A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning: MULLEN’S HISTORY SAYS THE OFFENSE WON’T SUFFER ALL THAT MUCH There is that old saying that when we assume it makes an ass out of u and me. There is this assumption that Florida’s offense is going to slow down considerably with Emory Jones taking over for Kyle Trask. The folks who do the analysis for the preseason football magazines tell us it’s only logical, but is it? Jones, after all, has far more experience running Dan Mullen’s offense than Trask did when he was rushed into duty when Feleipe Franks went down with a broken and dislocated ankle in game three in 2019. When Trask took his first snap at the start of the fourth quarter of that game in Kentucky, he had thrown 27 passes (completed 18) for 202 yards and two touchdowns while taking snaps in five games (four in 2018, one in 2019 prior to the UK game). Trask went on to throw for 7,184 yards and 68 touchdowns after taking over for Franks. Contrast that to Jones, who has played in 24 games, throwing for 613 yards and seven touchdowns while running for 514 yards and six more TDs. That’s not all in mop-up duty, either. Everybody knows Jones can run. Whereas Trask could see an opening and turn two yards into five, Jones can see that same opening and turn two into 20. It’s the passing that has the skeptics assuming Jones won’t be able to generate the same explosiveness with the UF offense that Trask could. Mullen seems to think people are going to be rather shocked to discover that EJ can make all the throws Trask did and that he may have a stronger arm. But if you need a little more convincing then take a look at Mississippi State in 2015 and 2016. In 2015 with Dak Prescott at the helm, Mullen’s offense averaged 34.4 points and 460.5 points per game. That was without a high quality running back and with only one receiver (De’Runnya Wilson) capable of stretching a defense. Prescott threw for 3,783 yards and 29 touchdowns, ran for 588 and 10 more. In 2016 with Prescott gone to the Dallas Cowboys, redshirt freshman Nick Fitzgerald took over at QB, still without a high quality running back and still with only one explosive wide receiver (Donald Gray). Fitzgerald considered Mercer and Samford before getting his scholarship offer from Mullen. He ran for 1,375 yards and 16 touchdowns, passed for 2,423 and 21 more. The Bulldogs averaged 30.4 points and 440.2 yards per game. The numbers would have been far better if (a) the Bulldogs had better running backs and receivers and (b) defensive coordinator Pete Sirmon had the kind of year Todd Grantham had at UF last year. Jones is a better QB than Nick Fitzgerald. He has better talent than Mullen was ever able to surround Prescott or Fitzgerald with. The least of Florida’s five running backs (Dameon Pierce, Malik Davis, Nay’Quan Wright, Lorenzo Lingard, Demarkcus Bowman) is better than any back Mullen had at MSU and all of Florida’s receivers are better than what they were able to recruit to Mississippi State. The offense will shift to more of a running game with a lot of option thrown in. It’s going to resemble what the Gators ran in 2008 when Tim Tebow was the QB. Jones doesn’t have Tebow’s power, but Tebow would have loved to have Jones’ speed. The running game will be explosive enough that it’s going to open up the passing game. We tend to forget that Tebow wasn’t exactly Mr. Thread the Needle when he threw, but the threat of the running game was so substantial that most of the time UF’s receivers were so open Tebow didn’t have to make a precision strike. Don’t assume the Gators are going to have a serious dropoff on offense. It will only make an ass out of u and me. NEXT STEP FOR THE 12-TEAM PLAYOFF WILL BE TAKEN ON TUESDAY When the College Football Management Committee and the CFB Board of Managers meet in Dallas Tuesday, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will present the proposal to expand the playoff from the current four teams to 12. It isn’t expected to have much opposition. The Board of Managers – 11 college presidents – won’t exactly give the proposal a rubber stamp but that’s only because some tweaks will likely be required before there is a final version, but it is about 99.9 percent certain they will elect to move forward. After all, according to Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger that it was the presidents who wanted to move forward with expansion in the first place. Before they settled on the 12-team idea, the working group of Swarbrick, Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey, Big 12 commish Bob Bowlsby and Mountain West commish Craig Thompson, investigated expanding to six, eight, 16 and 24 teams. Prior to their 12-team announcement, it was thought expansion would go slowly to accommodate ESPN, which holds the exclusive television rights until the current contract expires after the 2025 playoff. The group decided that six wouldn’t work, eight didn’t offer enough at-large slots and 24 extended the season too long. Twelve was ideal because it accommodated both the Power Five and Group of Five and eliminated the growing problem of opt outs. Here are some key points of the proposal: (1) 12 teams with the six highest ranked conference champions and six at-large teams; (2) no conference gets an automatic bid so it’s possible that one or two Power Five conference champs won’t make the field; (3) the four highest seeded conference champs will get a first round bye; (4) because Notre Dame doesn’t play in a conference and won’t play a league championship game, the Irish can never be seeded higher than fifth even if they go unbeaten; and (5) because it’s the six highest ranked conference champs, at least one Group of Five champion will make the playoff every year. All four members of the working group, which began investigating expansion 13 months ago, had reason to approve the plan. Swarbrick was happy with the proposal because if Notre Dame is seeded 5-8 the Irish will host a playoff game in South Bend. Sankey was happy because in a 12-team playoff, the SEC will get a minimum of two and quite often three teams in every year. Bowlsby doesn’t have a mega contract like the SEC has with ESPN that will pay the league $300 million a year so this proposal means a lot of money for his league and, in most years, two teams in the playoff. Thompson was happy because the Group of Five teams will finally have a chance to participate and to share in what is expected to be a payout that is perhaps five times more than the current $97 million pittance offered by the CFP. OVER, UNDER, AROUND AND THROUGH THE SEC Alabama: Herb Jones, John Petty and Josh Primo have been invited to the NBA Combine. Jones and Petty were seniors last season although they could return to Alabama if they chose. Primo was a freshman who has not hired an agent so he could return to school. Jaden Shackleford was not invited to the combine and is expected to return to school … Quarterback Arch Manning, grandson of Archie and nephew of Peyton and Eli, visited Alabama this past weekend. Arch is a 5-star rated quarterback in the 2023 recruiting class. Arkansas: Kevin Kopps, who went 12-1 with 11 saves for the Razorbacks, won the Dick Howser Trophy as the nation’s top amateur baseball player. Kopps was the SEC Pitcher of the Year and was Collegiate Baseball Magazine’s Player of the Year. Auburn: Freshman wide receiver Hal Presley has gone home to Texas and placed his name in the transfer portal. Presley, a 3-star 2021 signee, was on the Auburn campus and involved in the offseason workout program when he elected to bolt. Georgia: Caryl Smith Gilbert, who led the Southern California women to two NCAA outdoor championships in the last three years, is the new men’s and women’s track and field coach. She will be the first woman to coach a men’s team in Georgia history. Kentucky: The firing season has begun in the NBA which means John Calipari is going to be linked to nearly every opening. Cal is set to make $9.2 million this year at Kentucky and has six years remaining on his contract although that wouldn’t deter some of the higher profile NBA owners from making a run at him. The one NBA job that might lure him would be the Los Angeles Lakers. Cal is close friends with LeBron James and Anthony Davis led UK to the only national championship Cal has won. Of course, for Calipari to take that job, the Lakers would have to fire Frank Vogel, who won the 2020 NBA title. Figure Calipari is staying ... Power forward Oscar Tschiebwe, who averaged 11.2 points and 9.3 rebounds at West Virginia, is in Lexington after dealing with visa issues that kept him in his native Congo for three extra weeks. LSU: With Kevin O’Sullivan and Pat Casey off the board, LSU’s home run baseball hires are said to be either Tennessee’s Tony Vitello or Vanderbilt’s Tim Corbin. Corbin is paid $2.3 million a year but LSU would offer $3 million-plus. Still, at Vandy he wins championships and walks on water, which can’t be said of the football and basketball coaches. Figure he stays put. Vitello is making only $600,000 a year in Knoxville. Consider him a possibility. The two coaches who have already interviewed are Mike Bianco of Ole Miss, who is a former LSU catcher, and Cliff Godwin of East Carolina, a former LSU hitting coach. If Vitello says no, put your money on Bianco. Mississippi State: Will Bednar struck out 15 batters in six innings and closer Landon Sims struck out six in three innings as Mississippi State (46-16) knocked off No. 2 seed Texas (47-16), 2-1, Sunday night. Texas managed only four hits and one walk although Sims gave up a homer and two singles in the ninth inning. Mississippi State will face Virginia Tuesday night in a winner’s bracket game. Missouri: Now that Allie Green IV has transferred to Mizzou, both of Tulsa’s starting corners from last season are reunited, but what exactly is Mizzou getting? Between Green and Akayleb Evans, there were three pass breakups and one interception. That doesn’t sound like Mizzou is getting much of an upgrade. Ole Miss: Ole Miss will be spending $35-40 million to upgrade the Manning Center, which is the football operations center. South Carolina: Frank Martin’s son Chuck has been promoted to associate head basketball coach. Tennessee: The Vols (50-17) were shut out by Virginia (36-25), 6-0, Sunday afternoon at the College World Series. Tennessee will face Texas Tuesday afternoon in an elimination game … Baseball coach Tony Vitello was named National Coach of the Year by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association … Former walk-on wide receiver Kenny Solomon, who earned a scholarship in 2019, is transferring to Tulsa. Texas A&M: Cornerback Devin Morris, who was in on 25 tackles and had three pass breakups in 2020, is retiring from football in order to focus on what he calls mental health issues. Morris isn’t walking away empty-handed. He leaves Texas A&M with a college degree. Vanderbilt: Kumar Rocker got knocked out of the box by Arizona (45-17) but the Commodores (46-15) were able to come back and win it, 7-6, in the bottom of the 12th on a walk-off bases loaded single by Jayson Gonzalez. Vanderbilt faces North Carolina State (36-18) tonight (7 p.m.) in a winner’s bracket game. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Leave it to the Pac-12 to object to the 12-team College Football Playoff proposal. Under the proposal, no conference gets an automatic bid. Instead, the six highest rated conference champs will get in as well as six at-large selections. Outgoing Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott objects and wants what he calls the “Autonomy Five” champs to get automatic bids. That’s a fancy way of saying the Power Five. Under Scott’s leadership the Pac-12 has become irrelevant in football. Oregon (2014) and Washington (2017) are the only two Pac-12 teams to ever make the playoff in seven years. Had there been a 12-team playoff last year, Pac-12 champ Oregon wouldn’t have made it in while Cincinnati (American Athletic Conference) and Coastal Carolina (Sun Belt) both would have been in. Sun Belt commissioner Keith Gill, reacting to Scott’s objection, said, “Playoff spots should be earned and not given.”

Everything you ever read or heard about college football emphasizing TEAM? Forget it. This new Name/Image/Likeness deal will change all the rules. As cataclysmic as it sounds, though, it’s not going to be a fatal blow to CFB. Clearly, however, this is not your daddy’s football anymore. That old “all-for-one/one-for-all“ “sis-boom-bah” chant should be amended to “… and it’s all about the Benjamins.” That fits the modern name-image-likeness compensation plan that looms like the Sword of Damocles over college football. But remember, that sword could cut both ways for a school like Florida. Sooner or later, the players had to be paid in some fashion. At least this way they’re on equal footing with other students. And they’re earning their own cash. This is the New Day: A 12-team playoff, player mobility through the transfer portal and opportunity to make money on yourself. Why not? Everybody else is making a buck off of you! In a way, Florida is the perfect media-savvy school to market yourself as a player. After all, it’s in the University of Florida’s DNA. A long, long time ago, about the time Bear Bryant was just arriving in Tuscaloosa, when the measure of success of Florida football was defined by the team going .500 or better and making it to the Gator Bowl, we were getting most of our news and sports from newspapers. Despite the mediocrity of the Gator program, there was an extraordinarily heightened newspaper interest in the sport right there in black and white, as reflected in long row of at least a dozen newspaper racks out front of “The Hub” at the book store on Stadium Road. A dime or so got you the news of the day. As I recall, newspaper row at The Hub then included publications from Tampa (2), Jacksonville (2), Orlando (2), St. Petersburg (2), Daytona Beach, Gainesville – and maybe even Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. They all had student correspondents. Most every sports editor of those papers covered many of the Gator games because there were no professional teams in Florida then and only the University of Miami rivaled the UF for ink — and then only in South Florida. At one point back in the sixties and seventies, the Gator beat had more journalists traveling to cover its football team than any college in America. Why is this significant sixty years later? Well, it turns out that media attention could eventually play a big role in attracting future Gator stars. Not through dinosauric newspapers, even if you could find them anymore. In SOCIAL media. (Stick with me because, this gets sticky.) If you feel like an idiot and can’t for the life if you figure out what this whole N-I-L thing is about and that it’s threatening the core values of the game you love, you’re not alone. There are more potholes in the NIL than the Major Deegan Expressway after back-to-back New York City ice storms. Contrary to the hue and cry echoing among the CFB traditionalists, this will not destroy the game, however, which is about to launch a multi-billion dollar playoff plan. Trickle-down economics are about to kick in. We just don’t know how much yet or where it will trickle. So buckle up! Let’s start with the good news. Some coaches will adapt, some will not and some have already chosen to pivot in their career because of the transfer portal and N-I-L. In the case of Florida, Dan Mullen has shown the propensity for embracing new trends. Who else adapted quicker and more successfully in finding talent and adding roster depth from this new resource than Mullen? These past three seasons have revealed Mullen’s acumen for utilizing non-traditional trends and staying competitive at a championship level by leveraging those assets. Now it be interesting to see what he can leverage from the new N-I-L when it is all finally adjudicated. So far, at least 19 states have passed the legislation which can be put in place by July 1 or at a later date. How it will be monitored and adjudicated – that’s another matter. Stop me right here, and let’s agree that we’re all dumbstruck and haven’t a clue what’s about to take place. But can we agree on this? If you gotta have a scout leading the way into unknown territory, give me a smart guy like Dan Mullen, who no doubt has already been burning the midnight oil scoping it out and is equipped with a compass, telescope, metal detector and crystal ball. Back to the news about how it will help Florida. Take the case of Houston Clearlake 4-star cornerback commit Julian Humphrey. Humphrey is so far advanced that he’s already got a personal logo and a name for his merchandise, “Julio Island.” According to Zach Abolverdi of the Sun, Humphrey already has more than 1.3 M followers on TikTok. No doubt one of the reason the media-savvy Humphrey chose Florida was the opportunity for peddling his wares in the Gator Nation. Something’s already changed in Gainesville about recruiting. We’re seeing a revamped strategy and philosophy that seem to be resonating with top prospects. More four and five star prospects are tweeting and TikToking about their recent positive UF experience. And even though UF facilities are not up to expectations yet, it’s coming. We don’t know this for certain yet, but some knowledgeable observers are predicting this will be the most fruitful two-week recruiting period in Mullen’s Gator tenure. This stat from Abolverdi: “Of the 24 official visitors in June, 10 were top-100 prospects and 17 rank in the top 150.” Mullen’s response: “It’s their opportunity to learn about us and to see us interact.” As that guy used to say on those Men’s Warehouse commercials: “And you’re going to like the way you look.” After all isn’t that what Name, Image and Likeness is all about?

The course of history is often changed by the most subtle and well-intended decisions. In the case of football at the University of Florida, the decisions and events of 12 days over a 92-year period have impacted and shaped the Gators’ pursuit of championships. Here is a look at the 12 days that had the greatest impact on Florida football history. 1. Tennessee 13, Florida 12 (December 8, 1928): The Gators went into this game 8-0 and the nation’s highest scoring team. Tennessee was 8-0-1, the tie a 0-0 stalemate with Kentucky just 10 days before. Both teams thought they had a shot at the Rose Bowl. Little did they know that a deal was in place for Georgia Tech to go to the Rose Bowl with a win over Georgia in its final regular season game. East Tennessee was mired in a drought that had lasted for months but as legend has it, when the Gators showed up for the game on Saturday morning the field in Knoxville was a muddy mess, The Gators were said to be the nation’s fastest team but they arrived in Knoxville minus the long cleats needed to play effectively in the mud. And wouldn’t you know it, Colonel (he didn’t become a general until World War II) Bob Neyland didn’t have any cleats he could spare, plus all the local sporting goods stores were closed. Florida’s speed advantage was neutralized and the result was a slog it out game that Tennessee won, 13-12, when Bobby Dodd blocked the extra point. Neither the Gators nor Tennessee got the Rose Bowl bid because Georgia Tech beat Georgia, 20-6, to finish undefeated (9-0) in the regular season. An unbeaten season could have changed the course of Florida football forever, but things were never the same after that loss to Tennessee. Four years later Charles Bachman left to become head coach at Michigan State. There were only pockets of success and never any championships won until Steve Spurrier became Florida’s head coach 62 years later. 2. Bob Woodruff hired by Dr. J. Hillis Miller, December 1949: Before he got his name on the first University of Florida med school, Dr. Miller was the president of the University of Florida. In the years following World War II, UF’s student population exploded as veterans took advantage of the GI Bill. Legend has it that Florida’s 28-7 upset win over Georgia in 1949 convinced Dr. Miller that UF was capable of far more than what Raymond “Bear” Wolf (13-24-2 from 1946-49) was delivering as the head football coach. When Wolf was fired, Dr. Miller turned to Bob Woodruff, the Baylor head coach who had worked as an assistant to General Bob Neyland at Tennessee, Col. Earl “Red” Blaik at Army and Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech. Woodruff took Florida to its first two bowl games (1952, 1958) and only posted two losing seasons in his 10 years as head coach. Six of his assistants went on to become head coaches including Hall of Famer Frank Broyles. Doug Dickey, a quarterback on that first bowl team, would later become head coach at both Tennessee and UF. Woodruff’s football style can best be described as boring since third-and-7 usually meant Florida would punt. He won just enough (53-42-6) to raise expectations, not only of the Gator Nation but of UF president Dr. J. Wayne Reitz, who believed Florida could do better. In the summer prior to the 1959 season, Reitz told Woodruff his contract would not be renewed. So while Woodruff was a lame duck coach in 1959, Dr. Reitz was busy seeking a replacement who was capable of awakening the sleeping football giant he perceived Florida to be. 3. Dr. Reitz hires Ray Graves, December 1959: When first choice to replace Woodruff – Ara Parseghian – elected to stay at Northwestern amid promises to upgrade facilities, Dr. Reitz turned to Ray Graves, the brilliant defensive coordinator for Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech. This was a potentially volatile situation since Graves and Woodruff were teammates at Tennessee and close friends. When Dodd, who had been a Tennessee assistant when both Graves and Woodruff played for the Vols, gave Graves his blessing to take the Florida job the deal was sealed. Woodruff, who would go on to become the athletic director at Tennessee who hired Douglas Adair Dickey away from Frank Broyles at Arkansas, also gave his okay. Dr. Reitz hired Graves for the princely sum of $19,000 a year to become both the head coach and athletic director. 4. Steve Spurrier signs with the Gators, 1963: Spurrier was an athletic legend in the state of Tennessee where he was the MVP of the state championship game in football, basketball and baseball during his prep career at Science Hill High School in Johnson City where his dad was a Presbyterian minister. The Gators knew all about Spurrier because the postmaster in Johnson City was Marvin Graves, Coach Graves’ brother. Graves was a passing quarterback at a time when the Vols were still running the single wing under Bowden Wyatt, who was General Neyland’s hand-picked successor. Before recruiting Spurrier, Graves sought Wyatt’s approval. Because (a) Wyatt wasn’t going to change offenses even for a stud like Spurrier and (b) Florida wasn’t on the UT schedule for years to come, Wyatt was all too happy to give Graves the okay. It was a cold, snowy day in Tennessee when Spurrier made his official visit to UF. It was warm and sunny in Gainesville where people were out playing golf. That was all Spurrier needed to make the decision to sign with Florida and the moment he signed the scholarship papers, Florida football changed forever. 5. Florida 10, No. 3 Alabama 6 (October 12, 1963 in Tuscaloosa): Florida was unranked. Alabama was unbeaten, playing at home where Bear Bryant teams just didn’t lose and had Lee Roy Jordan playing both sides of the football and Joe Namath at quarterback. Nobody gave the Gators a chance, which is exactly what Gene Ellenson was telling the Gators in the locker room before the game. It fired up Jack Katz (you know him now as Panama Jack) to smash his helmeted head through the blackboard. There was only one problem. There was only a single door leading out of the locker room and there was a logjam of players trying to rush out onto the field. Alabama won the toss and elected to receive. All-SEC running back Benny Nelson caught the ball at the four and took one step before he was de-cleated by Hagood Clarke. Nobody heard Nelson’s gasp. That’s because everyone in the stadium let out one of those “Oh my gosh!” gasps. Florida took a 3-0 lead on a 42-yard Bobby Lyle field goal and a fourth-quarter touchdown run of 42 yards from Dick Kirk made it 10-0. Alabama got a late touchdown but missed the two-point conversion. Florida held on, beat the Tide and the Gators carried Graves off the field on their shoulders. As the Florida buses got ready to drive to the airport, Namath climbed on the bus and congratulated UF on a deserving victory, a very classy move. 6. The kick heard ‘round the world (October 29, 1966): Etched into Gator lore is Steve Spurrier’s 40-yard field goal with 2:12 left that not only gave Florida a 30-27 win over Auburn but pretty much sealed the Heisman Trophy for Spurrier. The story that most people don’t know is that the game should have never been close. It should have been a blowout win by the Gators, who outgained Auburn 442-138. Throughout the game, the Gators kept shooting themselves in the foot with fumbles like the one an Auburn player ran back 91 yards for a TD or the 15-yard penalty that put the ball back on the Auburn 23 with 2:12 to go, necessitating the field goal attempt. Forty yards was beyond the range of Wayne “Shadetree” Barfield, who was 1-2 all season, having made one from 26 and missed from 34. Spurrier had actually kicked two field goals including one from 41 yards earlier in the year. He had his square-toe kicking shoe ready to go so during the time out before the kick, Spurrier told Coach Graves to give him a chance to win it. When he trotted out on the field for the field goal attempt, Auburn assistants were in Shug Jordan’s ear insisting the Gators were going to fake it. Jordan just shook his head and told his coaches, “If Spurrier tries it, he’ll make it.” Spurrier made the kick to complete a day in which he threw for 259 yards and one TD, ran 18 yards for another and averaged 47.4 yards per punt. It was an afternoon that put Spurrier over the top among Heisman voters. 7. Graves out, Dickey in, 1969: In a move that resembled the one Dr. J. Wayne Reitz made in 1959, UF president Dr. Stephen C. O’Connell told Coach Graves in August that this would be his final season. Dr. O’Connell told Graves he could remain as the AD but not as the head coach. Nobody knew at the time that Dr. O’Connell and Tennessee coach Douglas Adair Dickey had verbally agreed that Dickey would be the Florida football coach in 1970. Behind the All-America pass-catch duo of John Reaves and Carlos Alvarez, the sophomore dominated Gators went 8-1-1. In a cruel twist of fate, Florida was paired with Dickey and SEC champ Tennessee in the Gator Bowl. Two days before the game Jack Hairston of the Jacksonville Journal and Buddy Martin of Cocoa (now Florida) Today broke the story that Graves was out, nearly causing a player revolt. The Gators played the game under protest but beat the Vols, 14-13. Graves finished on a 9-1-1 note, the best season in Florida football history. Dickey took over in 1970 but never once won the SEC nor did his teams ever come close to matching the excitement of the Super Sophs in 1969. 8. Charley Pell hired as head coach, 1979: When Dickey was fired after a 4-7 season in 1978, all eyes turned to Lou Holtz at Arkansas. It seemed that UF and Holtz were about to strike a deal when communication broke down. When he didn’t hear from UF in what he thought was a reasonable amount of time, Holtz backed out completely. SMU coach Ron Meyer was thought to be the focus, but UF quietly turned its attention to Clemson coach Charley Pell, a former All-SEC player and assistant coach for Bear Bryant at Alabama. Pell agreed to come to Florida for the astounding sum of $75,000 a year. His first team went 0-10-1 but the Gators went 33-16-1 including a remarkable 8-win season in 1980 after that. When Pell fell on the sword for NCAA violations in 1984, he left UF with what amounted to an NFL team. He never coached again. Pell never blamed anyone else for the NCAA sanctions and there is still a large contingent of Gator fans who are bitter about one of the stiffest probations in history, but without Charley Pell, the Florida athletic program would have never become one of the best in the country. Pell organized the Gator boosters and turned them into a fundraising juggernaut. He got facilities upgraded substantially. The probation will always hang over that era, but it wasn’t completely negative. 9. The conquering hero returns, 1990: Pell’s successor, Galen Hall, was fired midseason in 1989 when the men in blue suits from the NCAA came calling. UF limped home with a 7-5 record that concluded with five consecutive losses. The offense was Emmitt (Smith) left, Emmitt right, Emmitt up the middle. Zero in the way of creativity or imagination. Up at Duke, Steve Spurrier was doing the impossible and winning the ACC championship. Despite the Gator Nation’s cries to bring Spurrier home where he belonged, UF athletic director Bill Arnsparger wanted Mike Archer, the man he had hand-picked to succeed him at LSU. Depending on who you believe, Arnsparger either decided Spurrier was a better choice or had a Ben Hill Griffin-induced change of mind when BHG told him, “Bill, Steve Spurrier is going to be the football coach at Florida next year. You don’t have to be the athletic director.” Spurrier went 9-2 in his first season in 1990, went 122-27-1 in 12 years, won the first six Southeastern Conference championships in UF history and the 1996 national championship. When he took the job, all the so-called experts in the media and plenty of coaches – present and former – said the Spurrier offense would never work in the SEC. Not only did the offense work, but it changed the way football was played in the SEC and nationwide forever. 10. The Zooker and the frat house (September 16, 2004): On the evening of September 16, Florida football coach Ron Zook got a call from athletic director Jeremy Foley telling him to get over to the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house where a brawl seemed ready to break out between frat boys and three UF football players. There had been ongoing harassment from the frat boys and UF players that escalated that night when one of them sucker-punched Steve Rissler. When Zook arrived, he engaged in a verbal shout-down with the frat house president. Police arrived and prevented anything further from happening but the media turned the dispute into a nationwide negative. Thirty-seven days later, Zook and the Gators lost 38-31 to unranked Mississippi State in Starkville, dropping Florida’s record to 4-3. On October 24, Zook was fired although he was allowed to coach out the season. At the press conference on October 25, UF president Bernie Machen was asked how much the frat house incident had played into Zook’s demise. Machen replied, “Not much,” but to admit anything different would have empowered any frat house on campus that it could take down a Florida coach. On December 4, to no one’s surprise, Utah coach Urban Meyer was announced as Florida’s football coach. Meyer had been hired by Machen at Utah in 2003 and from the moment Zook was fired, it was thought to be only a matter of time before he was named the UF coach. 11. Tim Tebow picks Florida over Alabama (December 13, 2005): The entire Alabama coaching staff spent 12 hours at the Tebow family’s west Jacksonville compound the day before Tim was to announce at a nationally televised press conference where he was going to play college football. In the early hours of December 13, Tebow was on the phone with former UF offensive coordinator Larry Fedora, then the OC at Oklahoma State. Fedora and Tebow had grown close when Ron Zook had targeted Tebow as a must-get recruit. Fedora told Tim to look at whose poster was on his bedroom wall (Danny Wuerffel), what color was the family mailbox (orange and blue) and to remember whose games he started going to (Florida) when he was just a kid. Even so, it was still a struggle. Tebow and his entire family were particularly fond of Alabama coach Mike Shula, plus they had a great visit to Tuscaloosa on the weekend when Bama destroyed the Gators, 31-3, on October 1. Two hours before he was supposed to announce his decision on ESPN, Tebow was still torn but Fedora’s words resonated. An hour before decision time, Tebow informed his parents he was going to be a Gator. Twenty minutes before the announcement, the call was made to Shula. Then came the call to Meyer but before Tebow could say “I’m a Gator” the battery of his cell phone died. Meyer couldn’t bear to watch the ESPN announcement so he was pacing outside his Haile Plantation home when he heard Shelley and the kids yell. Only then did he know Tim had chosen the Gators. During his four years at UF, the Gators went 48-7, 35-6 with Tim as the starter. He won the 2007 Heisman Trophy, was a key contribor on the 2006 national championship team and the MVP of the 2008 national championship game when the Gators beat Oklahoma, 24-14. 12. Urban Meyer resigns, not once but twice: In the early hours of the morning of December 6, 2009, following Florida’s loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, Meyer thought he was having a heart attack. Taken by ambulance to the Shands ER, it was determined that Meyer hadn’t suffered a heart attack. It turned out he was having esophageal strictures, a condition in which the esophagus narrows to the point that only small amounts of food and liquid can pass but it was a scary enough incident that 20 days later, just before the Gators were to depart for New Orleans and a Sugar Bowl date with Cincinnati, Meyer resigned. A day later, Meyer rescinded his resignation with an agreement that he would take a leave of absence. He really needed a year off but allowed himself to be talked into coaching again. The attempt to balance coaching with dealing with the esophageal strictures meant neither the Gators nor Meyer’s health got quite the attention they needed. The result was an 8-5 season, the most losses ever suffered by any Meyer-coached team. On December 8, 2010, Meyer announced he was retiring for a second time and this time there was no turning back. The Gators closed out the Meyer era at Florida with a 37-24 win over Penn State in the Outback Bowl. Meyer spent the fall of 2011 working as a studio and sometime game analyst for ESPN. Without the concerns of recruiting, practice and everything else that goes into being the head coach at the University of Florida Meyer’s health returned to a reasonable enough condition that when Ohio State offered its vacant head coaching job in late November he accepted. There will never be any way to know for sure, but had Meyer taken 2010 off and come back to coach the Gators in 2011, it’s highly unlikely that he would have taken the Ohio State job and he might have been Florida’s coach for much, if not all, the next decade. Meyer was 65-15 in his six years on the Florida job with two national championships. In the 10 years since his second resignation, there have been no SEC or national championships. The three coaches who have followed Meyer – Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen – have combined for a 79-42 record.

Jeffrey Meldon was born and raised in one of the most sports-rich cities in America – Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up worshiping the likes of legendary Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes and the Cleveland Browns, who he swears were “pretty good back then,” followed by a chuckle. After graduating from Ohio State University in 1966, followed by earning a law degree from Case Western Reserve Law School in 1969, the Clevelander trekked south to Gainesville, Florida, where he worked his first jury trial in the State of Florida in 1971. Fifty years later, Meldon was just celebrated by the Florida Bar for a half century of service. But the Central Florida injury and criminal defense attorney isn’t done yet. On Wednesday night, Meldon celebrated his second Ocala location’s grand opening – and he did it in grand fashion. Towards the end of 2020, Meldon inked a deal with the University of Florida that gave him and his associates the distinction of being the “official law firm partner of the Florida Gators.“ “It’s a great honor to be chosen among all the different law firms as the only official law firm partner of the Florida Gators,” Meldon said. “What we plan on doing is actually to activate our relationship with the University Athletic Association by promoting all of the Gators’ sports – not just football.” Though Meldon’s upbringing and watching the Browns win a Super Bowl in 1964 led him to love the game of football, he recognizes that the University of Florida has so much value athletically beyond the gridiron. Meldon says the communities in the Ocala and Gainesville area are special because they also recognize the value of UF sports beyond the walls of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. “Football is the big sport and the big dog and all of that,” Meldon said. “But people in Gainesville and Ocala, they love coming to Gators basketball, coming to baseball games, softball games, volleyball, gymnastics events... What we want to do is really publicize that; do ticket giveaways to people in our community because those are the sports that are most supported by locals. “We want to really make it fun and exciting and help the Gators fill the house for every sporting event.” And if Wednesday night’s event at Meldon’s new Ocala location proved anything, it’s that Meldon, his family and team know how to draw a crowd and have fun. Meldon opened his ribbon cutting to the public. People from all over Ocala and its surrounding areas flocked under a white tent in the parking lot of Meldon’s new location on U.S. HWY 441 in the heart of Ocala to celebrate the accomplishment. Ocala Mayor Kent Guinn was on site for the celebration, in addition to members of the Ocala/Marion County Chamber and Economic Partnership. The parking lot was dotted with orange and blue balloon arrangements, cups of beer, cheese boards, pizza and lots of free swag bearing the logos of the University of Florida and Meldon Law. There were plenty of incentives to draw a party crowd, but none as rewarding as the Head Ball Coach himself. Former Florida Gators football player and head coach Steve Spurrier joined the crowd on Wednesday to celebrate not only Meldon, but also recognize what Meldon’s partnership will bring to University Athletic Association. “On behalf of the University of Florida, were proud to be associated with Meldon Law and his crew,” Spurrier said. “We’re happy that he’s opening up his new locationnhere and he does a super job all over the state so we’re happy and proud to be associated with Meldon Law.” While Meldon and his team of attorneys stand behind their motto, “Won’t Back Down,” which plays homage to the Tom Petty song played at UF sporting events, Meldon’s impact on the State of Florida extends beyond quality legal practice. In 1997, Meldon started his Scholar-Athlete Program, which initially recognized one male and one female high school athlete from the North Central Florida area on a monthly basis. Since then, the program has blossomed into a weekly award that Meldon gives to student-athletes in conjunction with WCJB TV20. The Scholar Athlete Program now also dishes out two annual awards for the Male and Female Scholar Athlete of the Year. According to Meldon, Meldon Law has handed out more than 600 scholarships to local high school student-athletes. After 50 years in the Ocala-Gainesville area, his youthful years of cheering for the teams back home are a thing of the past. “When I came down here and started getting excited about being a Gators fan, now the Gators are obviously my No. 1 team,” Meldon said. “Some people don’t know it, but my No. 2 team is still my alma mater, Ohio State. “But when the Gators play the Buckeyes, I’m always pulling for the Gators.”

Florida Gators baseball commit Deric Fabian has been named the Florida Dairy Farmers 2021 Mr. Baseball, the Florida Dairy Farmers announced on Thursday. Fabian joins a long list of big names in baseball, including the very first Mr. Baseball, Alex Rodriguez. Fabian, who was also named the Class 4A Player of the Year, tallied 118 points, with eight first place votes. The award was voted on by a panel of high school baseball coaches and media representatives. As stated in a release, “the Florida Dairy Farmers High School Sports Awards program exemplifies Florida Dairy Farmers' commitment to the state's youth. This is the 29th year of these unique awards as we honor the state's top athletes and coaches in all 30 FHSAA sanctioned and recognized sports. The program also emphasizes to young people the importance of keeping dairy products a primary part of their diet in their overall nutrition plan.” The short stop helped his team, the North Marion Colts, to a 4A state championship appearance this season. So much of the Colts success in the field came courtesy of Fabian’s glove and instincts between second and third. “I think his defensive play gets overlooked a little bit because he is such an amazing offensive player, but he just doesn't get enough credit for what he does in the field,” remarked Dale Hall, Head Coach of North Marion. But just like his brother—current Florida Gator Jud Fabian—it's Deric’s bat that sets him apart. “Deric is a force in the box,” bragged Hall. “He's got great pop. I mean there's a reason why he's going to the University of Florida, he's a special player…Deric does a really good job of being patient and getting good pitches to hit.” The elder Fabian notched over 20 home runs during the 2021 season for the Florida Gators. And a day before Deric was named Mr. Baseball, Jud was named a 2021 NCBWA Third Team All-American, as announced by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association. The NCBWA honor marks Fabian's second All-America award of 2021, as Collegiate Baseball also handed him a third team accolade back on June 3. As a third-year player in 2021, Fabian finished the season tied for ninth in the country and ranking second in the SEC with 20 home runs. Fabian also ranks ninth in the SEC in walks (40) and 13th in slugging percentage (.570). By clubbing two home runs against Georgia on May 15 for his fourth two-homer game of the campaign, Fabian became just the fifth player in Florida baseball history to hit 20 home runs in a single season. Overall, the Ocala, Fla. native slashed .249/.366/.512 with 30 extra-base hits, 10 doubles, 51 runs, 46 RBI and six stolen bases to go with two outfield assists and a .984 fielding percentage defensively. The elder Fabian is expected to head to the pro’s this summer, with his name in the MLB Draft. He’ll leave an outfielder position open, but also an open spot for a Fabian legacy in Gainesville with the Florida Gators. Who better to fill that role than his kid brother, from just down the street.

A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning: ANOTHER DAY, TWO MORE WHAT IFS … WHAT IF DAN MULLEN HAD SUCCEEDED URBAN MEYER IN 2011? Let’s start with three facts before we get into the meat of the matter. (1) Urban Meyer SHOULD HAVE taken a year off in 2010 and gotten his health back in order; (2) Florida’s fall from a 13-1 team in 2009 to 8-5 in 2010 had plenty to do with transition in the coaching staff; and (3) the Gators had excellent personnel but the quarterback position was handicapped because John Brantley was a conservative non-runner, Trey Burton was an option QB who couldn’t hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle from point blank range when he threw and Jordan Reed was a tank between the tackles but too tentative as a passer to succeed. To point No. 1, Meyer was prepared to either resign completely or take the year off but was talked into returning to the sideline in 2010. Big mistake. He needed the year to get his health back. I know a lot of people still find it hard to believe but the fact is Urban had esophageal strictures, a condition where the esophagus narrows to the point that food can barely pass. He lost close to 40 pounds during the 2009 season. I was at every press conference and noticed how haggard he was looking. Everyone in the media noticed the weight loss. During the 2010 season he had to be treated by dilation of the esophagus, which is quite painful. I think that made it very difficult for him to focus his full attention on the football team. Had he taken a sabbatical year, I think he would have gotten healthy and remained at Florida. The 2008 coaching staff is one of the best in college football history. Gone from that staff in 2009 were Mullen (head coach Mississippi State), John Hevesy (tight ends/tackles, to MSU with Mullen), and Billy Gonzales (wide receivers, to LSU). Gone from the 2008 staff in 2010 were defensive coordinator Charlie Strong, who took with him to Louisville corners coach Vance Bedford and running backs coach. Meyer made a mistake in turning over the 2009 offense to Steve Addazio, who also called the plays in 2010. The offense didn’t dip much in 2009 but that had everything to do with Tim Tebow playing QB. Without Tebow in 2010, Addazio’s offensive limitations were exposed. The offense dropped 100 yards per game and nearly two yards per snap in 2010. Meyer needed to bring in a coordinator with Mullen-like creativity instead of going old school. Losing Strong hurt as much in the discipline department as on the field coaching. Charlie was like the chief justice of the supreme court and his word was final. With him around you wouldn’t have seen a scenario like the one when Ronald Powell and two or three other high level freshman recruits decided to skip practice because they felt they had been dissed by Mike Pouncey and some of the upper classmen who thought there was a sense of entitlement among the freshmen. Florida did not recruit a quarterback in 2008. Jordan Reed was a high school quarterback in Connecticut who was projected to become a receiver from the day he arrived on campus in 2009. He could run but wasn’t much of a thrower and eventually made his mark at tight end. When Burton arrived in 2010, Addazio tried to use Brantley as a passer but when Burton and Reed were in the game at QB the defense instantly went eight in the box. Burton also found new life at tight end later in his UF career. Meyer decided to retire after the 2010 season. After what Mullen had done in two seasons at Mississippi State – a competitive 5-7 in 2009 and a 9-4 2010 that finished with a win over Michigan in the Gator Bowl – he seemed like the logical candidate although there were quite a number of boosters and fans who wanted Jeremy Foley to go after Bob Stoops. Gary Patterson had just taken TCU to a 13-0 record that included a win over Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. If Patterson were to ever leave TCU, this would have been the year. He would have been an exceptional hire and it could have happened. Foley rolled the dice and went with Will Muschamp, Nick Saban’s defensive coordinator for the 2003 LSU national champions and Mack Brown’s head coach-in-waiting at Texas. Like Zook back in 2002, Muschamp had no prior head coaching experience. From Meyer, Muschamp inherited 32 players who spent at least one year in the NFL from Meyer and a foundation from three previous recruiting classes that were ranked No. 2, 7 and 1. Five future NFL players were in Muschamp’s hastily cobbled together first recruiting class including quarterback Jeff Driskel and Jacoby Brissett, both of whom are still in the NFL. Muschamp made a quality hire in Dan Quinn, who left to become the defensive coordinator of the Seattle Seahawks after two seasons. Defense was never the problem for the Gators during the Muschamp years, however. The problems were always on the other side of the ball. Charlie Weiss was Muschamp’s first offensive coordinator. That lasted one year with the Gators ranking 105th in total offense, 71st in scoring, 73rd in rushing and 89th in passing. It actually got worse the next two years under Brent Pease. There was improvement in 2014 with Kurt Roper calling the plays, but the Gators barely cracked the top 100 (96th). There should be little doubt that Mullen would have been a vast improvement. His 2009 offense at Mississippi State ranked 69th, which turns out was higher ranked than any offense produced by Muschamp or his successor in 2015, Jim McElwain. Mississippi State ranked 42nd in 2010 and this was with athletes that, for the most part, Florida would have never recruited. He would have inherited far more talent on the offensive side of the ball than he had at Mississippi State. Could he have tailored an offense that would have been effective for Brantley? There seems to be little doubt Driskel would have thrived in a Mullen offense. Mullen worked a two-quarterback scheme effectively for about half his time at Mississippi State, often with one who was more of a pocket passer and the other more of a runner. Chris Rainey, Jeff Demps and Mike Gillislee would have been a very good threesome of running backs. Mullen never had the kind of speed at receiver at Mississippi State that he would have inherited with Andre Debose, Deonte Thompson and Frankie Hammond Jr. He would have inherited five future NFL linemen. I’m of the opinion that it wouldn’t have taken Mullen very long to make Florida a championship contender had he succeeded Meyer. He already had two years of on-the-job training in Starkville where he learned how to deal with the daily non-football nuances of the job. He had two years of making game-deciding decisions in the Southeastern Conference and he was a known commodity from his four years working for Meyer. Now, Alabama still would have had Nick Saban, but the overall gap between the personnel of the two schools wasn’t as great in 2011 as it is now. I also do not believe that Georgia would have gained such a recruiting foothold in the state had Mullen been on the job in Gainesville. As with Ron Zook, I think Will Muschamp would have had a better chance of success had he spent time at a non-power school learning how to be a head coach. With the exception of Jimbo Fisher at Florida State, this head coach-in-waiting thing hasn’t worked all that well and it certainly hasn’t done much to prepare the coach-in-waiting for the day he takes over. I don’t think working for Mack Brown did much to prep Muschamp for a head coaching job and I certainly don’t think he was ready for a job with the expectations of Florida. He was always a fine defensive guy, but never – whether at Florida or at South Carolina – learned how to hire the right offensive guy and then turn him loose. I’m not sure he would have seen the light had he coached at a lesser job, but I think there might have been a better chance. WILL AN EXPANDED PLAYOFF END TALK OF 16-TEAM SUPER CONFERENCES? Ever since the Southeastern Conference, ACC and Big Ten expanded to 14 teams several years back there has been speculation that four 16-team super conferences are a matter of when and not if. The power schools would align in four mega-leagues and they would only schedule each other, eliminating altogether paycheck games for D1AA and directional schools that are Division I bottom feeders. Since no one could foresee a time when any of what is now known as the Group of Five could challenge for a national championship, the four mega-league proposal seemed to have some merit. But a funny thing happened on the way to the power schools in Division I completely turning their backs on their Group of Five brethren. UCF won 27 consecutive games including a New Years Six against an Auburn team that beat both Georgia and Alabama in the regular season and in a pandemic year, both Cincinnati and Coastal Carolina ran their regular season tables and the Fun Belt Sun Belt was unbeaten against the Big 12. If there had been a 12-team playoff in 2020, Cincy and Coastal would have been in and Pac-12 champ Oregon would have stayed home. When you add those events with the very legitimate threat by Congress to intervene in how college football conducts its business unless it becomes more inclusive of the Group of Five we now have a proposal for a 12-team playoff that grants a shot at the big prize to someone other than a power conference team. In fact, it opens the door for multiple Group of Five teams to make the playoff. So, one of three things has happened: (1) The Power Five schools are seriously afraid that Congress will start telling them what to do; (2) they’ve gone a bridge too far by giving too many opportunities to the Group of Five; or (3) they’ve concluded that an expanded playoff means more interest, more television viewers, better ratings and therefore more money. The Power Five schools can either hoard it all and turn off the half of the country that associates with the Group of Five or expand and perhaps triple the amount of money coming in. Under the current contract with ESPN, the four-team playoff generates in the neighborhood of $650 million per year of which something like $92 million is distributed to the Group of Five. Economists who have crunched the 12-team numbers are projecting $2 million yearly. If those numbers are correct, the power conferences could divide up something like $1.5 billion for themselves while giving the Group of Five conferences $500 million. That may not seem fair, but it is more than five times the money for the 65 schools that make up the Group of Five and would amount to more than $7 million per school. Trust me, they wouldn’t hold out for more. I’m of the opinion that one of the primary reasons for the expanded playoff proposal is to stave off a move to four 16-team conferences. I don’t think the power conferences want to deal with the lawsuits and potential of Congressional intervention. Expanding the playoff seems to be smarter than cutting out half the teams in Division I. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: I’m disappointed. The US Open pairings have been announced and Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka won’t be paired together. Not only that, the USGA has Koepka going out at 10:29 a.m. Thursday with Justin Thomas and Colin Morikawa and DeChambeau teeing off at 4:14 p.m. with Hideki Matsuyama and US Amateur champ Tyler Strafaci. The Koepka-DeChambeau feud is actually good for golf so I really would have preferred them matched together. Maybe some other tournament. For now, I’m going to ignore them and send all my positive vibes in Phil’s direction to help him win. Geezers of the world unite!

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning: FEELING NOSTALGIC … A COUPLE OF WHAT IFS WHAT IF BOBBY STOOPS HAD BECOME THE UF HEAD COACH IN 2002? Sitting in the stands at Citizens Field in Gainesville in the fall of 2004, I spent an hour talking with then Oklahoma co-defensive coordinator Brent Venables, who was in Gainesville to watch Avery Atkins of Daytona Beach Mainland. Inevitably, the conversation turned to what happened in January of 2002 after Steve Spurrier had abruptly resigned as Florida’s football coach. All eyes turned to Norman, Oklahoma and Bobby Stoops, who had beaten Florida State, 13-2, for the national championship in 2000, his second season at OU. “All I can tell you is that on Friday we were going to Florida and on Saturday we weren’t,” Venables told me. “What happened overnight? I don’t know. Something. We all thought we were going to Florida.” Jeremy Foley spent Friday and Saturday in Norman. Sunday, he flew out. On Tuesday, Foley was in New Orleans talking to Ron Zook, the defensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints and Spurrier’s former defensive coordinator. On Wednesday, news broke that Foley was hiring Zook, a move that sent shock waves through the college football world. Why, for a job this important – Spurrier went 122-27-1 in 12 years, played for two national championships, won one and won the SEC six times – did Foley hire a head coaching novice who had never even been on anyone’s radar as a head coach prospect? Foley was enamored with recruiting, which is where Zook excelled but Stoops was 42 years old, had a 31-7 record in three years at OU and had won a national championship. The Zook hire didn’t make sense except that Foley thought Zook’s recruiting could overcome his coaching inexperience. Seven games into year three of the Zook era, Foley was all but forced to fire him. Losing to a Mississippi State team that finished the season 3-8 had something to do with it, but there was an underlying reason. Back on September 16, there was an incident in front of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house that involved Drew Miller, Billy Griffin and Steve Rissler, who was sucker punched. Zook got a call, rushed to the frat house where tempers flared. According to a police report, Zook shouted to the fraternity president, “I’m not going to let you take the #$%& football team down … I will do anything in my power to take this house down.” When Zook was fired, UF president Bernie Machen was asked how much that incident played into the firing. Machen answered, “Not much,” but he couldn’t empower a bunch of frat boys by saying they had provoked the football coach into losing his mind enough to the point he had to be fired. Machen simply waited until Zook lost an unlosable game and that was it. He was allowed to coach out the season but left to take the Illinois job prior to Florida’s loss to Miami in the Peach Bowl. From the moment Zook became Florida’s lame duck coach, it seemed only a matter of time before Urban Meyer became the head coach. Machen was the president at Utah when Meyer was hired from Bowling Green in 2003 so it was assumed correctly that Meyer was target No. 1. At least he was the top target in Machen’s eyes. Many credible sources claimed that Foley’s top choice for the job was Bobby Petrino, who went 11-1 in 2004 while Meyer was running the table at Utah. Whatever the case, Meyer wound up at Florida where he went 65-15 in six years with national championships in 2006 and 2008. There were flashes of hope that Stoops would come to Florida when Meyer resigned after the 2010 season but that never materialized, in large part because Foley seemed dead set on hiring Will Muschamp from day one. Like Zook, Muschamp had never been a head coach. When Muschamp was fired toward the end of the 2014 season, there was a glimmer of hope that Stoops would get a call and the third time would prove to be a charm, but Foley hired Jim McElwain, the former Alabama offensive coordinator who was resurrecting the program at Colorado State. McElwain didn’t last three full seasons at Florida, fired by new athletic director Scott Stricklin when he lied about death threats he and his family had received from zealous Florida fans. The time to hire Stoops would have been in January of 2002. The Gators were coming off a 10-2 record in Spurrier’s final season with the only two losses when Earnest Graham was hurt and couldn’t play. Had the Gators beaten Tennessee in a game pushed back to December after the 9/11 attack on the United States, UF would have played Miami in the Rose Bowl for the national championship. Florida had big time name recognition and so did Stoops. He was the one coach who could have stepped into Spurrier’s shoes without blinking or feeling a ton of pressure. After all, when you’ve been the coach at Oklahoma where Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer once coached, you know all too well about the pressure to succeed. Stoops handled Oklahoma like an old pro. There is no reason to believe he would have had any problems taking over for Spurrier. Ron Zook was indeed an exceptional recruiter who signed 20 of the 22 starters for Meyer’s first national championship team in 2006, but it was his misfortune that he had no prior head coaching experience. It was like giving the keys to the Caddy to the cabana boy. If Zooker had spent three or four years at an outpost in the Mid-American Conference or at a school in one of the smaller Division I conferences where he could have learned how to budget his time and delegate authority, he might have succeeded at Florida. Zook went 23-14 at Florida, never once putting together a 9-win season and never once winning the SEC East. In Spurrier’s 12 years on the job, the two worst seasons produced nine wins (1990, 1999). During the three years Zook was Florida’s head coach, Stoops went 36-5 at Oklahoma with three Big 12 championships. During the four years Will Muschamp was Florida’s head coach, Stoops went 39-13 coaching the Sooners. In his 18 years as Oklahoma’s head coach, Stoops went 190-48 with one national championship and 10 Big 12 championships. His Oklahoma teams made it to three other national championship games. WHAT IF THE BIG EAST HAD ACCEPTED PENN STATE BACK IN 1982? Back in 1982, after having his idea of an all-eastern football conference rejected, Joe Paterno tried to join the Big East Conference for all the other sports at Penn State. In particular, Paterno wanted to bolster the basketball program in Happy Valley but his petition was rejected by a single vote from the eight Big East schools, so the decision was made to join the Atlantic 10 in all sports but football. Rather than Penn State, the Big East voted to add Pittsburgh. It’s fair to ask what would have happened not only to the Big East but conference expansion everywhere if Penn State had gotten one more vote back in 1982. In 1981, Joe Paterno proposed an all-eastern football conference that consisted of Penn State, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Maryland, Syracuse, Temple, Boston College and Rutgers but the effort failed. Had the Big East voted Penn State in for all its other sports in 1982, would Penn State have been able to gain support for a Big East football league prior to 1990 when the Big Ten added the Nittany Lions in all sports? When the Big East decided to form a football league in 1991 to accommodate football-playing schools Syracuse, Boston College and Pitt, it needed a marquee program. Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Rutgers and Temple made geographic sense. Miami, which was 880 miles from Blacksburg, made no geographic sense whatsoever, but the Hurricanes were college football’s bad boys with a national following. The league got what it needed because Miami won two national championships (1991, 2001) as a Big East member and played for the national championship in 1992 and 2002. West Virginia was unbeaten in its regular season in 1993 only to get clobbered by Florida in the Sugar Bowl. Virginia Tech played FSU for the national championship in 1999. In 2000, Miami and Virginia Tech both finished 11-1. Miami left for the ACC in 2004. The football league fell apart after 2012 when Syracuse and Pitt joined the ACC. Back in 1991 when the Big East formed its football league, Roy Kramer was determined to expand the Southeastern Conference from 10 to 12 teams. His first choices were Texas and Texas A&M of the Southwest Conference, which would have given the league a footprint in the state of Texas. However, legislative hurdles kept them in the SWC. When that option was no longer available, Kramer turned to both Miami and Florida State, who both said no. Bobby Bowden has gone on the record that FSU chose the ACC instead of the SEC because the path to national championships was far easier in the ACC. Miami had three options – the SEC, ACC and Big East. The Big East was selected because the league – desperately needing a marquee football program – allowed Miami to remain independent in baseball. If the Big East had been off the table, would Miami have chosen the ACC or the SEC? And, if Miami had chosen the SEC, it likely would have eliminated South Carolina joining the league in 1992 when the Gamecocks and Arkansas were added. Arkansas and South Carolina were Kramer’s third choices. They really didn’t bring much of a television footprint to the league, but they did give the SEC 12 teams, which Kramer needed to stage the first SEC Championship Game. The athletic director at Arkansas was Frank Broyles, who was an SEC guy from his days at Georgia Tech. He wanted out of the SWC (they used to say it stood for Sure, We Cheat), which he saw as the most corrupt league in the country. Arkansas brought a powerhouse basketball program to the SEC (won the national championship in 1994) and the nation’s best track and field program. The Razorbacks have won seven national championships in cross country since joining the SEC and 25 in indoor and outdoor track. South Carolina got almost exclusively because Miami and FSU turned Kramer down. Since joining the SEC, South Carolina owns three national championships – two in baseball, one in women’s basketball – since joining the SEC. Had the Big East voted in Penn State back in 1982, conference makeup might look a lot differently today. A Big East that included Penn State might have become a mega-conference in football. Miami might have joined the SEC and South Carolina might have eventually gone back to its ACC roots if not for the SEC invitation. And one last thing: The SEC distributes more than $45 million a year to each of the 14 schools that make up the league in 2021. When the new deal with ESPN kicks in a couple of years from now, the Southeastern Conference will be distributing in excess of $60 million a year. The ACC just cracked the $30 million level in 2019. OMAHA BOUND: When Mississippi State (45-16) won the Starkville super regional by knocking off Notre Dame (34-13), 11-7, Monday night, it gave the SEC three of the eight teams that will play in the College World Series in Omaha with Vanderbilt (45-15) and Tennessee (50-16) the other two. The ACC has two teams (North Carolina State and Virginia) while the Pac-12 has two (Arizona and Stanford) and the Big 12 one (Texas). ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Despite having to withdraw from The Memorial while leading by six shots because he tested positive for Covid-19, Jon Rahm is a 10-1 favorite to win the US Open this week at Torrey Pines. Phil Mickelson is given 50-1 odds even though he won the PGA last month and will be playing the course he grew up on. Phil will be 51 years old tomorrow but he’s probably going to have 95 percent of the Torrey Pines gallery pulling for him as well as every golfer and golf fan in the world who’s more than 50. If you thought the crowd at Kiawah was worth a couple of shots because of their energy when they got behind Phil, imagine what it’s going to be like at Torrey Pines.

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning: IF THERE HAD BEEN A 12-TEAM PLAYOFF THE LAST THREE YEARS … The arrival of Dan Mullen as Florida’s head football coach has resulted in three consecutive New Year’s Six bowl games. Had their been a 12-team playoff format in existence when Mullen arrived in 2018, the Gators would have made the playoff all three years. 2020: Last season the Gators were 8-3 after the SEC Championship Game, after which they played Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl. In a 12-team playoff, the No. 7 Gators would have hosted No. 10 Iowa State at The Swamp with the winner facing No. 2 Clemson in the second round. 2019: The Gators finished the regular season 10-2 and played Virginia in the Orange Bowl where they emerged with a 36-28 win behind 305 passing yards by Kyle Trask. If there had been a 12-team tournament in 2019, the No. 9 Gators would have packed up their thermal undies and headed to Madison to play No. 8 Wisconsin in a first-round game with the winner facing No. 1 LSU in the second round. Madison in December. Cold. 2018: The Gators finished the regular season 9-3 and were paired with Michigan at the Peach Bowl, where Florida won convincingly, 41-15, as Feleipe Franks played the best game of his Florida football career. If there had been a 12-team playoff, Florida (No. 10) and Michigan (No. 7) would have still met up in the first round but instead of playing in Atlanta, the game would have been in The Big House in December. Cold. Winner of the game would have played Clemson in the second round. A FEW MORE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE 12-TEAM PROPOSAL Whereas there is going to be enormous pressure to crank up the 12-team playoff by 2023 – that’s when the working group that came up with the proposal wants it – ESPN has exclusive rights to televise until 2025 and the only network that the CFB can negotiate with until 2025. If ESPN holds the CFP to the current contract, the people at the CFB may decide to take their business elsewhere and you can bet the farm some network is going to come up with Godfather money to make an offer that can’t be refused. CBS, for example, has shown how to successfully partner with Turner for its NCAA Tournament coverage. The result is every game is televised and there is more money to distribute. While we could end up with a poker game scenario where both ESPN and the CFP people try to bluff each other, put your money on ESPN caving and cranking up the new format in 2023 rather than take the chance of being outbid by CBS, Fox or NBC, who, like ESPN, have multiple networks at their disposal. You would think that after the 2020 experience when Notre Dame joined a conference for the first time in school history then won the ACC regular season and conference championship game that the Irish would think seriously about joining a conference. But, no such luck. Since Notre Dame will be competing as an independent without a conference championship game, under the 12-team proposal the Irish can never been seeded higher than fifth even if they run the table and hold the No. 1 ranking in all the polls. They will have to play a first-round game and won’t have a chance for a bye. Under the current proposal, the first-round games between teams seeded five through 12 will take place on college campuses and after that – second round (quarter-final), semifinal and championship – games will be played at neutral sites with at least six bowl games part of the process. This is where some tweaking might have to be done because those top four seeded teams that get a first-round bye will not have an on-campus game. If there is enough opposition, the choice will be to play all first and second round games on campus. That would result in fewer bowl games part of the process, which obviously won’t go well with the fat cats in pastel blazers who start showing up at regular season college football games in October. One way to accommodate the bowls would be to add four teams (total 16) and eliminate first round byes altogether but bet the farm that won’t fly. Under the proposal there are no guaranteed bids to the Power Five conferences. Automatic bids will be given to the top six conference champions, which does open the door for at least one Group of Five champion. Had this format been in place in 2020, both Cincinnati (American Athletic Conference) and Coastal Carolina (Fun Belt Sun Belt) would have been automatic qualifiers while Oregon, which won the Pac-12 and was ranked 25th, would not have made the playoff. It is difficult to imagine the Pac-12 is going to go for this. In the seven years of the four-team College Football Playoff, the Pac-12 has only been represented twice (2014 by Oregon and 2017 by Washington). Among the reasons the Pac-12 forced Larry Scott out as commissioner and hired George Kliavkov is to make sure the league gets represented in future playoff scenarios. If all five power conference champs are included with automatic bids, however, that lessens the chance that two Group of Five conference champs could get in as they would have if there had been a 12-team bracket last year. The Group of Five conferences are going to raise holy hell if a proposal goes forward that lessens the possibility that stars and planets could align for two of their teams to get automatic bids. Four things are certain in this 12-team format: (1) The scramble for at-large bids will make for a more interesting November; (2) since only the six highest rated conference champs will get an automatic bid, a team with four losses that pulls off a conference championship game shocker won’t get the automatic bid, which would eliminate the possibility of a top four seed from that league; (3) if multiple Group of Five teams make the 12-team field a number of Power Five coaches whose team didn’t make the playoff will find themselves seeking gainful employment somewhere else; and (4) the SEC is going to absolutely love this format, which assures at least two teams from the league every year and probably three. An expanded playoff is a step in the right direction and it might prove to be the only thing that saves the bowl games from becoming an extinct species. Bet the farm that in December we will see a record number of players from Power Five schools opt out rather than play in a bowl game that isn’t part of the playoff. Fewer stars means bad TV ratings. If the current system remained in place, it would only be a matter of time before the only bowl games that would exist would be for Group of Five schools where the players don’t realize that a week in Shreveport any time of the year or an opportunity to have toes removed because of frost bite while playing a game on Boise State’s Smurf Turf in late December is not a reward, but punishment. SCOTTIE LEWIS INVITED TO NBA COMBINE In two seasons at the University of Florida, Scottie Lewis averaged 8.2 points and 3.1 rebounds per game, not exactly the kind of stats that wow you. Proof that the NBA drafts on athleticism and potential as much or more than productivity is the report by Jeff Goodman of The Stadium that Lewis has been invited to the NBA Draft combine June 21-27. Lewis is listed as the No. 80 prospect in the 2021 draft by ESPN. Since the NBA draft lasts only two rounds with 60 players taken, that would indicate Lewis is seen as a developmental project, most likely a free agent who will be assigned to the G-League unless he is unexpectedly productive in the scrimmages at the combine and slips late into the second round. Goodman, one of the better connected college basketball insiders who has excellent sources in the NBA, projects Florida’s Tre Mann as the No. 16 pick in the draft, taken by the Boston Celtics. GATOR MEN FINISH 4TH, WOMEN 7TH IN NCAA TRACK Behind a brilliant effort from freshman sprinter Joseph Fanbulleh, the Florida Gators finished fourth at the NCAA Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon, marking the 15th time in Mike Holloway’s 19 years as the head coach the Gators have finished fourth or better. Fanbulleh finished seventh in the 100 meters with a 10.26 time, then won the 200 meters at 19.91, the 10th-fastest time in collegiate history and the sixth best time in the world this year. Saturday, the Florida women had a strong day to finish seventh, the seventh consecutive year the UF women have finished among the top ten nationally. Florida will pick up somewhere around 150 points in the Learfield Director’s Cup standings thanks to track and field, which, combined with the NCAA championship in men’s tennis, regional championship in softball and making the NCAA fiend in baseball, women’s tennis and both men’s and women’s golf should move the Gators well past Kentucky and into fifth place nationally. OVER, UNDER, AROUND AND THROUGH THE SEC Arkansas: The unthinkable happened in Fayetteville. No. 1 Arkansas (50-13) blew out North Carolina State 21-2 Friday night dropped back-to-back one-run games to lose the super regional in the most stunning outcome of this year’s NCAA tournament. This was the first time all season that Arkansas has lost a series. LSU: Paul Manieri’s hall of fame coaching career came to an end in Knoxville when the Tigers (38-25) lost both games of the super regional to Tennessee. Reports that retired Oregon State coach Pat Casey has been offered the job have proven erroneous. All eyes at this point are on Louisville coach Dan McConnell and Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco. Bianco, a Sanford Seminole and Indian River Community College grad, was the catcher on LSU’s College World Series team in 1989. Mississippi State: A trip to the College World Series is on the line today when the Bulldogs (44-16) and Notre Dame (34-12) face off in the decisive game of the Starkville regional. Missouri: Tulsa graduate transfer defensive back Akayleb Evans has committed to Missouri. Evans played in 30 games over four seasons at Tulsa. Ole Miss: Ole Miss (44-22) ran out of pitching at the Tucson super regional as Arizona teed off Sunday night to bring the Ole Miss season to an end in game three. South Carolina: Due to the pandemic, South Carolina’s athletic department operated at a $27 million deficit in 2020-21. This is the first time South Carolina has had a deficit since Ray Tanner became the athletic director. Tennessee: The Vols (50-16) knocked off LSU twice in the Knoxville Super Regional to advance to the College World Series for the fifth time in school history. The Vols will face the winner of Monday’s super regional game between Dallas Baptist and Virginia in the first round in Omaha. Vanderbilt: The Commodores (45-15) are headed to Omaha for a chance to win the third national championship in school history. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: All season long, but especially since the NCAA regionals began and advanced through super regionals, I’ve been shocked at the number of called strike threes with men on base. It’s one thing to swing and miss. At least the hitter gave himself a chance to make contact and either foul the ball off or put it into play. The called third strikes aren’t necessarily on pitches that back door their way across the plate or that may or may not have nipped the corner, either. How many times over the weekend did I see a batter watch a pitch somewhere around belt-high and straight down the middle all the way into the catcher’s mitt without once lifting the bat off his shoulders? There have been record numbers of strikeouts in this collegiate season and while I don’t have access to all the analytics, I would love to see what percentage of the strikeouts have been called. And, since I’m on the subject of strikeouts, I have to ask this: whatever happened to choking up on the bat with two strikes, cutting down on the swing and making sure the ball goes into play? I’m not sure I saw anyone with two strikes Sunday choke up on the bat and try to make contact.

“Do not focus on your failings, for you will only encourage them. If you keep beating yourself over the head over these, you will only reinforce them” – Stephen Richards My grandmother, the sage and intuitive Ivey Van Sickle, used to say, “Once you squeeze it you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. You can’t re-live yesterday. There aren’t any do-overs in life.” As much as every Gator fan would love to have a do-over because of what could have been in the 2020 football season, it’s time to put it in the rearview. There are lessons to be learned from last year’s woulda, coulda, shoulda season but other than glean a few helpful hints about what needs to change moving forward, dwelling on the past serves no good purpose. So, here is my final statement about Florida’s 2020 football season: This was the weirdest football season I can remember and I’m glad I don’t have to re-live it. The toothpaste can’t be put back in the tube so it’s time to extract whatever good came out of 2020 for the Gators and move on. Instead of dwelling on a defense that invented new ways of shooting itself in the foot; instead of dwelling on the fumble at Texas A&M, the shoe toss against LSU or those three stupid penalties that cost the Gators the SEC Championship against Alabama; I’m going to fondly remember Kyle Trask, Kyle Pitts and Kadarius Toney. I’m going to remember how much fun it was to see great offense instead of the dull, unimaginative play calling that we saw from 2011-17 under Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain. That’s it. The rest is his-to-ry. And with that, it’s time to look ahead to 2021. I don’t know about you, but the more I study Florida football for 2021, the more I’m convinced Florida isn’t going to backslide. I am optimistic that the Gators are going to be very good, for reasons which I’ll outline for you. The pundits have all but doomed the Gators to 8-4 or maybe 9-3. Those fine folks at Athlon and Lindy’s are convinced the Gators will be (a) clobbered by Big Bad Bama on September 18; (b) roadkill against LSU in Baton Rouge on October 16; and (c) drawn and quartered by Georgia on October 30. That is three losses right there. They figure another loss is possible whether it’s in the regular season or the bowl game. Athlon has the Gators ranked 12th in its preseason magazine, Lindy’s 11th. Yahoo Sports ranked the Gators 12th, CBS 13th and ESPN put the Gators at No. 16. The only place the Gators are getting any respect is at Sporting News, where they are No. 8, but even Sporting News thinks the Gators are goners against Alabama and Georgia. Please take into consideration these are the same folks who last year thought Georgia could win the national championship because Jamie Newman had transferred in from Wake Forest. How did that work out? Newman not only opted out for the entire season but went undrafted despite Mel Kiper claiming he had second round talent. The Philadelphia Eagles waived him after a couple of workouts in their mini-camp. Newman was simply last year’s reason for the pundits to hype Georgia. There is a new reason this year, but then again, there is always going to be a new reason to hype Georgia. For some reason, these same pundits find fewer reasons to get on the Florida bandwagon but that might not be a bad thing. We will only know for sure when games are played for real on the field in the fall if the pundits had it right or if they were wrong, but do know this: Dan Mullen is probably finding it difficult to contain his glee that Florida is – in his opinion – being disrespected in a big way. When he gets into his quiet space, he’s probably giggling. Why? For one thing, despite losing Trask, Pitts and Toney, who will be playing for pay on Sundays at an NFL stadium near you, Mullen has the most talented roster top to bottom that he’s had since he arrived at the University of Florida in December of 2017. There is strength, speed, skill and next-man-up type of depth. Mullen knows what he has and because of that, you can bet the farm that he will be doing a rather nifty Bobby Bowden impersonation, which is to say he will be touting everyone on the Florida schedule as the greatest team since our primitive ancestors got the idea that it’s a good thing to band together for group hunts thousands of years ago. These are, after all, impressionable 18-to-22 year-old kids who tend to buy in completely when a coach sells compelling arguments. Mullen, it turns out, is really good at this and you would be amazed at how well the disrespect card plays with kids that age. Mullen may play the Mr. Humble role publicly, but privately he will sound like the second coming of television preacher Ernest Aingley as he pounds disrespect and us against the world to his team. Mullen knows fully well that he’s got enough talent to win a championship although the moon, stars and planets may have to align for any team not named Alabama or Clemson for that to happen. If he can glue a sizeable chip on the shoulder of each player on his roster, he will get a lot of mileage out of a team that will feel an urgent need to prove themselves every single weekend. Working in Mullen’s favor is a certain newness to the offense that won’t be throwing from the moment the buses pull up in front of The Swamp and the team begins the Gator Walk on Saturdays. The last couple of years, defensive coordinators could give lip service to the running game while focusing 90 percent of their game planning energies on scheming against a lethal passing game. The passing game is going to once again be good, but there will not be the same dependence on throwing the ball in 2021 as there has been. Third-and-three and third-and-four won’t necessarily be passing downs, not with dual threat quarterbacks like Emory Jones and Anthony Richardson and certainly not with the stable of running backs at Mullen’s disposal. No one feared Kyle Trask as a runner. He only ran in feets don’t fail me now situations when his protection broke down or else when he could catch defenses by complete surprise. Trask didn’t have concrete feet because he was particularly adept at moving in the pocket to find throwing lanes and could throw accurately on the move, but he was never a threat to turn two yards into 20. Jones can do that. So can Richardson. The book on Jones is that he’s a tremendous runner (514 career rushing yards, 5.6 per carry, 6 touchdowns), but Mullen almost giggled during the spring at the notion that Jones has limitations as a passer. “He has a cannon for an arm,” Mullen said and later in the spring surprised media members when he told them Jones can make throws Trask couldn’t make because “he has a stronger arm.” Now, Trask was so accurate that Kyle Pitts said he turned what some would call a 50-50 ball into an 80-20 that favored the receivers. Jones has never shown that kind of precision but his opportunities have been limited to 86 attempts in three seasons (55 completions for 613 yards, 7 touchdowns). Figure that the Florida offense is going to more closely resemble what it was back when Mullen was calling plays for Tim Tebow. Tebow never threw lasers but he was such a threat to run the football that it forced defensive backs to make hard – and often bad – decisions to abandon coverage or to let Tebow to get a head of steam and charge into the secondary like a runaway bull. Tebow threw 88 touchdown passes and averaged 9.3 yards per pass attempt during his career while running for 2,947 and 57 more TDs. The stats for Jones might not be as gaudy, but there is every reason to believe he will be highly effective whether it’s throwing or running the football. Pitts and Toney won’t be around to catch passes from Jones, but the Gators aren’t lacking for talent or speed at the receivers, not with Jacob Copeland, Justin Shorter, Trent Whittemore and Xzavier Henderson returning. They may not have as many passes thrown their way but they may average more yards per catch. Ask Georgia what Malik Davis and Nay’Quan Wright can do with a wheel route. The passing game is going to be just fine. With Jones and Richardson bringing the element of the option into the offense and a running backs room that is more talented than any Mullen has had in his coaching career, not only will Florida be as improved as any team in the Southeastern Conference when it comes to the ground game, but one of the most explosive, too. Having a healthy Lorenzo Lingard and Clemson transfer Demarkcus Bowman in the mix along with between the tackles hammer Dameon Pierce and run-catch specialists Davis and Wright gives Mullen any number of ways to create personnel mismatches that will favor the Gators. Lingard and Bowman add that home run ability that has been lacking the last three years. By adding the option element to the offense, the offensive line doesn’t have to be the mashers that fans would like to see. The option requires three big guys in the middle – Stewart Reese at center (6-6, 354), Ethan White (6-5, 346) and Josh Braun (6-6, 352) at the guards – and mobile tackles who can get to a linebacker since the end/edge guys aren’t blocked. Can Richard Gouraige (6-5, 313) and Jean Delance (6-5, 307) pass block? That’s the real question but with the offense redesigned to fit the talents of Jones and Richardson, the quarterbacks will be spending less time in the pocket. Translation: Florida’s offensive line is going to be more effective this year even if it isn’t the type to line up and knock people off the blocks. Now we get to defense, a painful subject in 2020 when the Gators practically invented ways to turn games into white knuckles shootouts. The defense will be better. It has to be better. It cannot and will not be worse. Todd Grantham survived last season and lives to coach another year in Gainesville. If there is a repeat of last year, he won’t be Florida’s defensive coordinator in 2022 and may have a very difficult time getting a coordinator’s job anywhere. There are only so many excuses that can be made for a defense that tails off the way Florida’s did last year. Come back with a great season and the 2020 season will be viewed as an aberration. There are all sorts of theories why Florida’s defense under-performed last year, far too many to list. There are also several good theories why Florida’s defense will be vastly improved in 2021, the best of which are spring football and offseason on-campus workouts. There was no spring practice and there were no offseason on-campus workouts last year and it showed the way the defense performed. There was spring football this year. There will be offseason on-campus workouts. That alone speaks to improvement. Improvement will begin in the middle of the defensive line where Auburn transfer Daquan Newkirk and Penn State transfer Antonio Shelton bring experience, toughness against the run and the ability to collapse the pocket from the inside. The Gators couldn’t stop the run last year and rarely got pressure up the gut. Having Newkirk and Shelton gives Grantham the ability to play manchild Gervon Dexter both inside and outside. If he ever figures out that he’s a human mismatch no matter where he lines up, he will become a very dangerous defensive lineman. Pressure up the gut also means less help blocking Zachary Carter and Brenton Cox Jr. off the edge and it also gives Grantham more latitude in blitzing Ventrell Miller and Mohamoud Diabate up the middle. It gives Grantham flexibility with Jeremiah Moon, whose surgically repaired foot should allow him to play up to his potential whether in space or coming off the edge. Florida has few on the roster with Moon’s athleticism. Grantham also has an X-factor in transfer Diwun Black, the nation’s top-rated juco defender. He can play inside linebacker, off the edge, in space or even in the secondary. He’s that good. What pressure also means is the secondary doesn’t have to cover for extended periods of time. Ask any defensive coordinator and he will tell you that even the most talented guys in the secondary can’t blanket receivers forever. Nothing improves pass defense quite like pressure from the front seven. When Black’s juco teammate Jadarrius Perkins transferred in, it completed Florida’s secondary. Kaiir Elam and Tyron Hopper are the likely corners but Perkins can line up as the nickel or even play safety. Like Black, he’s going to be on the field. Former 5-star corner Jason Marshall didn’t come to Florida to sit. Safety has been a question mark, but new assistant Wesley McGriff instilled a new, more aggressive attitude in the spring. Trey Dean III is going to start at one safety and the other is likely to be true freshman Donovan McMillon, who might be the best head-hunting safety the Gators have had since the days of Keanu Neal and before him Major Wright. Marshall’s high school teammate, Corey Collier, a 4-star recruit, also didn’t come to UF to sit. So, what can you conclude from this exercise? Above all, a Florida team that will be better than the pundits are willing to admit. If you buy into their projections, then the Gators stand very little chance of repeating as SEC East champs because Georgia has recruited all those 5-star guys and because it’s Nick Saban and his usual band of 5-star suspects, no reason whatsoever to think UF could hang with Alabama. Maybe the pundits are right, but games are played on the field and not in the magazines or online. If they were played in the magazines, then Georgia would play Alabama for the national championship every year. Alabama, at least, almost always lives up to the hype. There isn’t much hype going for the Gators but don’t be too concerned with the lack of confidence shown by the media. If anything, embrace it. Get a chip on your shoulder that’s every bit as big as the one Mullen is going to put on the shoulders of this 2021 edition of the Florida Gators. Mullen is going to instill into the Gators the attitude that there is plenty to prove this year. Teams that play with a chip on their shoulder, convinced they are disrespected and determined that they are going to prove all the disbelievers wrong are very, very dangerous. Very dangerous indeed. I like this Florida team. I think you should, too.

Scott Stricklin had a spacial issue on his hands, in that, he had none. The Florida Gators needed a new stand alone football facility. It had become glaringly obvious over the years and in the college football arms race, the Gators were not only lacking in wow factor, they were lacking in what had become basic necessities at other schools. It was time to get the football team and coaches offices out of the stadium basement. So Stricklin, the Gators Athletic Director, knew he had to deliver a facility. But there simply wasn’t enough space. On a campus that encompasses over 2,000 plus acres, buildings and dorms rooms and sprawling oaks take up nearly every available square inch. The University Athletic Association had finally buckled down and decided to put the facility opposite the football practice field, in an area that includes the basketball practice facility, as well as the track and field complex and tennis complex. Doing so though meant shoehorning an area that had to be show stopping, into a small fit. There would be no way to truly give the facility everything it needed within that spot. Yet there were also no other options. At least that’s what they thought at first. As Stricklin sat in his office, overseeing the entire department, Executive Associate Athletics Director for Internal Affairs Chip Howard entered. “You know if we move the baseball stadium to the edge of campus,” he began, “we could expand that park and give the football facility all the space it needed.” It was so simple—well as simple as taking on two massive relocation and construction projects can be—and it solved everyone’s problem. The baseball team received a much needed upgrade, into a $65 million new ballpark that sits like a crown jewel on the edge of campus. And the football team would get a new standalone facility that would finally get them out of the basement at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and into the 21st century. Thus began a project that has come a long way from a dream, produced a new baseball park, stumbled and emerged from a global pandemic, and is on track now to be completed by spring of 2022. And on Tuesday of this week, what will be known as the James W. "Bill" Heavener Football Training Center as part of a lead gift from Bill Heavener, got one massive step closer to completion, in what construction crews like to call “the topping off ceremony.” The final structural piece was welded in, putting the bones in place for the 142,000 square foot area (the nearly 40,000 square feet of outdoor space will come later). It’s enough space for a state-of-the-art football facility. But the construction of this space revealed one more problem. Dan Mullen didn’t want a standalone state-of-the-art football facility. Mullen, who on Tuesday had a front row view, sporting a hard hat and watching underneath the crane, arrived in 2018 as the new football head coach. It was during this time Stricklin and Howard were putting together plans for the football facility. Mullen and Stricklin had gone through the construction of a new facility while at Mississippi State together, so the duo knew how to navigate the stressful time to a successful conclusion. But Mullen wanted this one to be different. He wanted it to be better. And to do so, it couldn’t benefit just the football team. So this new facility will primarily be an All-Sports complex. There will be an area on the back half that connects to the indoor practice facility. It’ll host the weight room, training and recovery room, coaches offices and locker room. That will be for football only use. But while other schools put in waterfalls and slides and high tech entertainment center, then say “this is just for the football team,” Mullen pushed for the “wow” factor of this facility to be multi-purpose. “I think some [school’s facilities] are like ‘hey we’re football only,’” Mullen explained to reporters on Tuesday. “I think what makes Florida so special is that bond of the student athletes. I mean—a massive contributor to the 2006 national championship football team was the 2006 men's basketball team. The motivation I think that that drove the players and the interaction that they had, I think that motivates. "That was always my vision of, if we're going to create this massive amenity area that has all these great things, I want all of our student athletes to be able to utilize that. And I also want our players around these other successful people and have them interact…so that our players can be around Olympians and world record holders and national champions and they can all interact and grow and learn from each other. Then our locker room for the football players, alone, the locker room will probably be one of the biggest wow factors. It’s going to be the premier locker room in probably all of sports at any level.” The wow factors will still be abundant and, well, wowing. There will be a barber shop, a recording studio, a virtual gaming center, indoor pool, outdoor pool, golf simulators, an outdoor lawn center for volleyball/wiffleball/kickball tournaments, and more. Each entrance will boast a nutrition center, so that no player has to decided between getting in their car 200 feet away or walking to the other side of the massive facility. The healthy options will always be within reach. The weight room opens directly onto the indoor practice facility, helping to make those days with Strength and Conditioning Coach Nick Savage seamless. Walkways will be covered from the locker room for the days it’s storming, coaches offices will look out over the fields, and there will be a recovery center within a few feet of any area a player could potentially be injured. There’s even an area that’s nothing. It’s probably Dan Mullen’s favorite part. “We all met and I said, ‘Can you tell me what college football is going to be like in 10 years? What’s the cutting thing we need in this facility 10 years from now?’ We’re all thinking, I said, ‘I’m not sure.’ So we actually redesigned part of the building that has an area right now for future development; that it can immediately, it's going to be—I mean it's it's finished, it’s that, it’s going to become a bigger area that is set for future development.” These are the things Dan Mullen has been involved in the past couple of years. After visiting other schools, and even corporate headquarters—“Why do people want to work at Apple and Google,” Mullen asked—the staff and administration compiled their research to see what worked in other places, what didn’t, and what would need to be tweaked to appeal to future Florida athletes. Then there was also the matter of focusing on the athletes themselves. While designers and architects wanted to focus on natural light and sleek lines, he had to think about a football team and athletes. “When you’re in architectural design you’re not thinking about 6-foot-5, 350-pound guys as being the normal person walking around,” joked Mullen. “I have 100 guys in a meeting room that aren’t normal human beings. Our guys are probably not normal human beings, so when you design a hallway or you design a door or you put a chair in …I [ask] ‘Is max capacity like 450 pounds?’ And they’re like, ‘Excuse me?’ We have big guys here. Our guys are a little bit thicker a little bit wider than most people. “They brought in chairs for the meeting room, so I brought Stew [Stewart Reese], Ethan [White] and Des [Desmond Watson]* up to sit in the chairs and show that this is the chair that we need. “So I’m like, Ok, we have 100 guys, these enormous guys, how’s the fastest way for me to get them fro the team meeting room to on the field? And they’re like, ‘But it looks so much prettier this way.’ Nah, I need functionality. They’re like ‘What if we have one door in the middle and it opens like this?’ Absolutely not. Give me a door on this side and a door on that side so half can go that way and half can go the other way to get us out of the room. That’s my expertise in architecture.” *Average weight of 377 pounds between the three This is a long term plan for long term success. Being the man at the forefront requires a long term commitment. The Florida Gators and Dan Mullen made that to each other this offseason, with Mullen’s contract being extended three more years, now through the 2026 season (until January 2027). After an offseason that included NFL coaching rumors, critics for how the season ended and speculation that Mullen had his eye on the next level, this contract extension—working hand-in-hand with the new facility and the recruits it will inevitably attract—is Mullen and the Gators way of saying he’s here to stay. “Scott and I have a great relationship and I love everybody questioning everything and where is our relationship at? I want to tell you, that hasn’t wavered. That never wavered. It was nothing we wanted to dive into to try and play things out in the media as we were working on the contract extension that had been in work for a long time. “I think people kind of blew this up a lot more than it was and it wasn’t worth arguing. I think now and the result that everybody sees where the relationship is, how we work together, and both of our long term commitments to being here at Florida and making this program where it needs to be.”

How Else Are They Going to Beat Alabama? This May Turn Out To Help Florida’s Playoff Hopes. I’m resisting the temptation to play the Carnac The Magnificent card, a la Johnny Carson, holding the empty envelope to my head and saying, “I Told You So, I Told You So, I Told You So! …” Then blowing open the envelope to pull out a card that reads: “What is Buddy Martin muttering about the new 12-team college football playoff which he envisioned back in 1990?” That would be boasting. So I won’t. Or…maybe I will! It took ssooo loooong for the college football brain trusts – well, now there’s a real oxymoron for you! – to wake up and formulate a plan whereby a championship tournament could be played without merely anointing four teams. Not even Carnac could have done that. It was officially announced Thursday that the model to be presented for approval will include a dozen teams to commence tournament play two weeks after the conference championships, consummating in January. Sadly only the first-round games two weeks before Christmas will be played on-campus. This is the recommendation that will be discussed next week at CFP Management Committee meeting June 17-18. What we will finally have is this controversial, flawed, but necessary, discombobulated plan to Stop The Nick Saban Freight Train and pull off this heist for the CFB crown jewels, spreading billions of dollars among more teams. Plainly a money grab, but with Name, Likeness and Image costs accelerating the price and the arms race for lavish, absurdly posh facilities – plus the bottom-line losses from the pandemic – athletic directors are madly dialing for dollars. There is plenty of disagreement about playing up to 17 games, but those who consider themselves guardians of the CFB galaxy are suddenly morally outraged about a number that they really can’t justify or quantify themselves. How many teams should be included in the playoff? How many games are too many for a young athlete’s body? Who died and made these guys chief kinesiologists? A lot more teams are going to be invited to The Big Dance. All things considered, given that the new proposal revealed on Thursday was created by this Headless Horseman of CFB, I like the new plan, even if it was thousands of days late and billions of dollars short. I think there are going to be some pluses like a fair and equitable opportunity for neglected conferences. I’m not feeling sorry for the Pac 12, or the a Group of Five team, or saying they will not be qualified -- but at least they have a shot. Unless you are in Tuscaloosa, Norman, Clemson or Columbus, you might even like the way your team’s chances look. Most likely these four teams will usually make it, but there are more forks in the pie and most likely smaller bites. Here’s why I’m in favor of the new plan: —It makes post-season more relevant again and eliminates the “Opt-out” bowls. —It’s more inclusive of Power Five conference winners and runners up and even offers a glimmer of hope for the hopeless. —It could tighten the regular season schedule to mean fewer Cupcake games. —It will eliminate what I call the “Groundhog Day” Syndrome --- the fatigue of seeing the same old teams ... Alabama ... Clemson... Alabama… Ohio State...Oklahoma...Alabama… Although they will all probably still qualify. At least they’ll be playing somebody else in between. I’m not buying the suggestion that it “waters down” the regular season, any more than March Madness does basketball. If anything it heightens interests and puts a premium on a stronger regular season schedule with intraconference play. If done correctly, it would make college football more of a national game, could reward some season ticket holders for their loyalty with better value at their home venues and offer access to a smorgasbord of road trips never before experienced. The myopic SEC fans probably need to see Boulder, Colo. or Eugene, Ore., or Happy Valley, Pa. However from all indications, it’s pretty much of a money grab and very few games will be played on campus. These neutral sight games will be the payoff to the bowls who would otherwise be out of business. The 12-team model invites the six highest ranked conference champions and six at-large teams. Why does it matter? There could be four or five SEC teams included (four would have made it in 2019). Under this a new format, once again the Pac 12 would not have made it last year. The top four conference champions will have byes in the first round and the other eight teams will have first-round games on the campuses of the next four highest-ranked teams. There are some advantages to schools like Florida, as well as other SEC, Big 12 and ACC teams left in the wakes of Alabama, Clemson and Oklahoma, outside looking in. Every conference champion would have been eligible to be a playoff team. And given what would have been at stake in a playoff game, no doubt fewer Gators would have opted out of the post-season in 2020. No self-respecting agent would ever dare have a player skip a championship round game. But let’s skip 2020 and apply the playoff formula to 2019 after the bowls. Just for kicks, let’s say the 2019 Gators were in. They finished No. 9 and would square off vs. No. 8 Wisconsin at one of the best venues in CFB, Camp Randall – but no doubt in the frost or snow? Then, if the Gators beat the Badgers, they would be playing in Athens against the Bulldogs the following week, providing Georgia won. What I really like is that this revised post-season gives fans more choices. Gator fans would enjoy a visit to South Bend or Norman or Madison for a change instead of Orlando or Atlanta or New Orleans every year or so. Except, perhaps for the frigid weather. Also it probably means so long and thanks to most of the meaningless bowl games which have long ago outlived their usefulness as borderline fraudulent reasons for winter practice. And, finally, it eliminates the “December Dead Zone” which happens after the passion of post-season conference championships. Instead of the Cricket Celebration Bowl, Famous Idaho Potato Bowl and Roofclaim.com Boca Raton Bowl – all real and to be played this year. However they wind up formulating the playoffs for 2023, it will be far better than the Carnac method, whereby the CFB utilized a “mystical and borderline divine way, ascertaining the answers having never before heard the questions." One final note: If Florida had played in Madison, Wisc. at Camp Randall on Dec. 14, 2019, there was a high of 23 degrees Fahrenheit. Bring it.

A few thoughts to jump start your Friday morning: WHY AN EXPANDED COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF MAKES GOOD SENSE Thursday, a proposal was submitted by a working group to expand the College Football Playoff from the current four to 12 teams. In this proposal, the top six conference champions and six at-large teams would make the playoff. There will be no automatic bids and no limit on the number of teams from one conference. In this format, the top four conference champions would get first round byes and the four first round games will be held on campus approximately two weeks after conference championship games. Second round – or quarterfinal – games will take place on January 1 or January 2 and will be integrated into the bowl system. There will be some tweaking to the proposal for sure. It’s hard to imagine the Pac-12, which has only had two teams in since the playoff system began in 2014 (Oregon 2014, Washington 2017), will agree to anything that doesn’t include an automatic bid for its conference champion. The same holds true for the Big 12, which didn’t get its conference champ in last year. There is that teensy matter of the Group of Five. To get their agreement – and if their concerns aren’t addressed you can bet there will be lawsuits – at least one of their conference champs will have to be included. The earliest the expanded playoff could take place would be 2023 although the new playoff might not begin until after the current contract with ESPN expires in 2025. If you’re the type that wagers on such things, put your money on sooner and not later. It will take time to clear up all the details, but one thing for certain, an expanded playoff is going to be a good thing for college football. You can forget those extremely silly arguments that expansion will only make the regular season less meaningful and turn college football into a miniaturized version of the NFL. Sure, there will be more teams involved but remember this: There are 30 teams in the NFL, more than half of which make the playoffs. There are currently 130 Division I football teams so we’re talking 12 teams – that’s less than 10 percent of the overall total – will be involved in the playoff. Now that we’re over and done with NFL comparisons, let’s talk about why the regular season is not going to be diminished by expansion. Start with the current four-team format. You can all but pencil in Alabama and Clemson. Since the CFP got off the ground in 2014, Clemson and Alabama have been in the final four six times. Clemson missed in 2014 but has made the playoff every year since. The only year Alabama missed was 2019. Ohio State and Oklahoma have made it four times each. If you go by the Athlon Sports preseason magazine projections, the top four teams at the end of the 2021 season will be (1) Alabama, (2) Clemson, (3) Ohio State and (4) Oklahoma. Lindy’s flops Oklahoma with Georgia but its top three is the same as Athlon. In projecting the top four teams for the next three seasons, ESPN goes with (1) Alabama, (2) Clemson, (3) Ohio State and (4) Oklahoma. The usual suspects are in the playoff every year, which is why interest in the semifinals and national championship game has declined. Typically, we know who three of the four playoff teams will be by the first weekend in November, so only a very few teams have a shot at that fourth slot. Only once has one conference placed two teams in the playoff (2017 when Georgia was the SEC champ and Alabama was selected at-large over Big Ten champ Ohio State and Pac-12 champ Southern California. No Group of Five team has ever made the playoff. UCF won 27 straight games (2017-18) and didn’t get in. Cincinnati and Coastal Carolina both went unbeaten in the regular season last year and didn’t get in. I don’t know if any of those teams could have made it to the championship game in an expanded playoff format but at least they would have had a chance. Since playoff expansion means more teams than the usual suspects have a chance to win a national championship. If there is one thing the NCAA Basketball Tournament proves it is the nation loves a Cinderella story. The chance that a team from nowhere will not only make the Final Four but may someday win it all appeals to a quite sizeable group of fans who are always cheering for an underdog. Cinderella has come close a few times in the last decade. Butler crashed the Final Four party twice as did Gonzaga. Wichita State and VCU have also shocked the world by making the Final Four although neither made it to the national championship game. Back in 2006 when Florida won the first of its back-to-back NCAA titles, Billy Donovan was asked what is it like to be the best team in the country. Donovan surprised a lot of people by answering that he wasn’t sure the Gators were the best team when you took into account the entire season, but for three consecutive weekends and the six games of the NCAA Tournament the Gators went unbeaten and were the last team standing when they played “One Shining Moment.” In an expanded College Football Playoff, there is no assurance whatsoever that we will see a Cinderella, but with 12 teams there will always be the possibility that one can go 4-0 and climb to the top of the mountain. The fight to be one of those 12 teams in the playoff field will make November far more exciting, not to mention put added pressure on the conference championship games. Under the current four-team format, it only takes one upset loss to knock a team out of conference championship and playoff contention. With expansion, a team that might have lost a game or two can get hot at the right time and still have a chance to play for the national championship. I’ll use an example many Gator fans can appreciate. In 1984, with the NCAA bearing down on Charley Pell and Florida, the Gators started out 1-1-1. Then they got hot, winning eight in a row. At season’s end, Florida was the one team in the country nobody wanted to play. Pell, who was fired due NCAA pressure, had assembled what amounted to an NFL team with one of the greatest offensive lines in college football history led by future College Football Hall of Famer Lomas Brown. With the Great Wall serving as the football equivalent of an eclipse – they blocked out everything in their path – future first round NFL running backs Lorenzo Hampton, Neal Anderson and John L. Williams ground opponents into the turf. On those occasions when freshman walk-on QB Kerwin Bell was asked to throw, future NFL receivers such as Ricky Nattiel, Ray McDonald and Frankie Neal were typically wide open. The defense was nasty. That team had more than 35 future NFL players. It’s worth mentioning that Florida team even though they couldn’t participate in a bowl game because they are the perfect example of how a team can lose early and then find its mojo. With an expanded playoff format, a team can endure early season disappointment and still have a chance to be around at the end. If there is a downside to an expanded playoff, it will be the enormous pressure on Power Five coaches to make sure they are one of the top 12 teams. As former Gator tight end Ben Troupe points out, a coach making $7 million can offer the excuse that it’s next to impossible to elbow your way into a four-team playoff in which three of the teams are all but decided before the season even begins. Expand the playoff, however, and it’s tough to justify that big salary if you aren’t one of the top 12 teams. My Conclusion: Purists will argue that expansion means a three-loss team could win the national championship, but what’s wrong with that? If an unbeaten team that’s been No. 1 all season can’t win the most important game of the season – particularly against a team that lost three in the regular season – then it shouldn’t have been No. 1 in the first place. I’d rather see an expanded playoff that offers a second chance to a team that perhaps lost a game or two early on because of injuries or a first chance to a team like Boise State than go on with the same teams dominating every year. Even with expansion, Alabama and Clemson might still wind up in the championship game most years, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with them needing to win one or two more games to get there. OVER, UNDER, AROUND AND THROUGH THE SEC Arkansas: The Razorbacks (49-11), the No. 1 team in the NCAA Tournament, will be hosting North Carolina State (33-17) in super regional play in Fayetteville this weekend. Georgia: According to the Atlanta Business Journal, freshman QB Brock Vandagriff has an endorsement deal with apparel brand Onward Reserve lined up once the NCAA approves name, image and likeness legislation. Onward Reserve is owned by prominent Georgia booster TJ Callaway. Kentucky: Former Ole Miss linebacker Jacquez Jones made it official Thursday when he transferred to Kentucky. Jones led Ole Miss with 75 tackles last season. LSU: The Tigers (38-23), who surprised 14th-seeded Oregon in the Eugene regional, will start Landon Marceaux (7-6, 2.44 ERA) on the mound Saturday in the Knoxville regional against No. 3 seed Tennessee (48-16). Mississippi State: The 7th-seeded Bulldogs (43-15) will face 10th-seeded Notre Dame (33-11) in the Starkville regional, beginning Saturday … Former MSU great and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is switching from Adidas to Jordan Brand, a deal that will make Prescott the highest paid NFL athlete on the Jordan Brand roster. Missouri: Former Montana State offensive lineman Connor Wood (6-5, 300), who has 20 career starts to his name, is transferring to Missouri. Ole Miss: Ole Miss (44-20) expects to start lefty Doug Nikhazay (11-2, 2.39 ERA) tonight in the Tucson super regional against No. 5 seed Arizona (44-15). South Carolina: Former Gamecock Johnathan Joseph is retiring after 15 seasons and 32 interceptions in the NFL. He was selected to the Pro Bowl twice. Tennessee: A lot of Tennessee baseball season ticket holders are furious that they are squeezed out of tickets for the Knoxville super regional because UT is allowing boosters to buy as many as eight tickets. Texas A&M: Cornerback Elijah Blades, who opted out of 2020, has entered the transfer portal. He’s finishing up his degree in summer school so he can transfer as a graduate. Blades played in seven games in 2019 with six starts. Vanderbilt: The No. 4 national seed Commodores (43-15) will open their Nashville super regional against 13th-seeded East Carolina with Kumar Rocker (12-3, 2.65 ERA) on the mound. ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Under the expected NCAA legislation change that will make it possible for college athletes to make money off endorsements, Georgia freshman quarterback Brock Vandagriff is said to be on the verge of an apparel deal with a company owned by UGa megabooster TJ Callaway. This is nothing more than sanctioned cheating and it’s going to make a level playing field for recruiting more difficult if not impossible because boosters are going to be able to buy recruits for their school. Vandagriff hasn’t even played a game. How will teammates who have been busting their butts for three or four years feel about an untested rookie getting money? And there is also a dark underbelly to this name, image and likeness legislation. Who is going to police the folks who pay players? What happens if gamblers get a player to throw a game or two after getting their hooks in him from what appears to be a legitimate endorsement deal? That’s not extreme thinking. That’s a very real possibility. NCAA president Mark Emmert, of course, is probably sitting on a toilet somewhere reading a magazine instead of providing the kind of leadership that this situation calls for.