEC East? A 6-1 or even 7-0 start is possible. Do that and the Gators might be the surprise team of the SEC.