If the No. 6 Florida Gators come out on Saturday against the LSU Tigers and line up in a classic wishbone formation—a running back and two halfbacks behind the quarterback and two tight ends on the edge—consider it Head Coach Dan Mullen’s, well, middle finger to critics of the Gators run game…or lack thereof. “I might come out in the wishbone this Saturday,” Mullen joked on Monday. “Make them think right there. [LSU Head Coach] Ed [Orgeron is] gonna get nervous…it feels like you’re challenging my ability for us to be able to run the ball. So I’m not even gonna throw it on Saturday. We’re gonna run it every play of the game.” The comments—and criticism, such as it is—follow a Gators rushing performance against the Tennessee Volunteers that was its worst of the season. The Gators “rushing attack” totaled 19 yards on the ground. That number does look slightly better when one accounts for the sack adjusted yardage, bringing the actual rushing total to 31 yards across five rushers. Still it’s far and away from the 140 yards the Gators had been averaging before the trip to Knoxville. The 140 yards per game still placed the Gators decidedly in the lower tier of national rushing offenses however. Still…19 yards (or 31, depending on which stat you prefer) stands out. The Gators intentionally rushed 13 times versus Tennessee, 19.6% of their 66 offensive plays. One of the Gators only 3-and-outs of the day featured two rush attempts and an overthrow. There was nothing to the ground game, leading to what would be the typical concern; the offense isn’t balanced and it will come back to bite the nation’s No. 1 passing offense. “We missed a couple of blocks. We didn’t really try to run the ball very much. I think our backs had about four or five carries, that’s about it. They were giving us the pass game so we just kind of stuck with the pass game,” explained Mullen. "So we really didn't run the ball that much and a couple of them were at the end of the game when we were trying to kill the clock, too. So if we ran the ball 40 times and didn't have many yards, that would probably go into the concern area. The fact that we weren't really trying to run it doesn't really throw it into my concern area.” Mullen’s lack of concern with the lack of run game should actually be comforting for Gator fans. The worry over whether or not the Gators can run the ball is relieved incredibly by the fact that the Gators don’t need to run the ball. As mentioned, Florida ran 13 rushes versus Tennessee (three sacks and a kneel out bring the total to 17). Yet Offensive Coordinator Brian Johnson called 18 plays out of an empty set, 19 if considering one play saw quarterback Kyle Trask motion running back Malik Davis out of the backfield before the snap. One of those plays was called back for an offensive pick, and it coincidentally was a wheel route to Davis that went for a touchdown. The Gators put up 452 yards of offense against the Vols and told them their game plan more often than not. Trask went 35-49 for 433 yards but it was the Gators running 28% of their plays out of an empty set that told Jeremy Pruitt’s defense what was going to happen before the ball was even snapped. And the Vols still couldn’t stop the pass. The Alabama Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship Game will be much more difficult than the 2-7 Tennessee Volunteers, yes. But as mentioned, the Gators lead the nation in passing, making one wonder, why not drop back and dare the Tide’s 73rd ranked passing defense (240.3 yards per game) to stop Trask, the receivers and the historic passing performance they are putting together this season? “We can go spend a lot of time and we can go run the ball. We'll find a way to run the ball and go do it, you know,” proposed Mullen. “Probably slow the game down, ball control, grind it out. But that doesn't really fit the strength of our team right now when we have success throwing it and have matchups all over the field that cause problems for people. So I think it's a lot about what we want to do.” The matchups are in fact a problem for people—Kyle Pitts, Tre Grimes and Kadarius Toney are the only trio in the nation to have eight touchdowns and 400 plus receiving yards each. And the running backs are not ideally sitting on the sidelines twirling their thumbs. Malik Davis is fourth on the team in receptions (22-318). Nay’Quan Wright and Dameon Pierce additionally have 27 receptions for 296 yards between them. One could argue the three hauling in 10 wheel route receptions for 212 yards was the deciding factor in defeating the Georgia Bulldogs. On Saturday against the reigning National Champions, the Gators will have an opportunity to work on their run game and other formations before facing Alabama. The 2020 version of the LSU Tigers is incredibly beatable. Florida is a 23.5-point favorite on Senior Night. The offensive game plan will likely vary, as it has all season from game to game as the Gators show multiple ways to beat a team. In the win over the Vanderbilt Commodores, Johnson and Mullen even called a wildcat to receiver Tre Grimes from the 5-yard line. It almost worked; the receiver picked up four yards before the ball was punched in for the touchdown the next play. “Some politicking going on for that one,” laughed Johnson, recalling how the play came about and its likelihood for the future. “It was interesting because I was wondering who was get it based on who’s in the game, if it was Tre or [Justin] Shorter or the running backs. We had to rock, paper, scissor that thing or something to see who was going to get it. Nah, I’m just teasing. “But it’s just something that we came up with. Those guys are big-bodied players and just a way to get the ball in their hands and given them an opportunity to go down there and see if they could punch it in.” Whatever happens on Saturday—and the subsequent Saturday for that matter—will be where coaches feel the Gators energy should be to win the game. If that’s the run game, then so be it, explained Mullen. “We weren't putting a concerted effort in to run the ball [versus Tennessee]. I think you've seen us do that before and I mean if I want to go put our, put our energy into it I'm sure we can figure it out.” Mullen and staff have delivered on nearly every offensive promise made thus far, so it’s hard to scoff at this assertion as well. If the Gators end up needing to run the ball, they feel confident it’ll happen. “We can run the ball when we have to,” said Nay’Quan Wright. “I mean, we just gotta get things rolling. I mean, passing is working, so I think we just feed off the passing. We’ve got a talented group of receivers and the tight ends. Those guys rolling. So, I mean, we’re just going to feed off them and then when the time come for us to run the ball, which we doing pretty well with it, we just gotta get more efficient and we gonna be fine.” Added Kyle Trask, “I think we have great potential in our running game. There’ve been certain times when we’ve definitely established a good running game. We’re right there, it’s just some little things gotta get cleaned up. I think it’s good to be able to run the ball. It’s never a bad thing. But at the end of the day, we’re going to do what we have to do.” “It’s a fine line. It’s a balancing act. I’m pretty sure if we really tried to scheme up a bunch of stuff in the run game we could manage to be OK,” agreed Johnson. So maybe fans really will see the wishbone. “We’re going to dust off the ol’ option playbook, we got the ability to kind of get into some of that stuff,” joked Johnson. “I wouldn’t be shocked, keep some people on their toes. We have a chance to do some stuff. We’ll see what we come out in.”

A few thoughts to jump start your Friday morning: My how the times have changed. When LSU took control in the fourth quarter a year ago to beat Florida 42-28 it was the game that vaulted Joe Burrow into the thick of the Heisman Trophy discussion. This year there is no Joe Burrow and the only potential Heisman Trophy winner is the guy who lit up LSU for 310 yards and three TDs last year. This year, Trask has already thrown for 38, which is tops in the nation, and it’s Florida that has a chance to win the national title while LSU is struggling to avoid a losing record. Another 400-yard passing game with four or more TDs will only enhance Trask’s Heisman resume. It will be Senior Day at The Swamp, Trask’s final home game as well as the last one for Kadarius Toney and junior tight end Kyle Pitts. They will be playing for big bucks on Sunday next year so they will want their final impressions at The Swamp to be good ones. Florida is favored by 23 points. The oddsmakers are actually being kind by making it that close. The Sayer Says Sooth: LSU is going to start freshman lefty Max Johnson at QB. He’s the son of Brad Johnson, who won a Super Bowl quarterbacking the Tampa Bay Bucs but was benched at FSU in favor of Charlie Ward. Brad had best be in his feets don’t fail me now mode because Todd Grantham is going to bring the blitz early, often and from cleverly disguised angles. Meanwhile the LSU defense, which is allowing 313 passing yards per game is about to be lit up for the second straight week, this time by Trask, whose Senior Day at The Swamp will be a Heisman Trophy statement. Florida 55, LSU 14 THE SEC SOOTHSAYER #1 ALABAMA (9-0) at ARKANSAS (3-6): Even if Alabama boatraces Arkansas by the 32 points it’s favored by Saturday, it has been a highly successful season for the Hogs, whose best days are ahead. Normally, losing by 32 or more would be a sign that the HBC is soon to be known as the FHBC, as in formerly head ball coach, but Pittman has delivered three SEC wins, a small miracle in that heading into 2020 Arkansas hadn’t won an SEC game since a 1-point win over Ole Miss in 2017. They love Sam Pittman in Arkansas. They love Nick Saban in Alabama, too, and why not? He’s got Alabama favored to win its sixth national championship since he took over in 2007 and he’s got an offense coordinated by Steve Sarkisian that has scored at least 35 points in 22 consecutive games, which is an NCAA record. Make that 23 in a row because the Arkansas defense won’t offer much resistance and Mac Jones, Devonta Smith and Najee Harris will fill out their stat sheets impressively. About the only real news that will come out of this game is that Bama play-by-play announcer Eli Gold will miss his first game since 1988 due to Covid-19. The Sayer Says Sooth: This promises to be close until Alabama gets the ball a second time. By then the score will probably be 14-0 and the Hogs will feel like they’re being measured for slow cooking at Dreamland in Tuscaloosa as Alabama tunes up for its SEC Championship Game showdown with the Gators on December 19. Alabama 59, Arkansas 17 #9 GEORGIA at #25 MISSOURI (5-3): The weatherman says it will be 43 degrees and rainy at game time Saturday in Columbia. Will that be a help or hindrance to a Missouri team that seems to have lost its fear of big bad SEC brethren? Now, there is no question Georgia is the more talented team by a longshot, but the Poodles don’t have a lot of incentive for this one. There won’t be any Near National Championship this year and instead of getting a rematch with Alabama in Atlanta they’ll be watching the dratted Gators play Alabama in the SEC Championship Game on December 19, the same day they’ll be closing out their season in a meaningless game against Vanderbilt. If Georgia mails it in it won’t be the first time an SEC team that didn’t get to a big game took a powder (Alabama 2008, for example). Would an under-motivated Georgia on a day when the weather is bad be the kind of thing that puts this game on upset watch? Or will Georgia show up determined to prove that JT Daniels is the greatest thing to happen to Georgia quarterbacking since Jamie Newman? The Sayer Says Sooth: Georgia is a 13-point favorite in the wet and gloom of Columbia. Missouri has won three in a row, all against SEC East bottom feeders but those wins have the Tigers motivated and believing in themselves. To spring the upset they have to figure out a way to snuff out the Georgia running game and trust their corners can cover even when there is very little pass rush. Georgia may not be motivated but that shouldn’t keep the Poodles from winning. It could be close. Georgia 28, Missouri 17 AUBURN (5-4) at MISSISSIPPI STATE (2-6): Auburn linebacker KJ Britt has opted out a couple days before the final game of the regular season. Just what Gus Malzahn needs in a game that might determine his coaching future on The Plains. It’s bad enough to be 5-4. There wouldn’t be a Go Fund Me page up and operating fast enough to raise buyout money if the Gus Bus is 5-5 with a loss to a bad Mississippi State team on the final regular season game of the season. The game is in Starkville where Mississippi State does play better. Auburn is bad on the road but the Tigers are still favored by 6.5 points. The good news for Auburn is its bad run defense won’t be tested since Mississippi State averages only 23.75 yards per game. Auburn has to keep the Bulldogs from dinking and dunking away while keeping Bo Nix and the offense off the field. The Sayer Says Sooth: The folks in Las Vegas don’t trust Auburn, which is why the Tigers are favored by less than a TD. Judging by the way they play on the road, Gus Malzahn shouldn’t trust his team, either. This is a bad Auburn team whose only hope is that a worse Mississippi State team plays the way it has all season. Auburn 30, Mississippi State 27 TENNESSEE (2-6) at VANDERBILT (0-8): A win for Vanderbilt would prevent the Commodores from doing a reverse run of the table. It would also be the end of the Jeremy Pruitt era at Tennessee says a story written by Matt Hayes for Saturday Down South. During Vandy’s eight-game losing streak, the Commodores have had close calls with Texas A&M in the season opener and with Mississippi State four games ago. The last three games have been lost by an average score of 39-17.3. Tennessee won its first two games but has lost the last six by an average score of 31-12. All six have been lost by at least 11 points, marking the longest streak of bad losses in Tennessee history. It will be the battle of the freshman quarterbacks because Vandy will start Kenny Seals and Tennessee will start Harrison Bailey. The oddsmakers favor Bailey to get the win. Tennessee is a 16-point favorite. The Sayer Says Sooth: Jeremy Pruitt’s job will be safe for at least one more week because there is no way the Vols should lose this one. Of course, we’ve been saying that all year. Tennessee 31, Vanderbilt 13 THE RICH JUST GOT RICHER It will take at least a couple of years for the new deal to kick in, but every team in the Southeastern Conference is about to get a $20 million a year raise. CBS, which has been paying the league $55 million a year and broke off negotiations with the SEC several months ago, is being replaced by ESPN. The new deal, announced Thursday, is worth in excess of $300 million a year. Due to the financial hit every athletic department in the country has taken due to the Covid-19 virus, the new deal can’t crank up fast enough. Florida, for example, which is fiscally sound and hasn’t had to lay off employees or scale back salaries, will lose in excess of $50 million this year so the new deal will do wonders for the bottom line. The new deal also widens the financial gap between Florida and in-state rivals Florida State and Miami, both of which belong to the Atlantic Coast Conference. The SEC distributed $43.7 million to its 14 member schools back in January, at least $13 million more than the ACC distributed. With the new deal, Florida will be bringing in more than $60 million a year. Even with the ACC Network doubling up on subscriptions it will be hard for ACC teams to significantly close the gap with the SEC. SANKEY TO THE NCAA: “CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE” LOOMING Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated has obtained a copy of a six-page letter written by Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey to the NCAA in which he lamented the fact that the organization has been sitting on at least a dozen basketball infractions cases for three years and so far only a couple have received sanctions. In the letter, Sankey wrote, “Despite numerous reviews, working groups, task forces and commissions, the enforcement and infractions process continues to present meaningful challenges affecting member relations and public relations while raising concerns that, if left unaddressed, will emerge as a crisis of confidence.” Three years ago, a commission headed by former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to study basketball corruption raised expectations that the NCAA was going to make the kind of changes necessary to get at the root of the problems. Now three years later, there has been little or no progress made. It’s enough to disgust Sankey, who spent nine years on the NCAA infractions committee. In his letter to the NCAA, Sankey wrote, “Expectations for the NCAA to enact meaningful change were equally high around the basketball community. Nearly three years later, it doesn’t appear either expectation – for accountability or change – has been met.” Currently, there are four SEC teams whose programs are under investigation after revelations during the college basketball corruption trials – LSU, South Carolina, Alabama and Auburn. South Carolina, Alabama and Auburn have cooperated with the NCAA. Auburn has tried to lessen potential NCAA penalties by self-imposing sanctions that include a ban on post season play this year. LSU coach Will Wade was caught on a federal wiretap discussing bribes paid to land players. This is a case that seems cut and dried, yet it has been three years and nothing at all has happened. The perception is that LSU cheated and continues to cheat but gets away with it. Forde points out that the NCAA needs to streamline the infractions process and hit up coaches who cheat worse than the schools. That makes plenty of sense because 90% or more of the time when a school goes on probation, the athletes who were at the heart of the infractions have moved on while the coaches are still in place, still cheating away. TODAY’S PITHY THOUGHT: Cam Newton needs to retire from pro football and audition for a job in the TV booth. He’s a shell of the player he used to be. Rather than continue to embarrass himself, he needs to gracefully ride off into the sunset as soon as this season is over, hire a coach who can teach him the ins and outs of studio work and then pitch himself as the next great TV analyst. Every game he plays nowadays cuts into what was once going to be a rather decent NFL legacy.

A few thoughts to jump start your Thursday morning: If ever we needed an expanded College Football Playoff, this is the year. In this season of opt-outs, cancellations, Big Ten (Plus Four) stupidity, the Pac-12 following the Big Ten (Plus Four) like a lost puppy only to discover that who it was following is lost, conference-only schedules and teams all but going under financially, we need something other than the same old, same old. Oh, there is some excitement but it doesn’t really involve the schools from the power conferences, who are once again thumbing their noses at the Group of Five and locking them out of the playoff. Would anyone in the Power Five be bold enough to do what BYU and Coastal Carolina did by scheduling a game on a Wednesday and playing it on Saturday, knowing fully well that one of them would lose its shot at a perfect season? Of course not. There aren’t enough athletic directors with big enough nads or foresight to do something like that on such short notice. Do you think for even one second that Iowa State will ever consider scheduling a game with Louisiana-Lafayette after the way the Rajin Cajuns poleaxed them (31-14) on their home field? And can you tell me how it is that Iowa State (8-2) from the Big 12 (Minus Two) is ranked 12 places higher in the College Football Playoff Poll than the Rajin Cajuns? The Big 12 (Minus Two), by the way, is oh-fer-three against the Fun Belt Sun Belt, whose best team (Coastal Carolina, 10-0) didn’t even start playing football until 2010 and only joined Division I in 2017. Urban Meyer, who is a rather accomplished evaluator of football talent, says that 8th-ranked Cincinnati (8-0) is very capable of playing with and beating a lot of ranked teams from the Power Five. Yet, when the most recent poll came out, the Bearcats moved down a spot and Iowa State moved up one. What do you read from that? Well, start with the fact the committee is all but freezing the Group of Five out. There are only four spots in the playoff and in a year in which every Power Five team is taking a huge financial hit, they’re not about to give a Group of Five team a slice of the playoff pie. That’s why the playoff will configure in one of these ways barring a miracle of the walls of Jericho tumbling down proportions: Scenario 1, which you can bet is preferred by ESPN: Alabama (11-0 SEC), Notre Dame (10-1 ACC), Clemson (10-1 ACC) and Ohio State (6-0 Big Ten Plus Four) In this scenario Alabama beats Florida, Notre Dame loses a squeaker to Clemson and Ohio State beats Northwestern. Scenario 2, which ESPN can live with: Florida (10-1 SEC), Alabama (10-1 SEC), Notre Dame (11-0 ACC) and Ohio State (6-0 Big Ten Plus Four) In this scenario, Florida beats Alabama but Alabama gets in as a wild card, Notre Dame beats Clemson and Ohio State beats Notre Dame. Scenario 3, which ESPN can also live with: Florida (10-1 SEC), Alabama (10-1 SEC), Notre Dame (10-1 ACC) and Clemson (10-1 ACC) In this scenario, Florida beats Alabama but Alabama gets in as a wild card. Clemson beats Notre Dame in a squeaker and Ohio State loses to Northwestern. Essentially, we are going to get more of the same of what we’ve gotten every year of the playoff. The SEC gets one or two teams in. The ACC could get two in because Notre Dame is playing in a conference for the first time in school history. Ohio State is in from the Big Ten (Plus Four). Think how much more exciting it would be to let one or two teams in from the Group of Five this year? Wouldn’t it be more fun to give Cincinnati and perhaps Coastal Carolina in? What if they won a game or two? What if one of them made it to the championship game? Do you remember when Butler made it to the NCAA basketball championship game two straight years? Do you remember when Coastal Carolina won the NCAA baseball title? There is still a place for Cinderella in our sports culture. In a year in which things have gone sideways, we need a potential Cinderella story. The best way to do it would have been to expand the playoff but that’s not going to happen. Back in August or September it could have been done. Now it’s too late. But it should have happened this year. If not this year, then next year would be just fine. DAN MULLEN ON THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF On the SEC Coaches Teleconference Wednesday, Florida coach Dan Mullen sounded off about the playoff, playing 10-game SEC schedule plus the conference championship game. What he said could have been taken as a veiled slap at Ohio State, which seems assured to get into the playoff having played only six games: “The playoff committee, they’ve put emphasis on playing a strong schedule; they’ve put emphasis on conference championships; they’ve put emphasis on those things. I know that’s just how it’s been played out. I do think it’s been pretty unique this year that within the league – not just us, everybody – we’re playing a 10-game SEC schedule. For us, we’re going to have an 11th conference game with the SEC Championship Game. Playing 11 SEC teams. That’s never been done before, and obviously, this is the toughest conference and the best conference in all of college football. And so, it’d be interesting to see how they perceive what teams are doing in this league and having to play the games and, you know, actually playing the games. At the end, we’ll see if you get rewarded for playing such a tough schedule and taking on that challenge that’s never been done before in this league.” IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS NOT WHAT’S FAIR Wednesday morning the Big Ten (Plus Four) Conference voted to rescind its six-game minimum requirement so that 5-0 Ohio State, which has played only once in the last three weeks, can play in the league championship game against 14th-ranked Northwestern. The Big Ten (Plus Four) issued a statement claiming that the decision was made after “competitive analysis” which determined that if Ohio State could have played six games the Buckeyes certainly would have won, therefore advancing to the championship game. Of course, this isn’t the least bit fair to 12th-ranked Indiana (6-1), which lost by a touchdown to Ohio State a few weeks back, but fairness never was part of this equation. No matter how the Big Ten (Plus Four) tries to spin it, the only analysis that was done here was about how much money the league would lose if Ohio State can’t make the College Football Playoff. Fairness and integrity never entered into the discussion. This is just the latest in a series of missteps for the Big Ten (Plus Four). First they canceled football, all in the name of player safety and doing the right thing. Quite stupidly, the league said it was going to play in the spring. So you play two football seasons in one calendar year in the interest of player safety? Right. When the SEC, ACC, Big 12, American, Conference USA and Sun Belt failed to follow their lead, the Big Ten (Plus Four) hastily set up a schedule that required teams to play eight straight weeks with no room for makeup dates. Yes, indeedy, this is the league that cares about player safety and once again the true colors of the Big Ten (Plus Four) have been exposed. Has any conference commissioner in the history of college sports had a worse rookie year than Kevin Warren of the Big Ten (Plus Four)? RUMBLING, STUMBLING, BUMBLING IN THE SEC #1 ALABAMA (9-0): Alabama has already been established as a 14.5-point favorite to beat Florida in the Southeastern Conference Championship Game. ARKANSAS (3-6): Feleipe Franks is practicing but is not 100% so it will be a game-time decision whether he plays against Alabama. AUBURN (5-4): Redshirt freshman linebacker O.C. Brothers has entered his name in the NCAA transfer portal. A former 3-star recruit who was originally committed to UCF, Brothers played in two games last year and in one this year. #9 GEORGIA (6-2): Wide receiver Makiya Tongue confirmed reports from last week that he is entering his name in the NCAA transfer portal. The redshirt freshman is a former 4-start recruit from Baton Rouge. With LSU’s scholarship numbers way down, it would seem Tongue is likely to head home to see if he can get on the field. LSU (3-5): In an effort to convince the NCAA there is no need to drop the hammer on the football program, LSU has self-imposed a bowl ban for 2020 (all Division I schools are eligible no matter their records this year). LSU already self-imposed a reduction of scholarships and banning Odell Beckham Jr. from facilities for multiple years. Basketball is also under NCAA investigation and what happened in hoops under Will Wade makes the football violations seem like Romper Room. #25 MISSOURI (5-3): Running back Larry Rountree III has moved into second place in Missouri’s all-time rushing list with 3,583 yards. Rountree, who has run for 835 yards and 11 touchdowns this season, has scored 37 rushing TDs in his career. TENNESSEE (2-6): Tight end Jordan Allen, who has also played linebacker since arriving in Knoxville from a California junior college, is entering his name in the NCAA transfer portal. Allen has not caught a pass in his Tennessee career. #5 TEXAS A&M (7-1): Unless there are some upsets among the four teams ranked ahead of the Aggies, they won’t make the College Football Playoff. That prompted HBC Jimbo Fisher to say Wednesday, “Inevitably (the playoff) has to grow to make sure you’re getting everyone in that you need to get in.” THEY SAID IT Clay Travis of Outkick.com on why Title IX advocates aren’t pushing for football to be declared a co-ed sport after Sarah Fuller broke down the sex barrier for the college game by kicking off for Vanderbilt a few weeks back: “If women started playing football – even a little bit – then that opens the door for the argument that football isn’t an exclusively male sport. And that could be detrimental to women’s sports.” Pat Forde of Sports Illustrated on the cancellation of the Michigan-Ohio State game and the future of Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh: “How weird would it be if Michigan Jim Harbaugh’s last game as coach of the Wolverines was in late November and nobody knew it? Even if his team is able to play Dec. 19, Harbaugh could be the first Michigan coach whose final Big Ten game wasn’t against Ohio State since Tad Wieman in 1928.” Blake Topplemeyer of the Knoxville News-Sentinel on Tennessee’s propensity for firing coaches and then spending years paying off their buyouts: “Tennessee led the nation in reported severance for the 2018 fiscal year because it fired (Butch) Jones, his football staff and athletic director John Currie that year. UT’s athletic department reported $13.8 million in severance expenses that year. That figure reflected severance paid before June 30, 2018, and estimated money owed to those fired individuals after that date.” Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated on whether some NFL team will take a chance to lure Jim Harbaugh away from Michigan: “So if an NFL team were to land Harbaugh, what would they be signing up for? It’s all right there. He’s Bill Parcells. He’ll come in, shake things up and offer an immediate return on your investment. Yes, maybe four years down the line, he’ll have worn people out and started to eye the door. But there are lots of teams that would sign up for a couple of 11- or 12-win seasons, understanding that things might get awkward down the line.” THE THURSDAY PITHY COMMENT: I can’t remember who it was who told me this way back when but the comment was, “Will Rogers says he never met a man he didn’t like. Well, Will Rogers never met Ray Perkins.” Perkins, who died Wednesday morning (he was 79) and whose personality rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way, is the perfect example of why you never want to follow a coaching legend (he followed Bear Bryant). Perkins was 32-15-1 as Alabama’s head coach. Upon leaving Alabama, he coached the Tampa Bay Bucs but had the good sense this time to succeed Leeman Bennett rather than follow John McKay, who retired after the 1984 season.

A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning: In their 31-19 win over Tennessee last week, the 6th-ranked Gators ran the ball for 19 yards, a total not lost on both Florida fans and the national media. Everybody seems so upset about Florida’s running game. Well, everyone but the only person whose opinion really counts. Dan Mullen doesn’t think it’s such a big deal although he probably does wish the Gators had blocked better in the running game. The Gators ran 66 plays against Tennessee. Kyle Trask threw the ball 49 times, completing 35 for 433 yards and four touchdowns. The Gators only ran the ball 17 times. Asked about the high number of passes and the lack of rushing attempts, Mullen responded Monday, “And a couple of them were sacks (2 for -11 yards), right? Because they count as rushes. So we really didn't run the ball that much and a couple of them were at the end of the game when we were trying to kill the clock, too. So if we ran the ball 40 times and didn't have many yards, that would probably go into the concern area. The fact that we weren't really trying to run it doesn't really throw it into my concern area." Heading into the game, Mullen wasn’t planning on running the ball all that much. He figured Tennessee would try to stuff the run, get after the quarterback and zone up against the passing game. The strategy might have worked against other quarterbacks, but Trask got enough time to find holes in the secondary. The results might not have been as spectacular as some previous games but it’s hard to argue with 433 passing yards and four touchdown passes. Trask found tight end Kyle Pitts seven times for 128 yards, Kadarius Toney eight times for 108 yards and a TD, Trevon Grimes six times for 52 yards and two touchdowns and Jacob Copeland three times for 53 yards and the fourth scoring pass of the game. To use a worn out cliché, Mullen and the Gators took what the Tennessee defense gave them. “I don't think we really tried to run the ball very much,” Mullen said. “So, we can go spend a lot of time and we can go run the ball. We'll find a way to run the ball and go do it, you know, probably small the game down, ball control, grind it out. But that doesn't really fit the strength of our team right now when we have success throwing it and can matchups all over the field that cause problems for people. So I think it's a lot about what we want to do. It'd be one thing if ... I didn't look at the numbers, I don't think we were run efficient. That was disappointing." Mullen has a history of adapting his offense to his personnel. He’s had plenty of teams that ran it as much as they threw it although the last two seasons at Florida the offense has been more pass heavy, largely because he’s got a pure pocket passer in Trask who is probably the most accurate he’s ever coached. But whether it’s running the ball or throwing it, the one thing Mullen expects is excellent execution. “No, we just gotta execute better, you know I mean?” he said. “Like, I don't know that we were very good last week offensively, to be honest with you. You know, I mean, which is kind of I guess hard to say, I think - it's not to say we weren't very good, I think we missed a lot of opportunities last week. I think we had three possessions start on the plus side of the field with zero points,” Mullen said. “I mean you should be 100% at that. So, I think we left 21 points out there on the field that we should have had.” Had the Gators lit the Vols up for three more touchdowns, they would have hung 52 on the Neyland Stadium scoreboard. That would have probably quieted the critics, but Mullen might have sung the exact same tune when he met the media. He is a perfectionist so he would have found something to nitpick. COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF POLL: WEEK THREE: (1) Alabama 9-0; (2) Notre Dame 10-0; (3) Clemson 9-1; (4) Ohio State 5-0; (5) Texas A&M 7-1; (6) FLORIDA 8-1; (7) Iowa State 8-2; (8) Cincinnati 8-0; (9) Georgia 6-2; (10) Miami 8-1; (11) Oklahoma 7-2; (12) Indiana 6-1; (13) Coastal Carolina 10-0; (14) Northwestern 5-1; (15) Southern Cal 4-0; (16) Iowa 5-2; (17) North Carolina 7-3; (18) BYU 9-1; (19) Louisiana 9-1; (20 Texas 6-3; (21) Colorado 4-0; (22) Oklahoma State 6-3; (23) North Carolina State 8-3; (24) Tulsa 6-1; (25) Missouri 5-3 POLL REACTIONS Ohio State’s game with Michigan was canceled Tuesday but that shouldn’t affect the Buckeyes’ chances of making the College Football Playoff because the Big Ten isn't going to let an undefeated team miss the playoff. So if the Big Ten holds steady with its requirement of six games to make the Big Ten Championship Game, Ohio State will go to the playoff as a 5-0 team. Count on it. That might cause a stir in Indiana where the 12th-ranked Hoosiers (6-1) came within a TD of knocking off the mighty Buckeyes, but the higher ups in the league aren’t going to care. They know Ohio State is the Big Ten’s only chance to win a national championship so figure this: Even if they play only five games, the Buckeyes will be in the playoff. If the six-game rule is waived, they'll make the league title game needing only a win over Northwestern to make the playoff. You could call it Big Ten bias and you wouldn’t be wrong, but in this season in which there aren’t enough tourniquets to stop the cash bleed the committee understands fully well what Ohio State in the playoff can mean. I think Alabama, Texas A&M or Florida from the SEC and both Clemson and Notre Dame would beat Ohio State if they played. I also think a team that has played only six games shouldn’t make the playoff but this is a pandemic year and the committee is going to make darn sure it gets four teams that bring the ratings. If the Buckeyes are the unbeaten Big Ten champs they will be in the playoff. Period. End of story. I do think the Aggies would beat Ohio State in a head-to-head matchup but the Buckeyes are in as long as they are unbeaten. Barring a scenario in which Alabama beats Florida in the SEC Championship Game and Clemson embarrasses Notre Dame in the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game, the Aggies will have to settle for a New Year’s Six matchup, most likely in the Cotton Bowl. Georgia (6-2) dropped one spot but the Poodles are still in the top ten. I have no doubt they would put the kibosh on Iowa State, which is ranked seventh but that doesn’t mean either Georgia or Iowa State belong in the top ten. Somebody tell me how it is that two-loss Iowa State – which will probably lose for a third time to Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship Game on December 19 – is six spots higher than Coastal Carolina, which is unbeaten, has a power five win and a win over then unbeaten BYU; and 12 spots better than once-beaten Louisiana, which poleaxed the Cyclones in the season-opener? If you’re going to have two-loss team in this playoff poll, it ought to be Oklahoma. The Sooners losses are by a combined 10 points and they are currently working on a 6-game winning streak in which the average margin of victory is 25.8 points. Cincinnati is still unbeaten (8-0) but the Bearcats dropped a spot behind two-loss Iowa State. I’ve seen both teams and wouldn’t hesitate to pick Cincinnati to beat Iowa State head-to-head, but the Bearcats didn’t play last week and their Saturday game with 24th-ranked Tulsa has been canceled. When you’re from the Group of Five, you need that exposure and you can’t afford to have a game with a ranked team canceled. RUMBLING, STUMBLING, BUMBLING IN THE SEC #1 ALABAMA (9-0): Offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian is a semifinalist for the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach. Alabama leads the nation in scoring and ranks X in total offense. In his two years as the OC, Alabama has scored at least ARKANSAS (3-6): No word yet on who Arkansas will start at quarterback this week against #1 Alabama. Feleipe Franks didn’t play last week against Missouri because of a rib injury. In his place, redshirt freshman K.J. Jefferson played very, very well. AUBURN (5-4): Auburn is getting very little respect from Las Vegas. The Tigers are 6.5-point road favorites at Mississippi State Saturday. Although it’s expected that the Tigers will win the game and that Gus Malzahn will return next season, a loss to MSU could change those plans. #9 GEORGIA (6-2): Running back Kendall Milton and defensive tackle Jordan Davis could play against Missouri. All-American safety Richard LeCounte is practicing but is highly unlikely to play. KENTUCKY (3-7): The search for a new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach is on. Kentucky HBC Mark Stoops and athletic director Mitch Barnhart have committed to spend top dollar to lure better assistants than the fired Eddie Gran and Darrin Hinshaw. LSU (3-5): There are some fairly good reasons why LSU is in the midst of a monumental collapse but they begin with the fact that 34 players from last year’s national championship team aren’t with the Tigers at this moment. Sixteen players are cashing NFL paychecks while others transferred or opted out for 2020. Currently the Tigers have around 63 scholarship players on the roster. MISSISSIPPI STATE (2-6): Although it’s been announced that QB KJ Costello will play in the East-West Shrine Bowl game, HBC Mike Leach says there are ongoing discussions with Costello about possibly returning next season since the NCAA ruled that 2020 will not count against anyone’s eligibility. #25 MISSOURI (5-3): Tre Williams, who had 21 tackles and two sacks in eight games, has left the team and is exploring options somewhere other than Missouri. OLE MISS (4-4): Grant Tisdale, a former 4-star quarterback recruit who was moved to wide receiver by the previous coach (Matt Luke) has placed his name in the NCAA transfer portal with the hope of playing QB once again. Ole Miss has a full QB room with Matt Corral, John Rhys Plumlee and Kinkead Dean. Last week freshman QB Kade Renfro also placed his name in the transfer portal. SOUTH CAROLINA (3-7): Wide receiver Shi Smith (57-633, 4 TDs) and linebacker Ernest Jones (86 tackles, 5 tackles for loss) are leaving for the NFL. TENNESSEE (2-6): Apparently, HBC Jeremy Pruitt has moved on past Jarrett Guarantano. This week, Pruitt plans to go with Harrison Bailey and JT Shrout at QB when the Vols play Vanderbilt in Nashville. Guarantano isn’t going to be drafted by any NFL team so figure he’ll be a grad transfer. Sophomore Brian Maurer could be putting his name into the NCAA transfer portal as well. #5 TEXAS A&M (7-1): With the other 12 SEC teams all playing this weekend, there was no wiggle room for commish Greg Sankey to work out something so that the Aggies could get some style points for the College Football Playoff Committee after the postponement of their game with Ole Miss. VANDERBILT (0-8): Vanderbilt has interviewed Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea, a former Vandy linebacker, for its vacant head coach job. There are plans to interview Coastal Carolina head coach Jamey Chadwell, Charlotte’s Will Healy and Army’s Jeff Monken. It is also believed that Buffalo head coach Lance Leipold might be interested. MEANWHILE AT MICHIGAN … The soap opera that is Jim Harbaugh’s tenure at his alma mater has taken a brand new twist and it’s really juicy. There is a report that Michigan AD Warde Manuel has offered Harbaugh a contract extension (he has 13 months remaining on his $8 million a year deal) with a lower salary and buyout but with incentives that could raise his pay. The same report says that at least five NFL teams are interested in hiring Harbaugh. This report runs contrary to one by Paul Finebaum a few weeks ago. Finebaum said that Michigan and Harbaugh had agreed to part ways. PARTING PITHY SHOT: Boise State is making noise about leaving the Mountain West Conference. The only problem is where would the Broncos go? The American Athletic Conference needs a 12th team but Boise is so far away that it would add a serious financial burden due to increased expenses. The American isn’t a deep enough pockets league to absorb that kind of hit. Leaving the MWC might sound good but it’s not practical at least until there is a breakaway from the NCAA by the Division I football schools. When that happens we may see another wave of realignment, but not until. So for now, Boise can make all the noise it wants because nobody is listening.

A few thoughts to jump start your Tuesday morning: WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF EVIDENT … NOT JUST THE GATORS, EVERYBODY’S DEFENSE IS OFF On their way to an 11-2 record in 2019, Todd Grantham’s Florida defense got better as the season moved along. The Gators gave up 15.5 points per game (7th nationally) and 304.8 yards (9th). It was a solid unit led by Jonathan Greenard (9.5 sacks) that ranked 8th against the run (102.77 yards per game) and got to the quarterback 49 times (5th nationally). A year later there is no Greenard or C.J. Henderson locking people down in the secondary. The Gators are allowing 25.1 points (44th nationally) and 381 yards (50th) per game. Against the run the Gators give up 138.33 yards per game (42nd nationally) and they’re allowing 242.7 passing yards (79th), which is 40 more than last year. On paper you would say it’s a really bad year for the Gators, but what’s on paper doesn’t take into account how few games Grantham has had a full deck to play with because of injuries, suspensions and the virus. When the Gators lost to Texas A&M (Aggies scored 41 and had 533 total yards, 205 on the ground and 388 passing), Grantham was missing several key players. Also – and this can’t be over-emphasized – the pandemic has reduced the amount of hitting and physicality in practice. Since Grantham can’t know if he’s going to be missing two or three players due to the virus on Saturday, he can’t afford injuries during the week for conducting physical practices. The lack of tackling and physically taking on receivers shows on Saturdays. Those may sound like excuses but this is the reality in which we live and it’s pretty much the same everywhere you go. To Florida’s credit, the defense is getting much better in part because Grantham has more moving parts to work with now than at the beginning of the year. Kyree Campbell missed the first three games and didn’t really play a full rotation at nose tackle until game five. Safety Brad Stewart missed the first two games. Shawn Davis missed the Missouri and Tennessee games. Jeremiah Moon has been available only four games. James Houston has played in only six. And the list goes on and on. Despite the issues with personnel, there have been some particularly strong moments. After giving up two touchdowns and 136 yards in Georgia’s first two possessions, the Gators held the Bulldogs to 141 yards and one offensive touchdown the rest of the way. Missouri ran for only 40 yards. The Gators gave up 221 and picked off three passes against Kentucky. A week after lighting up Auburn for 222 rushing yards, Tennessee managed just 94 against the Gators. So, things are getting better but if you’re a numbers freak, then yes, the numbers are down considerably. They’re down everywhere in the SEC however. It’s not just Florida. Georgia was billed as the best defense in the country yet Alabama lit up the Poodles for 41 points and 564 yards. Florida went off for 44 points and 571 yards. Georgia is allowing 338.1 yards and 20.6 points a game one year after leading the nation in scoring defense (12.6 per game) and finishing third (275.7 yards) in total defense. A year ago, Alabama ranked 13th in scoring defense (18.6 points per game) despite allowing a combined 94 points to LSU and Auburn, and 324.4 yards (21st). This year, Alabama is giving up 18.3 points (tied for 15th) and allowing 357 yards (35th). Auburn gave up 19.6 points and 337 yards per game last year. This year the Tigers give up 418.8 yards and 25.2 points per game, worst in Kevin Steele’s tenure on The Plains. He’s paid $2.5 million per season. It’s somewhat unfair to mention LSU since most of its 2019 defense is playing in the NFL now but the Tigers are giving up 33.4 points (95th) and 469.1 yards (115th) per game under new coordinator Bo Pelini, who brings in a cool $2 million. One of the few SEC teams whose defense has improved is Texas A&M, which gave up 340.2 yards (29th) and 22.5 points (36th) a year ago. The Aggies give up 22.1 points (32nd) and 329.5 yards (21st) in 2020. As far as the SEC goes, the Gators rank 4th in scoring defense, 5th in rushing defense, 6th in pass defense and 5th in total defense. Are they elite? Hardly, but nobody else is either. There are very few teams nationwide playing defense with the same efficiency as last year. The offenses are clearly ahead of the defenses and that’s not going to change at least this year. It is true the Gators aren’t playing at the same level as a year ago but nobody else is either. West Virginia is the only Power Five defense holding teams to fewer than 300 yards per game but the Mountaineers still allow 20.4 points. GATORS BREAK INTO TOP 25 IN COACHES HOOPS POLL A 3-0 start has moved the Gators into 25th place in the Coaches Top 25 Poll. The Gators are unranked in the Associated Press poll but they trail only Michigan and Saint Louis among teams that finished outside the top 25. Coaches Top 25 Poll: (1) Gonzaga 3-0; (2) Baylor 3-0; (3) Iowa 3-0; (4) Michigan State 5-0; (5) Kansas 4-1; (6) Villanova 4-1; (7) Creighton 3-0; (8) Houston 4-0; (9) Illinois 3-1; (10) West Virginia 4-1; (11) Duke 2-1; (12) Texas 4-1; (13) Wisconsin 3-1; (14) North Carolina (3-1); (15) Virginia Tech 4-0; (16) Tennessee 0-0; (17) Texas Tech 4-1; (18) Virginia 3-1; (19) Richmond 2-0; (20) Ohio State 3-0; (21) Florida State 1-0; (22) Rutgers 3-0; (23) Arizona State 3-1; (24) Louisville 4-0; (25) FLORIDA 3-0 AGGIES PLAYOFF HOPES JUST TOOK A HIT The College Football Playoff path for 5th-ranked Texas A&M (7-1) was never easy since the Aggies have no control over their own destiny, but what chances they have to make it as a wild card team took a big hit Monday when their game with Ole Miss (4-4) was canceled because of Covid-19 issues within the Ole Miss program. Since Ole Miss went off for 35 points and 613 yards against the 6th-ranked Gators and for 48 points and 647 yards against #1 Alabama, the Aggies needed to score a shutdown win over the Rebels to enhance their wild card status. They have one remaining game on December 19 against Tennessee, which should result in a blowout. The way it stands right now, Florida makes the playoff by beating LSU Saturday and then beating Alabama in Atlanta on December 19. As long as Alabama doesn’t stumble against Missouri this week, the Crimson Tide is in the playoff no matter what happens against Florida. When you’ve won five national championships since 2009 and your name is Nick Saban, you get a mulligan every now and then. If Florida and Alabama are in, the remaining spot could be either Clemson or Notre Dame (or possibly both if Clemson beats Notre Dame) and Ohio State if the Buckeyes beat Michigan and then beat Northwestern for the Big Ten Championship. No path for the Aggies that way. If Alabama beats Florida there could still be two ACC teams if Clemson beats Notre Dame. If Clemson and Notre Dame have one loss apiece and Ohio State beats Michigan and then Northwestern for the Big Ten championship, the Aggies again have no path to the playoff. The only way for Texas A&M to even have a chance is for Alabama to beat Florida and Notre Dame to beat Clemson. That would give both Florida and Clemson two losses so they would be out. Ohio State would be in if undefeated. A loss to Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship Game could also open things up for the Aggies. However, not playing Ole Miss will indeed hurt since it’s late in the year and would be an eye test win if the Aggies were to shut down that Ole Miss offense. Without a win over Ole Miss, the Aggies could be jumped if Cincinnati finishes 10-0 as the American Athletic Conference champ. DOES HABAUGH STAY OR DOES HE GO? A few weeks back Paul Finebaum, who has spent the last 40 years cultivating impeccable sources not only throughout the Southeastern Conference but in all of college football, reported that Jim Harbaugh and Michigan had reached a mutually agreed upon divorce. Harbaugh was gone and Michigan would turn the page to the next sucker that thinks he’s going to beat Ohio State on a regular basis, which is what it takes to make Michigan alums happy. There has been a ton of speculation in the subsequent weeks but nothing concrete to let us know that Harbaugh hits the road after the annual beatdown at the hands of Ohio State, which happens to be this Saturday in Columbus. Ohio State is a mere 29-point favorite and it may take a miracle of feeding the 5,000 proportions for it to be that close. Michigan is 2-4 in a season in which the Wolverines were in just about everybody’s preseason top 15 and thought potentially top 10 if Harbaugh found a reliable QB. No QB has been found and the Michigan defense gives up 34.5 points and 429.3 yards per game. Those numbers could swell to even more ridiculous proportions if Ohio State runs up the score, which you know Ryan Day will do if given the opportunity. That puts Michigan in a serious squeeze. If Harbaugh decides he isn’t going anywhere would Michigan have the nads to shove him out the door? And if he indeed is gone, who does Michigan hire? The obvious first choice would be Iowa State coach Matt Campbell, but he’s on the verge of the school’s first conference championship in football since 1912. He’s got a good thing going at Iowa State with far less pressure than he would have at Michigan. They wouldn’t go after Cincinnati’s Luke Fickell, an Ohio State man to the core, would they? And has Oregon’s 3-2 start taken all the luster off Mario Cristobal? THE 1972 DOLPHINS CAN BREATHE EASILY FOR ANOTHER YEAR For those of you too young to remember, the 1972 Miami Dolphins made history by becoming the only team in NFL history to run the table. Nobody has done it since. The Pittsburgh Steelers were playing so well prior to Monday that folks were beginning to think they had a legitimate shot at going unbeaten but their 11-0 start came crashing to a half Monday in Pittsburgh. Behind Alex Smith the Washington Football Team scored a 23-17 win, not just underscoring once again just how tough it is to go unbeaten in an NFL season but how remarkable it was for the Dolphins. Because they went through an entire regular season, playoffs and Super Bowl unbeaten, a strong case can be made that the 1972 Miami Dolphins are the greatest team in NFL history. The 1985 Chicago Bears were certainly great (12-0 before the first loss to the Dolphins, 6-0 the rest of the way) as were the 2007 New England Patriots, who didn’t lose until the Super Bowl against the New York Giants. The 1962 Green Bay Packers were perhaps Vince Lombardi’s best team with a 13-1 record that included a 16-9 win over the New York Giants in the NFL Championship Game. It’s hard to compare teams from different eras because the game constantly changes so the only fair way is by record. The 1972 Dolphins went unbeaten and nobody did it before or has done it since. Until someone can run the table again, it’s hard to say the Dolphins aren’t the best of all time. TUESDAY PITHINESS: The University of Louisville pays football coach Scott Satterfield $3.25 million per year. He interviewed last Saturday with South Carolina, which presumably had the lure of more money and a chance to coach in the SEC. Satterfield either didn’t get the South Carolina job or turned it down. Louisville fans weren’t happy that he took the interview. Monday, Satterfield made things worse by saying this at his press conference: “As a player, you're there for three to four years and then you're done. As players, you don't have a family. It's just you. As coaches … and I'm just thinking in general terms here … coaches have wives and kids. As a job, are they going to be at a job at 40 years? There are a lot of different things that are involved in coaching. With players, like I said, it's three to four years, and they have to be all in." Let’s see how many Louisville players put their names in the transfer portal after a coach who makes millions says they have to be “all in” but he can do whatever he wants.

Florida Gators Head Coach Dan Mullen met with local media on Monday to discuss clinching the SEC East, not looking past LSU towards Alabama and the lack but unneeded run game. As a valued subscriber, we are offering this transcript in full. Injury report “I know you love report, who’s playing. You’ve got – we’re hoping to get Trent Whittemore back this week. That’d be really good for us, adding the depth to the receiving corps and special teams, he’s a significant impact on special teams for us. Let’s see. … Both Shawn Davis and Rashad Torrence will still be questionable. We’ve got to see how the week goes on for those two guys this week. Anybody else you want to know about?” Jeremiah Moon? “I don’t think he’ll be back this week. We’re hoping the following week.” How allocate resources while juggling LSU, Bama, signing day…? “We’ve got a good staff and really good people around us. You do have a lot going on. You’ve got this week’s game, preparing for LSU. That’s focus No. 1. You add in the senior night deal. It’ll be senior night here in The Swamp. There’s a little bit of an extra stuff that goes on with all of that. As you said, then we get the one more game. That’ll be kinda getting into a normal game week. The thing that’ll be different is we’ll be going through final exams that week, so you’ve got a challenging schedule to get that organized the following week, as well as having a signing day on Wednesday. So there is a lot, but we have a really good staff to kinda keep everything and everybody to know what their job is, what their responsibility is and to get it done. It’s been a unique year with a lot of unique challenges, and this is just another one.” You ever wake up and go, I’ve got too much going on! Hit you ever? “You wake up and you go. Your mind’s just racing at night, you know? You try to fall asleep a little bit, your mind races between 2 and 3 or 4 o’ clock in the morning, making sure you’ve checked everything that needs to be done. But I guess that’s just part of the deal.” (On the answer as to why the offense has had some lulls in the first half. Something to change, different message to deliver?) "No, we just gotta execute better. You know I mean? Like, I don't know that we were very good last week offensively, to be honest with you. You know, I mean, which is kind of I guess hard to say, I think - it's not to say we weren't very good, I think we missed a lot of opportunities last week. I think we had three possessions start on the plus side of the field with zero points, I mean you should be 100% at that. So, I think we left 21 points out there on the field that we should have had. You know, there's a lot - when you look at it, you know, if there's one reason then you go, if there's one thing, you go fix it. But, it's just, you know, it's lots of different things. Whether it be a missed read by the quarterback, a missed check, missed communication at the line of scrimmage, a dropped pass, sometimes great defense, once in a while there's great defense too, we forget to give those guys credit whos job it is to stop us." "So, I think there's all of that that goes into it, you know, I think we can still continue to get better, I think we can play a lot better than we have. But, I think we also as a team do everything you need to do to win games. I mean, last week's game's a great example. We take a three-nothing lead, so we're playing with a lead. They come back, score to make it 7-3, we immediately go to 10-7 to take the lead right back from 'em, then at the end of the half, they give us the ball and they give us the ball and it's 10-7 and the next time they touch the ball it's 24-7. So, all those little things that we needed to do to win, it's 31-7 and we kinda put the game away and it's over in the fourth quarter. But, then we make the mistakes where we get the ball on the plus-side of the field and we don't score offensively. You know, like you said, we missed some opportunities, I know we want to be efficient, score every time we have the ball, that doesn't always happen. Defensively, we have a big lead, play a little bit softer to make them eat up the clock and kinda run out the end of the game and then when we give up touchdowns that we don't need to be giving up at the end of the game, guys need to come out and step up and make plays. So, there's all those little things that I think we can play better, but as a team, I'm really happy because we're doing what you need to do to win as a team from one week to the next." (On why he's reading a lot into the college football playoff strength of schedule model) "Well, I mean, every year they talk about that. Shouldn't it be strength of scheduling is what matters? So, I don't know why it should be different this year than other means, you know I mean, of that, why would you - I mean your criteria, why change it from strength of scheduling, ever? Right, I mean, either we should encourage you to play the toughest schedule you can play and encourage you to do that and you should get rewarded for playing a tough schedule and winning a lot of games. That's just me, but maybe -- I'm not on the playoff committee, so that's a great question for the playoff committee members of why criteria should change every year." When putting together future schedules, this is another data point that you are going to view in how they come up with CFB playoff teams? “That’s something that you probably should really pay attention to, you know what I mean. If it is all about – if strength of schedule, or if you are going to play a tough schedule and it doesn’t reward you – I don’t know, I would guess if you’re an AD, that would be a message to make, go out there I guess, if you want to get in the playoffs, try to schedule an easy schedule as possible.” After watching film of worst run-game performance of season, how would you assess performance? “Yeah, we missed a couple of blocks. We didn’t really try to run the ball very much. I think our backs had about four or five carries, that’s about it. They were giving us the pass game so we just kind of stuck with the pass game.” What about 30 sacks, a number you have hit in all three seasons here, how has that success continued? “I mean, we have great athletes out there. I think, you know, certainly Todd does a good job of getting players in positions to make plays. I think game situations puts pressure on people and change what they want to do within the course of a game and force them to be uncomfortable and play out of what maybe their game plan was. And allows us, which we want to be a fast, physical, aggressive defense, come after the quarterback and disrupt quarterback play. So, we’ve been able to do that again this year. That’s part of our defensive style.” What did the win over LSU in 2018 at home do for your program, beating a rival? “I think it was huge. I think our guys came out that day, we played a really tough, physical game, which it usually is against LSU. Always a battle right down to the end. And our guys, I think that day, found a way to win. I think really came together as a team. We had critical defensive stops when we needed to, big offensive drives when we needed to in the course of the game. Made a lot of big plays that day. I think any time you do that, that can be a huge boost for the confidence of the guys and especially, in our first year here in the program, was a big boost for our guys trying to believe and understand what we were trying to accomplish and what we would be able to do in the future.” Thoughts on this year's LSU team? "Oh, they've got a lot of talent. They put up a lot of points, can score points in a hurry offensively. They lost a lot of guys so they're a young football team, lost a lot of guys off of that last year's team. And you look, a lot of times you have a team that goes on a championship run like they did last year, they do it with a very veteran group of guys and then all of a sudden, the next year a lot of those veteran guys are gone. But they have a tremendous amount of talent, a lot of guys, some playmakers and mismatches on offense, from the running backs, different wideouts that can cause you issues. They've got a really athletic tight end in the passing game. Defensively, they've got DBs that can cover on the backend and a big, physical group up front. So, when you look at them I think they've had some up-and-down games, and with a young team. They've had, they've played a bunch of different quarterbacks this year, so when you, I mean you're going through all of those different changes and things that are happening, you can see. But they have a couple dominating wins where they came in and blew people out, a couple of games went right down to the wire for them. They've had a couple of games where, I'm sure, kind of went the wrong way for them with a young team, how they didn't expect it to go, and you know, ended up on the short end of those games. So you see a lot of different things from them as a team, as a young team they're growing, learning, but a dangerous team because they have weapons all over the field." Going back to 2018 game, you said "This is what Florida football should be." That was the big game that year, is that the standard now? "Yeah, I mean we're pretty pleased. I mean, our goal is to compete for championships and we're doing that this year, having the opportunity to go to Atlanta. You know, I mean you look though, the last two years we've had top-ten finishes and won two New Year's Six Bowl games, so that's where it is. I think, probably a lot of that for me is the atmosphere, which we're not going to get this year, which is you know, when we come and we play in The Swamp, we expect to be the toughest environment in college football. And if I remember back to that day, that was probably the loudest, most electric the stadium was that season for sure, and it kind of reminded me of what it was back in the National Championship years. So, anytime we step into The Swamp, I know I want our players to play at an extremely high level, but I mean the Gator Nation is so critical to give you that home-field advantage, that energy, that excitement, and I know they did it that year in that game. You know, moving forward though, that is what we expect. I love playing for championships, playing top-level football, and when we get the opportunity to be at home, have the best home-field advantage in college football." Is running game not there because the passing game is so strong or does the passing have to be strong because the running game's not there? "Well it can be a little bit of everything depending on the game and how it goes and what we do and how the game's going and how it's playing out. So there's not a specific answer to that. To be honest with you, go back to the game, I don't think we really tried to run the ball very much. So, we can go spend a lot of time and we can go run the ball. We'll find a way to run the ball and go do it, you know. Probably small the game down, ball control, grind it out. But that doesn't really fit the strength of our team right now when we have success throwing it and can matchups all over the field that cause problems for people. So I think it's a lot about what we want to do. It'd be one thing if ... I didn't look at the numbers, I don't think we were run efficient. That was disappointing." 66 plays, 17 rushes "And a couple of them were sacks, right? Because they count as rushes. So we really didn't run the ball that much and a couple of them were at the end of the game when we were trying to kill the clock, too. So if we ran the ball 40 times and didn't have many yards, that would probably go into the concern area. The fact that we weren't really trying to run it doesn't really throw it into my concern area." Senior Day, how does that change procedure wise (with COVID)? "You said all the different things on me. I haven't even got to that yet. I got a lot going on right now. I'll figure that out some time later this week." Feel for the seniors because of the year they've had to go through? "Well I think for them, they envisioned their senior year going to Atlanta and playing for an SEC championship. So I think that's probably what they would view as really important. So it actually is probably kind of exactly how they envisioned it." How good is Kyle Trask at spreading the ball around? “I think that’s part of playing the quarterback position. That’s one of the most important parts. At times, and Kyle will tell you this, I imagine, he misses reads during the game and takes some other things out there. But we have a lot of faith and a lot of confidence in what he’s doing and his decision-making on the field. That’s quarterbacking. That’s quarterback play of understanding the offense, understanding why we’re doing what we’re doing and what the design of the play is and then you’ve got to be able understand what the defense is doing and why they’re doing what they’re doing and what they’re trying to take away from you. They can’t take everything away from you. You’ve got to let them take something away from you. That’s OK. You go to the next option. Honestly, that’s what good quarterbacks do.” How do all yourself not to think about big, bad Bama? “I’ll be honest with you, you focus on that … our focus is that we’ve got to get better. If you want to be a championship team, as I’ve said all year, you’ve got to get better from one week to the next. You don’t regress. You don’t want to go backwards. Now, you might not get better in every single phase every single week, but you never want to regress as a team. Our focus has to be getting better this week. And then I imagine you can ask me the same question and I’ll say, ‘Are you looking forward to Ohio State, or Clemson or Notre Dame after Alabama?’ And I’ll say, ‘No, we’re going to be focused on getting better and us being a better team this week and focus on that.’ You know, that’s just the simplicity of it all. I know it sounds like coach talk. But the reality is, if you want to be a great football team, you focus on the task at hand. And the task at hand is us getting better as a team, preparing, practicing better this week than we did last week, playing with more effort and strain and being more efficient on offense and making bigger plays on defense than we did last week. And taking this week’s game plan and applying it to LSU and doing it better than we applied last week’s game plan to Tennessee and we get better as a team. If we do that and hopefully next week we do the same thing and weeks after that you continue to do that until the season ends and we put 2020’s team to rest.” Incremental a good word for it? “Sure. That’s like a big vocab word for me.” Kadarius Toney? Improvement and his game? “Well I think, you know you look, I think he’s always been such a dynamic playmaker. You put the ball in his hands and exciting things happen. But if you watch what he’s been able to do, his ability to understand the routes, be a great route-runner. He understands he has freedom within a lot of different routes at that position. We give that position a little bit more freedom even than other positions within the route running, and he understands though the freedom that he has and doesn’t just freelance it, but he understands the defensive coverages and the looks that he has, and he has a great feeling of how to attack those different coverages and looks, and how to win versus the different coverage people are playing against him. So I think he does a great job as a receiver, and then we all know that hey, once the ball’s in his hands, he makes exciting and dynamic things happen after the catch, so I think it just shows how he’s improved from a playmaker to an every-down reliable player.” Emory OK? “Yeah, yeah. We always have the package, we just didn’t get him in the other night. But he’s ready to go.” 5 true freshmen play over 100 snaps this year, how important have those guys been? “Well I mean it’s huge. You look, especially a year like this, you have guys get injured, you have the COVID issues, you have all the different things going on, there’s opportunities for guys. And you know, not that in every program as you build the program, you don’t sit there and say OK we’re going to rely on a lot of true freshmen all year long to win for us. I don’t think any program relies on that, I know people may say that in recruiting sometimes, but you don’t rely on that throughout your entire program. And, but it shows a lot of these guys came in, were ready to play. We talked to that, when you get an opportunity go seize the opportunity. And I think as a program, when you talk to young men, if they understand that, of – they worry about improving, they worry about getting better and worry about taking advantage of opportunities, and then they look at other guys on the team and say ‘OK, boy, you know, hey I’ve got an opportunity to play early in my career, Kyle Trask didn’t get an opportunity to play till a little bit later in his career but her certainly took advantage of it. Kadarius Toney had a small role early and then became an everyday playmaker later in his career. You know Kyle Pitts played his whole year at wide receiver, kinda helped him learn and get reps that way, and now he’s the best tight end in the country.’ So I think a lot of the guys within the program see it, and then they understand if I’m given the opportunity the best thing I can do is take advantage of that opportunity. I mean there’s a lot of guys on our team that want to play a lot more, and you know I wish we could get them to play more, but they understand ‘hey I’m going to be ready for my opportunity for when it comes, and if i worry about that, and then when my opportunity comes and I jump on it and seize on it, that opportunity, I’m going to have a great career’.” What has this recruiting process been like? “It’s unique. You know, you do it on FaceTime or Zoom calls or that type of stuff. You know, you don’t have them in-person here. It’s been a little bit different. It’ll be interesting to see after this year what maybe the NCAA takes as a plus and a minus moving forward, coming out of it. I’m sure there’s a lot of things you can evaluate and say, ‘Hey, you know, this has forced us to view things very differently or there are some benefits to it and what could be beneficial with this moving forward?’” Are you concerned that recruits not being able to visit campuses may lead to more transfers down the road? “I don’t know. I think you’re going to see a lot more transfers down the road, to be honest with you, because of the new NCAA rules that they’re putting into place. I don’t know if they’re in place yet but appear to be going into place. So, I think you might just see that a little more coming in the future anyway.” How important has it been to not have had any long-term injuries this year? “Well, it’s helped. I think if you look, I don’t know if we’ve had 70 scholarship players yet available for a game, to be honest with you. It doesn’t feel like it. So, like you said, we’ve had a lot of bumps and bruises, but it’s been beneficial that none of them have been – or, knock on wood, we have had very few that are longer-term injuries. They’re more guys missing a couple weeks here or there and able to come back, and then somebody else gets banged up and goes out, and they’re missing a couple weeks, but that’s kind of a football season, and this year’s even more unique than other years because of the COVID thrown into it as well.” Do you think about that at all going into this week I mean, I know that you want to play and compete in this game but then think to the SEC championship later, are you concerned with injuries or anything like that this week? “Nah, it just is what it is. We got to go out play, you know I mean we'll get guys opportunity to go out there and play and we got to get better, that's kind of what our focus is." On the run game, you guys ran on your last three touchdowns, one running back run just for the record so... “Yea I mean it was—we weren't honestly, I mean I hate to say, I didn't put a, we weren't putting a concerted effort in to run the ball. I think you've seen us do that before and I mean if I want to go put our, put our energy into it I'm sure we can figure it out. But we really didn't have a concerted effort into running it on Saturday. We might this Saturday, I might come out in the wishbone this Saturday.” Do you feel like Kyle Pitts has just been taking some hits? He took a shot on the sideline the other day. Teams are really going after the guy a little bit. “Yea he's a big guy though. He catches the ball, he's an athlete in the open field and he's a big guy. So, I mean, I think people look—you better, if you want to tackle him you better throw everything you have into him right there you know. And so, you know, and you're 6-6, 240 something, you got to put a lot of ‘oomph’ to even try to get him down on the ground. So, but, no I mean he's responded pretty, I mean he's, he's done a great job of that all year, of being a physical player." 12 seniors. And I counted just now I think 12 that were here, it during 2017, and some before that in 2016 like Kyle and some others. What has this class gone and overcome and what are you going to think about this class, years from now? "Well I think one obviously, that they were dealt with a difficult deal of coming in with a new coaching staff—they were then, then recruited them. That always you know kind of leads to a challenge, a little bit in itself and there has to be a buy in and I belief that hey, they, you know, 'these new guys coming in, these new coaches coming in are gonna do things a little bit differently than maybe I thought.’ And, then, but I think the success we've had over the last three years has shown their buy in. You know, we came in we said 'hey, if you buy in and believe in what we're doing, we're gonna have the opportunity to compete for championships,' and, you know, I'm sure most of them are very thankful they bought in, they believe in what we're trying to do and you know, I mean, here they are their senior year, getting to go compete for a championship.” How much time, energy resources have you already attributed to Alabama? “We have our advanced scouting people work on that to get everything in, all the information in, everything broken down. Once we had an idea that there was an opportunity for that (playing Alabama) so when we get in on Sunday morning of next week everything is all prepped, ready to go for us to start working on that gameplan.” How do you balance playing to win Saturday vs being smart and being healthy for the SEC Championship game vs Alabama? “Yeah, I mean we don’t worry about that. We gotta go play. It is what it is. You just go play. I think when you start worrying about those things you’re thinking about all the wrong things. You’re worrying about the guys walking to class tripping on the sidewalk, or going to practice every day. Your focus is, how do we go win the game this week and go win. Not many Florida teams have won nine SEC games in one season. We have the opportunity to do that. I think only two have ever done that. We have the opportunity to do that this week. There’s an awful lot on the table for our guys to be focused on to go win this week and that’s the complete focus on this team.” Think about the precarious spot of being very successful and have guys turn pro and then stuck in a spot like 2020 LSU? “As you get to that we meet with a lot of our guys, I’ve already met with several of our guys. The key is you want guys to make good decisions. We’ve had guys leave early each of the last couple of years and it seems like every year we’ve had guys leave early, like oh goodness, but we got better the next year. I tell the guys that. The decision is not, whether they stay of go, we’ll still be here, we’ll go compete, we’ll go play. The decision is, and I think this is where the people that start making mistakes when they do this, is they listen to the wrong people or they have the wrong vision of what it is all about when they make that decision. The decision is about them and their future and their ability not just their ability to play professionally but their preparedness to not just make it to the NFL but stay in the NFL. So, there’s a lot that goes into that decision making. Most of the guys, they really sit and reflect and think about it and do it, they say, ‘ok, here is where I’m at, here’s what I expect if I come back. Here’s what to expect if I leave. What puts me in the best position, not for the next six months, or year, but over the. Next five to six, seven, eight, ten years of my life? Let’s put me in the best position to be successful. And when guys think about the decision and make it the right way, usually they have a lot of success. When they don’t make it the right way, a lot of times they don’t have success. All we want to see if our guys have a lot of success. We’ll still have a team. We’ll still be playing. We’ll still be competing next year. I just want for our players, for them, to go make a great decision. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. It doesn’t have much to do with our program. It is about them and their future and as long as they make good decisions it usually works out the best for everyone.”

Florida Gators Offensive Coordinator Brian Johnson met with local media on Monday to discuss the Gators redzone offense, interviewing for the South Carolina Gamecocks head coaching position and having a tight end nominated for the Biletnikoff Award. As a valued subscriber, we are offering this transcript in full. Was this your first head coaching interview? "Yes, it was." What did you think you learned from Dan Mullen over the years? "I don’t know if we have enough time to talk about everything that I’ve learned from coach. I’m just really grateful for the opportunity and really grateful for everything I’ve learned from him. I’m really appreciative of how he’s really put people in a position to advance their careers and become a better football coach and develop as a football coach. I can’t say enough about how I appreciate that from him." Was it good to get those reps? "Yeah, for sure. Ultimately, I think at the end of the day when you get in this profession and you do a good job, you do a good job, people notice. And you get opportunities. It was good to get those reps, but I’m really looking forward to what we have going on here, it’s always great to be a Gator, and it’s a big challenge this against LSU and, uh, get some great things going." Did you expect to not get the job? Was it disappointing? "I think the biggest thing is, obviously, the timing of everything just now with early signing period. I think it’s completely changed when signing day comes up here in a week from Wednesday. I’m just really excited about the opportunities we have here, the chance to coach some great players and be with a great coaching staff. It’s work every day to continue to develop as a coach and to put our team in a position to win the SEC." Did you ever imagine having a TE named to the Biletnikoff semi-finalists? "We were just talking about that, actually: I don’t know if that’s ever happened. Kyle’s a great player, he works extremely hard. He’s super productive when he gets out there on the field. We all know what he can do and what he brings to the table, he’s done a great job of putting himself in a position to continue to go out there and perform at a really high level on a consistent basis, and when that happens, people take notice. I’m really proud of him, I’m extremely happy for him." WHAT HAS ALLOWED PITTS TO BE THE KIND OF WEAPON HE IS? "Yeah, I think the biggest thing is obviously his talent. He's got a ton of God-given ability and he works really, really hard at it. He practices hard. He takes care of his business. He's very, very mature. He's very focused and goal-oriented and self-motivated. Every great player that I've ever been around, they all share very similar traits. It's stuff that's really intangible. Just what kind of work ethic they have, their commitment to perfecting their craft, their practice habits, things of that nature. He checks the box for all of those." EARLY SIGNING PERIOD, HOW TOUGH TO JUGGLE WITH EVERYTHING GOING ON? "Yeah I mean it's just another unique challenge that 2020 presents. For the most part everybody is under the same circumstance, so you've just got to find a way to adjust and adapt. I think we have a great recruiting staff, and know those guys do a great job of helping us be organized with what we need to get organized. I know we're looking forward to it. I know the young men are all looking forward to it. It's kind of just something you've got to adjust and roll with in 2020." WHAT DID 2018 WIN OVER LSU MEAN FOR THIS PROGRAM, FIRST SIGNATURE WIN? "Um, I mean I don't; I mean it was a great game, great atmosphere, unbelievable environment. I don't know that I've ever heard a place as loud as when Brad made that interception to kind of seal it, other than maybe Perine's run against Auburn, maybe. It was a great atmosphere in the Swamp. It's a big game. Our guys, Florida-LSU is as big as it gets in college football. Our guys are looking forward to that challenge and looking forward to that opportunity, and our seniors get to play their last game in the Swamp." Call a play in the box and see it happen differently on the field? “It happens once in a while. When we called it, we were probably a little deep for that particular call. I think we were probably around 7 or 8. Kyle did a good job about managing the look, and they gave us a really different look than we expected - so once we get tight like that, we expected man coverage and they zoned it off. Kyle did a great job of managing the zone windows, letting it kind of clear and then find him a soft spot to deliver the ball.” This indicative of the intelligence the guy has since the catch would have been harder for Copeland but easier for Grimes. “I think for sure. I think it was.. it was a really good job of coverage recognition because you know, in theory, neither one of those guys were wrong. Copeland was in the zone so he kind of settled, Tre got matched so he tried to go across the defender’s face and get it to the next window - it just happened to be the same window based on the play. I think it was really good by both of them to recognize the coverage and settle into the zone.” Not getting points when Florida was in Tenn. territory. What was your takeaway? “It was awful. It’s just not great football to get the ball three times on the plus side of the field and come out of it with zero points. I mean it’s just not a recipe for success. We definitely have to do a good job, taking advantage of opportunities. That's something we stress a lot and it was really disappointing to get that type of field position and to come out with zero points. We missed a field goal; we had to punt; and Kyle pinned us deep on that third time - just a little bit of sloppiness on those drives and lack of execution. We got to find a way to be better in those situations and really blow up the game when we have the opportunity to do that.” Improve finishing drives, or just an off day? “We definitely need to improve on it. I think it was just a combination of things, maybe we got a little bit too greedy trying to get it all at once and taking back-to-back shots that were incomplete. Drop a ball, miss a block, get a penalty … just things that kill normal drives throughout the course of the game, but it just becomes magnified when you’re in scoring position and you do those things to hurt yourself. So we have to be much cleaner at that and put our team in a better position to go execute at a high level when we get field position.” Kyle Heisman moment with pooch? “Yeah, that was … scary.” Now that won the East, how keep team from looking ahead to Bama? “I think the biggest thing is guys are self motivated. This is Florida-LSU. This is a big football game. They have a ton of great players, guys that played against and they know each other and want to go perform at a high level. So it’s not … if you have a problem getting up for this game, that’s a you problem. We got to continue to have a great week of practice, trust the details and focus on getting better each and every week and performing better in each and every aspect of the game.” How run a wishbone, since Dan said he might trot it out? “I saw that … we got some stuff. We’re going to dust off the ol’ option playbook, we got the ability to kind of get into some of that stuff. I wouldn’t be shocked, keep some people on their toes. We have a chance to do some stuff. We’ll see what we come out in, I guess.” Do you view run game production as execution issue? “Yeah, we didn’t execute very cleanly in the run game, but we didn’t really try to run. Some people would argue we probably tried to run it too much, you know. It’s a fine line. It’s a balancing act. I’m pretty sure if we really tried to scheme up a bunch of stuff in the run game we could manage to be OK.” Did Trevon Grimes campaign for wildcat vs Vandy? “Some politicking going on for that one. It was interesting because I was wondering who was get it based on who’s in the game, if it was Tre or Shorter or the running backs. We had to rock, paper, scissor that thing or something to see who was going to get it. Nah, I’m just teasing. But it’s just something that we came up with. Those guys are big-bodied players and just a way to get the ball in their hands and given them an opportunity to go down there and see if they could punch it in.” Almost worked? “It almost did. He reached the ball out.” What are you going to remember about this senior class? “That’s a great question. I think obviously up to this point this is the group that we probably spent the most time with. I just really think about just have they really bought into what we’re doing as a staff and as a program and obviously these guys, a lot of them, didn’t sign to play with us and they had some different circumstances that they had to go through in their career. But a great group of guys, particularly in my group. I can’t say enough about Kyle Trask. He’s been everything you could ask for that you want to coach in terms of, obviously, his performance and just who he is as a person, how he prepares, the standard that he sets for himself, how hard he practices, how hard he works, how he takes cares of his business. It’s been really rewarding to watch him go out and have a ton of success as a senior.” Entire class was ready for a change? You’ve seen that before? “Not really. Everywhere I’ve been the program had kind of been built so to speak. It wasn’t a new transition. It’s very, very unique to see those guys continue to grow and develop and put all the hard work and effort in to put themselves in position to go win the SEC.” Will you FaceTime Feleipe Franks on senior night? “Yeah, we’ll see, if he’s down for it. You know I love Feleipe. That’s my guy. Really proud of everything he’s accomplished this year. It was tough to see him hurt last week and not get a chance to play. But I thought he’s done a great job this year and he’s somebody I’m always really, really proud of. In my mind, he’s always a Gator, so I wish him the best. I have to do it from the booth because I’ll probably be up in the booth by them. See if I can FaceTime him.” Are you part of the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches? “I am not.”

Special to GatorBait Magazine, release from UAA: Four Gators Named National Semifinalists for Six Awards Trask, Pitts, McPherson and Elam recognized for strong seasons GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Florida’s Kyle Trask, Kyle Pitts, Evan McPherson and Kaiir Elam were recognized by the National College Football Awards Association on Monday as semifinalists were named for several prestigious national awards. Trask was named a semifinalist for the Davey O’Brien Award and the Maxwell Award while Pitts collected three semifinalist designations from the Biletnikoff Award, Mackey Award and the Maxwell Award. McPherson was named a Lou Groza Award Semifinalist while Elam was named a Paycom Jim Thorpe Award Semifinalist. Kyle Trask 2020 Davey O’Brien Award Semifinalist 2020 Maxwell Award Semifinalist Trask leads the FBS in touchdown passes with 38, ranks second in passing yards with 3,243 and sits at No. 5 in passing efficiency (193.11) this season. Trask's 38 touchdown passes this season moves him within one of Danny Wuerffel's single-season school record (39 in 1996). He is also No. 2 in the FBS in passing touchdown percentage with 11.8%. With his four passing touchdowns against Tennessee on Saturday, Trask became the ninth FBS quarterback since 2000 with seven games of four-plus passing touchdowns in a season. The redshirt-senior's 433 passing yards ranks 10th on the program's single-game school record list and joins Trask with Danny Wuerffel (four) as the only quarterbacks in Gators history with three career 400-yard passing games. Davey O’Brien Award Info: The Davey O’Brien Fan Vote instituted a change to its format in 2020, as fans voted for their favorite quarterback’s post from the Davey O’Brien official accounts via three social media platforms—Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. The top five vote getters on those platforms each received bonus committee member votes. The next step in the process will be to select the award’s three finalists from 16 quarterbacks. Round two fan voting is now open and will close on Sunday, Dec. 20. National selection committee voting will take place from Dec. 16-20. The three finalists will be named on Tuesday, Dec. 22. The winner is to be announced live on Thursday, Jan. 7, on the 30th annual The Home Depot College Football Awards, which will be held virtually from 7-8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN. Maxwell Award Info: Semifinalist voting for both of the collegiate awards presented by the Maxwell Football Club will begin on Dec. 8 and will close on Dec. 20. Three finalists for each award will be announced on Dec 21 and a finalist round of voting will take place at that time. Eligible voters include Maxwell Football Club members, NCAA head football coaches, sports information directors and selected national media. All semifinalists are listed in alphabetical order by school with the player's school, position and class designated. The winners of the 84th Maxwell Award and the 26th Chuck Bednarik Award will be announced as part of the ESPN Home Depot College Football Awards Showwhich will be broadcast live on ESPN on Jan 7. Kyle Pitts 2020 Biletnikoff Award Semifinalist 2020 Mackey Award Semifinalist 2020 Maxwell Award Semifinalist Pitts has caught 36 passes for 641 yards and 11 touchdowns this season. His 11 touchdown grabs this season places him at No. 4 in the FBS among all pass catchers and No. 1 among all tight ends. Pitts logged his third career 100-yard receiving game, breaking the school record jointly held by three Gators – a trio which included Kirk Kirkpatrick (1987-90) and Ben Troupe (2000-03). Pitts is the third Gators tight end with multiple 100-yard games in a season (2009, and Troupe in 2003). Biletnikoff Award Info: The Biletnikoff Award annually recognizes the college football season's outstanding FBS receiver. Any player, regardless of position (wide receiver, tight end, slot back, and running back) who catches a pass is eligible for the award. As such, the Biletnikoff Award recognizes college football's outstanding receiver, not merely college football's outstanding wide receiver. The semifinalists, finalists, and award recipient are selected by the highly distinguished Biletnikoff Award National Selection Committee, a group of prominent college football journalists, commentators, announcers, Biletnikoff Award winners, and other former receivers. Mackey Award Info: The Mackey Award is currently scheduled to be awarded on Jan. 7 with the finalists announced on Dec. 22. Evan McPherson 2020 Lou Groza Award Semifinalist McPherson is 12-of-15 on field goals this season and 42-of-42 on PATs. His longest field goal this season is a 55-yarder against Ole Miss, which is tied for the third-longest make in school history. McPherson is tied for first in the FBS in field goals made past 50 yards this season and is tied for 12th in points scored among all kickers with 78. Lou Groza Award Info: Semifinalists will be voted on by a panel of more than 100 FBS head coaches, SIDs, media members, former Groza finalists, and current NFL kickers to select the three finalists. These finalists will be announced on Dec. 22 and honored at the 29th annual Lou Groza Collegiate Place-Kicker Awards Virtual Awards Celebration, streamed live on Jan. 4 on lougrozaaward.com. The same panel then selects the winner, who will be announced live on ESPN at the Home Depot College Football Awards Show on Jan 7. Kaiir Elam 2020 Paycom Jim Thorpe Award Semifinalist This season, Elam has registered 31 tackles, two interceptions, one tackle-for-loss, ten pass-breakups and has contributed to a defense that has held four of its last six opponents to under 20 points. Prior to the season, Elam was named to the Thorpe Award Watch List, the SEC Preseason Coaches Second Team and the SEC Preseason Media Second Team. Thorpe Award Info: The award recipient is selected from the three finalists by the Paycom Jim Thorpe Award National Selection Committee, which boasts members of the NCFAA, an Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame in-house award committee, former Paycom Jim Thorpe Award recipients, and sportswriters and college football journalists throughout the country. The three finalists will be announced on Dec. 22, in conjunction with ESPN. The 2020 Paycom Jim Thorpe Award winner will be announced on The Home Depot College Football Awards Show Presented by Gildan on Jan. 7, from 7-8:30 p.m. ET live on ESPN. The Paycom Jim Thorpe Award commemorative banquet is scheduled to be held in Oklahoma City on March 30.

Scott Stricklin, bundled up in big jacket, hands deep in his pockets to ward off the cold, meandered around the Florida Gators sideline, taking his hands out quickly in the 41℉ temperature to fist pump coaches and players as he passed by them. The clock was ticking down as the No. 6 Gators (8-1) defeated the Tennessee Volunteers (2-6) by a score of 31-19—a score that was made close by a late garbage time touchdown from the Vols that was significant to some. As Stricklin greeted one coach then a player then another, he gave them all a message. Put a smile on your face…this is what we work for. The Gators are going to Atlanta, having officially clinched the SEC East with the win on Saturday. That’s the first step of a three fold goal and it’s arguably the hardest part, requiring a gauntlet of a schedule in the best of years and 10-game full SEC schedule in 2020. Stricklin’s nudge was a reminder Mullen needed. “I’m a perfectionist, like I’m critical of every little detail that goes on during the game and I’m starting to analyze all the different ways we can get better,” Mullen explained after the win. “So Scott Stricklin came up and told me to put a smile on my face and make sure we enjoy this and put a smile on our face because this is what we work for. I’m thrilled. This is it. I came to Florida to have the opportunity to win championships. That is the reason that I came here. Now we’re SEC East champs. Now we have the opportunity to go be SEC champs. That’s what you work for all the time. That’s what we worked for since the day I got here a little over three years ago.” The perfectionist Mullen has plenty to work on and it’s why he had to be reminded to smile as the game wound down. The Volunteers held the Power 5’s best passing offense to their lowest point total of the season. Florida had two opportunities for touchdowns on the opening two drives, working down into the redzone for a field goal the first time and punting from mid-field the second. Of the 12 drives, the Gators scored four touchdowns and one field goal. “It shows where the program's at, right, when we're 31-7 when clean-up time starts and we kind of just clean up the game to finish it out and we say that's not a very good game by us or not one of our great performances. It shows where we're at as a program, which I think says a lot,” posed Mullen. Following those two sputtering drives, the offense answered with three touchdowns on the next four drives. There was a screen to Tre Grimes to go up and take the 10-7 lead. Then there was another redzone play that saw Kadarius Toney run 15 yards in pre-snap motion before finally slipping out to the right where Kyle Trask hit him for the easy touchdown. Tre Grimes got his second touchdown of the day after stealing the pass from teammate Jacob Copeland—“I had a feeling y'all were going to ask me this. I was throwing it to Copeland at first and Tre kind of came in. They were both open in the same spot, so I figured one of them was going to catch it,” said Trask—and then Copeland grabbed his own in the fourth quarter for the 31-7 score. But there were also receivers running wide open and drops and more than one ball slightly off target. “It definitely wasn't my cleanest game,” admits Trask, who still threw for 433 yards, four touchdowns and became only the second quarterback with Danny Wuerffel to have three such games with that much yardage. He also pulled within one of Wuerffel's single season touchdown record, with at least three more games to go. He also had a Steve Spurrier-esque Heisman moment with a perfectly executed pooch punt. Still there were issues and no one knows that more than Trask. “There was some times when maybe I was doing too much. And you know I just gotta, you know, just trust what we have called and just let it play out.” Adds Mullen, “I don’t know if there’s a game this year we left more points on the field than we did tonight. Really disappointed that we left all those points on the field offensively. I’m looking at this, to score 31 points that was disappointing for me with the opportunities that we had to go score a lot more points during this game.” With Grimes and Toney’s touchdowns, they join Kyle Pitts as the second Gators trio in school history with at least eight receiving touchdowns in a season. The other trio came from the 1996 Gators: Reidel Anthony (18), Ike Hilliard (10), Jacquez Green (nine). But what of Kyle Pitts? The nation’s best tight end caught seven receptions for a game high 128 yards yet at halftime he had only two catches for 30 yards. Given the impact he can have on a game, it rose the natural question, why isn’t Pitts involved more? “There's always an effort to get Pitts, you know, open as much as you can because he's obviously a matchup problem,” explains Trask. “And I think they did a great job—Tennessee—throughout the game of giving us some different looks. You know, trying to, put more guys on Pitts to shut that down, and we just gotta adjust as an offense.” And Pitts was involved more in the second half, like on the opening drive of the third quarter—where the Gators have dominated this season—when he streaked down the left sideline easily beating his man and pulling in the 42-yard pass from Trask. And two players later, when he did the other thing he’s done better than most tight ends this season, laying a block for Jacob Copeland to pick up 17 yards and make it 1st and goal. The defense, per usual, were apt to give up big plays on one possession—like the three touchdown drives that went 96, 94 and 96 yards respectively—and yet still come away having given up only 4-15 on third down and six different players all tallying a sack. Says Mullen, “Played a great defensive game. We've got to finish it there when we get into the clean-up time at the end of the game when we start subbing guys in. They've got to come in and slam the door, not give up the two garbage-time touchdowns that they scored there at the end.” With Shawn Davis unable to go and Rashad Torrence getting injured early in the game, Trey Dean III became the primary safety opposite Donovan Stiner and Brad Stewart Jr. Dean had a sack of his own along with his eight tackles, second most in the game. Speaking after the game, Dean reflected on his attitude that returned him to this point. "My coaches prepared me you know. Whatever God’s got planned for me I’m going to continue to do as well. My coaches are going to always prepare me for whatever the circumstance is and continue to work hard. What Coach Mullen preaches every day is just go out there and give it your all, when the time comes, play makers going to make plays.” The Gators—especially on offense—is full of playmakers. That has been of little question all season. But with a roster of playmakers and a quarterback who can seemingly put together two, four and long drives to the house with ease, why does it seems the Gators get in their own way and slow down the game, as they did against Tennessee? On defense, the answer is a fairly simple. When up and in garbage time, younger players come in for experience and can give up more yardage and even scores as Mullen mentioned. On offense, the playbook would ideally be balanced. The Gators are in no way balanced—versus the Vols, the 452 total offensive yards featured only 19 rushing yards—and lean on the passing game because it’s where they excel. When that’s the case, the running game isn’t as necessary, especially when all of the backs are just as lethal as pass catchers out of the backfield. When the passing game is that potent, it can feel like a traffic stop when turning to the run game. “You’re trying to manage the game at different times, manage different situations,” explains Mullen. "I think you guys know we want to try to stay balanced. We didn’t do a very good job of running the football at all [Saturday]. That’s on us. We’ve got to be better running the ball. We’ve got to be more physical up front. We’ve got to do a better job of running the football and establishing the run. “I wish we could score at will. I don’t know if there’s a game this year we left more points on the field than we did tonight. Really disappointed that we left all those points on the field offensively. I’m looking at this, to score 31 points that was disappointing for me with the opportunities that we had to go score a lot more points during this game.” If the Gators have any chance of defeat the Alabama Crimson Tide in two weeks, they’ll have to score more—at will even—and make stops on defense. But for this weekend, they head home as SEC East Champions. Says Mullen, “I think our guys are excited. Our guys are happy. This is what we work for is this opportunity to go win the East. But I think our guys are also very driven. We’re going to this win, it’s a very celebratory atmosphere in there, but I think our guys also know they’re going to be ready to get to work next week and get better. "I think the goal is the win the East, because that’s what we can control coming into the season. You go to our guys and they want to accomplish an awful lot more than that. But that’s all we can control coming into the season and we were able to do that. Now we have the opportunity to control being SEC champions. Adds Grimes, “this season it's been a lot of adversity, having to deal with COVID and COVID tests all the time, so knowing that we accomplished our goal at the end of the beginning of the season, to win the SEC East, is very phenomenal. Knowing that we're getting on the flight home victorious is something that we only can dream about, and dreams come true, so now we just have to go out and win the SEC Championship." Mullen and Strikland had the years for divisional wins take off of the walls in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, saying that wasn’t the goal. But on Saturday, Stricklin walked around the sparsely populated sideline and told all his coaches and players the same thing; this year, in a tough environment with an all-SEC schedule, it’s something to be proud of.

A few thoughts to jump start your Monday morning: Can we get real for just a moment? Prior to the Tennessee Vols scoring two fourth quarter touchdowns and gaining 190 yards against a mishmash of starters and backups, the Gators were playing as well as they had on defense all season. Up to that point, the Gators had allowed just 148 total yards and a single touchdown. Maybe a 31-19 win over a not so good Tennessee (2-6) team isn’t going to rank up there with some of the great victories in Florida football history, but it was solid and it accomplished the single most important goal of all – it clinched the East Division championship of the Southeastern Conference and assured the Gators of their first trip to Atlanta since 2016. Additionally, it ensured that Georgia will be sitting home, blaming Jamie Newman for a season gone bad instead of asking why it is “the best defense in the nation” (per Poodle fans) gave up a collective 85 points and 1,135 yards to the only two decent teams they faced all year (Florida and Alabama). Offensively, the Gators didn’t run the ball at all against the Vols – a rather pitiful 19 yards – and Kyle Trask wasn’t at his sharpest even though he did go 35-49 for 433 yards and four touchdowns. Think about it for a second. Trask wasn’t at his best yet he still had his third 400-yard passing game of the season and seventh with at least four touchdown passes. Eight of his completions went to Kadarius Toney for 108 yards and a TD; another seven to Kyle Pitts for 128 yards. Trevon Grimes caught six for 52 yards and two TDs. Jacob Copeland had three catches for 57 yards and a TD. He would have had two except Grimes intercepted the intended pass for his second score. Could the Gators have scored at least a couple more touchdowns? Sure. Could the defense have gotten off the field in the fourth quarter after it was 31-7 and the game was safe and secure. Of course. But don’t let the final 11 minutes of the game cloud your judgment. Really, don’t even judge at all except for the outcome. Florida totally outclassed the Vols. Sure, the running game is a concern but Dan Mullen will have a chance to pound it a bit this week against LSU, which hasn’t stopped the run against anyone except Mississippi State. The Gators definitely need to get some momentum back next week because they will need it in Atlanta against Alabama. Once again, the important thing against Tennessee was get the win. Mission accomplished. Florida goes to Atlanta on December 19. On that same day Georgia will be playing Vanderbilt. ASSOCIATED PRESS TOP 25 POLL: (1) Alabama 9-0; (2) Notre Dame 10-0; (3) Ohio State 5-0; (4) Clemson 9-1; (5) Texas A&M 7-1; (6) FLORIDA 8-1; (7) Cincinnati 8-0; (8) Indiana 6-1; (9) Miami 8-1; (10) Iowa State 8-2; (11) Coastal Carolina 10-0; (12) Georgia 6-2; (13) Oklahoma 7-2; (14) BYU 9-1; (15) Northwestern 5-1; (16) Southern Cal 3-0; (17) Louisiana 9-1; (18) Tulsa 6-1; (19) Iowa 5-2; (20) North Carolina 7-3; (21) Colorado 4-0; (22) Liberty 9-1; (23) Texas 6-3; (24) Buffalo 4-0; (25) Wisconsin 2-2 COACHES TOP 25 POLL: (1) Alabama 9-0; (2) Notre Dame 10-0; (3) Clemson 9-1; (4) Ohio State 5-0; (50 Texas A&M 7-1; (6) FLORIDA 8-1; (7) Cincinnati 8-0; (8) Miami 8-1; (9) Indiana 6-1; (10) Georgia 6-2; (11) Iowa State 8-2; (12) Oklahoma 7-2; (13) Coastal Carolina 10-0; (14) Northwestern 5-1; (15) Southern Cal 3-0; (16) BYU 9-1; (17) Louisiana 9-1; (18) Iowa 5-2; (19) Tulsa 6-1; (20) North Carolina 7-3; (21) Liberty 9-1; (22) Colorado 4-0; (23) Texas 6-3; (24) North Carolina State 8-3; (25) Wisconsin 2-2 GATORS IMPROVE TO 3-0 WITH EASY WIN OVER STETSON There might have been more competition in a full court scrimmage than what Florida got Sunday when the Gators blew out Stetson 86-40 at the O-Dome, but right now it’s important for Mike White to figure out rotations and see his guys going against unfamiliar faces even if the opponent is bad and Stetson is bad. In improving to 3-0, the Gators played all 13 scholarship players and two walk-ons as 11 players logged 10 or more minutes. Keyontae Johnson led four Gators in double figures with 19 points in 22 minutes. With a 5-6 effort from the three-point line, Noah Locke added 15 points while Tre Mann hit double figures for the third straight game with 10. Scottie Lewis had the best all-around game for UF with 10 points and game-highs in rebounds (10) and assists (6). The Gators hit 45.2% from the field, 39.1% from the three-point line and 21-24 from the foul line. Florida forced 23 Stetson turnovers that were converted into 24 points. Next up for the Gators is Florida State in Tallahassee next Saturday morning (11 a.m., ESPNU). RUMBLING, STUMBLING, BUMBLING IN THE SEC #1 ALABAMA (9-0): Devonta Smith (8-231 receiving) and Najee Harris (21-145 rushing) became the first two players to score three touchdowns each in the same game in Alabama football history. QB Mac Jones also threw for 385 yards and four TDs. For the season Smith has 80 catches for 1,305 yards and 15 TDs. Harris has 1,038 rushing yards for 20 touchdowns. Jones has thrown for 3,113 yards and 27 touchdown passes. Next week: at Arkansas (3-6) ARKANSAS (3-6): Even with Feleipe Franks sidelined with a rib injury, the Arkansas offense racked up 566 yards and 49 points behind freshman redshirt freshman QB KJ Jefferson (274 passing yards, 3 TDPs; 32 rushing yards, 1 TD) in a last-second loss to Missouri. It was the defense of coordinator Barry Odom, formerly the HBC at Mizzou, that did the Razorbacks in. Arkansas gave up 380 passing yards and 273 on the ground. Next week: vs. #1 Alabama (9-0) AUBURN (5-4): Back-to-back losses to Alabama and Texas A&M make a coaching change possible even though the school is swimming in red ink. Gus Malzahn has a $21,450,000 buyout but Auburn has wealth enough alums to cover the cost if the decision is made to part ways with the Gus Bus. Next week: at Mississippi State (2-7) #12 GEORGIA (6-2): Georgia thinks JT Daniels will be back for the 2021 season. That’s quite possible but it’s also possible Daniels will declare for the NFL Draft or transfer somewhere else. If he elects to stay, it’s highly possible freshman Carson Beck will join D’Wan Mathis in the transfer portal. And what will hotshot recruit Brock Vandagriff do? If Daniels stays does he bolt since Daniels has three (count ‘em) years of eligibility remaining (2020 doesn’t count against anyone’s eligibility)? Next week: at Missouri (5-3) KENTUCKY (4-6): Kentucky is seeking new direction for its offense. Coordinator Eddie Gran and QB coach Darin Hinshaw have been pink slipped. LSU (3-5): There are plenty of questions for LSU but one that nobody seems to be talking about openly is what to do about Myles Brennan? He threw for 11 touchdowns and averaged 370.7 yards per game when he got hurt against Missouri. Freshmen TJ Finley and Max Johnson have shown plenty of potential as Brennan’s replacement but will they stick around if Brennan (two years of eligibility remaining) wants to come back? Does Coach O want Brennan back? Next week: at #6 FLORIDA (8-1) MISSISSIPPI STATE (2-7): Jack Kristofek, a D1AA redshirt freshman QB from Sam Houston State, is transferring to Mississippi State. In his last two high school seasons in Dallas, Kristofek threw for 6,530 yards and 84 touchdowns. Next week: vs. Auburn (5-4) MISSOURI (5-3): By beating Arkansas, 50-49, on the last play of the game Saturday, Missouri guaranteed a break-even regular season. Back in August there were questions whether the Tigers could win more than 1-2 games. The win also made it a no-brainer that Eli Drinkwitz will be selected SEC Coach of the Year. Next week: vs. #12 Georgia (6-2) OLE MISS (4-4): Ole Miss won’t be resuming team activities until Wednesday after taking a pause for Covid-19 protocols. That will leave the Rebels two days to prep for their roadie to College Station for 5th-ranked Texas A&M. Next week: at #5 Texas A&M (7-1) SOUTH CAROLINA (3-7): There is a double dose of good news for the Gamecocks. First, the season has come to a merciful end. Second, and actually more important, Oklahoma associate head coach and special teams coordinator Shane Beamer will be named the new head coach. Beamer was Steve Spurrier’s best recruiter from 2007-10 when he lined up much of the talent that won 42 games in four years, the best run in South Carolina history. TENNESSEE (2-6): CBS television analyst made this observation about the state of the Tennessee football program Saturday when the Vols lost for the 15th time in 16 years to the Gators – “Jeremy Pruitt thinks the gap is closing. It just doesn’t show on film and I don’t think it’s a lack of talent.” Pruitt is now 15-18 in three seasons. Next week: at Vanderbilt (0-8) #5 TEXAS A&M (7-1): Isaiah Spiller ran for 120 yards against Auburn, his sixth 100-yard game of the season. Other than Alabama’s Najee Harris, he is probably the best running back in the SEC and is on the short list of the best backs in the country. Spiller has 897 yards and six touchdowns with two games to go. Next week: vs. Ole Miss (4-4) VANDERBILT (0-8): Georgia assistant Scott Cochran, the former Alabama strength and conditioning coordinator, has had contact with Vanderbilt in regard to the head coaching vacancy. Cochran interviewed for the Southern Miss head job which went to Tulane offensive coordinator Will Hall. Next week: vs. Tennessee (2-6) NON-SEC TACKLE FOOTBALL GOINGS ON BYU (9-1) lost its first game of the season Saturday on the teal turf at Coastal Carolina (10-0). As well as Coastal played, much credit must go to BYU, which agreed to play that game last Wednesday when Liberty had to cancel due to the virus. To agree to a game on Wednesday and three days later play that game 2,211 miles away says plenty about BYU. It also says plenty about the stupidity of our scheduling processes. I’m not one to buy into this notion that we have to schedule years in advance. I know there are extenuating circumstances in 2020, but if things can be done this quickly in a year in which things are going sideways in too many places, then it’s possible to give us decent scheduling a year or even months in advance. There is a Sunday night report that Urban Meyer told Texas thankee but no thankee and that he is unlikely to ever coach again due to health reasons. Notre Dame’s decision to join the ACC for football this season was made out of convenience when the Big Ten (Plus Four) and Pac-12 did their temporary opt out. The Irish are members of the ACC in all sports but football but now that they’ve gone 10-0 to secure a spot in the ACC Championship Game opposite Clemson (9-1) maybe it’s time to say good-bye to playing as an independent and join the league full-time for football. The ACC would be all too happy to let Notre Dame keep its home game television contract with NBC and since the league only plays eight conference games, Notre Dame could continue its longstanding rivalry with Southern Cal. This seems like a no-brainer. Marshall’s dream of an unbeaten season came crashing down at the hands of Rice, 20-0. The Thundering Herd played like a team that had its last two games postponed because of the virus. QB Grant Wells completed five passes to the Rice defense. South Alabama has fired head coach Steve Campbell. Keep an eye on Tennessee assistant head coach Tee Martin, a native of Mobile, and Indiana DC Kane Wommack, who was the South Alabama DC a few years back. A PITHY COMMENT OR TWO ON A MONDAY: Upon hearing that backup QB Jack Tuttle had led then 12th-ranked Indiana past then 16th-ranked Wisconsin, I couldn’t help but think about one of the two or three-best episodes of M*A*S*H. If you are too young to have watched the show or your recall fails you, check out the full episode on youtube.com … It has been a bad year for SEC officials and the folks in the replay booth. Check out video of the “targeting” call that got Mizzou linebacker Nick Bolton ejected. Phantom! Maybe Greg Sankey gets a decent coordinator of officials in the offseason, one who demands far more accountability. From what I’ve seen more than a few of them need to either go back to zebra school or be fired.

Florida Gators Head Coach Dan Mullen met with local media following No. 6 Florida Gators 31-19 win over the Tennessee Volunteers on Saturday night. As a valued subscriber, we are offering this transcript in full. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GET TO ATLANTA, WHAT YOU WERE BROUGHT INTO PROGRAM TO DO? "Absolutely and it shows where the program's at, right, when we're 31-7 when clean-up time starts and we kind of just clean up the game to finish it out and we say that's not a very good game by us or not one of our great performances. It shows where we're at as a program, which I think says a lot. I'm really proud of our guys. Really proud of how we played. Played a great defensive game. We've got to finish it there when we get into the clean-up time at the end of the game when we start subbing guys in. They've got to come in and slam the door, not give up the two garbage-time touchdowns that they scored there at the end. But overall pretty pleased with how we played for the day. Some mistakes, things we've got to get cleaned up, but winning the SEC East championship in this year, the hardest year in the history of this league where you're going to play 10 conference games, regular-season conference games, to win our division is pretty special and shows a lot of what the team is at and what the coaches and the whole program is at." COACHING CAROUSEL, YOU HEADING TO TEXAS "You need to call the boss on that one. I guess if I'm going to go home and the house is packed already then I go. Shoot." JUST KIDDING; BUT BRIAN JOHNSON INTERVIEWING? "I'm happy all our guys to get opportunities. I do think we have a very underrated coaching staff. I've said that a lot. People look and say, hey, I get a lot of credit and I probably get too much credit. You're kind of shocked, we have a bunch of guys on our staff I think that would make great head coaches. And it's great to see, I mean I know we've had some guys through the years with John Hevesy and Billy Gonzales and Brian get interviews. I have some former coaches in Manny Diaz, that's now a head coach at Miami even though he didn't come directly from us. Kind of a shame that guys; Geoff Collins, as well. Don't get looked at and get more opportunities, because I think we have a great staff and we have a great program. I think our coaches would do an awesome job. I'd love to see guys like Todd Grantham to get opportunities to go be a head coach. With Brian, with all our guys, that's what everybody wants and their dreams. I think programs would be really pleased if they gave those guys an opportunity to go show what they can do." Hardest sked in SEC? “You’re looking at things, one you have the COVID, you guys that decide to opt out before the season starts. We come in today’s game, we’re already to our third-string safety by the fifth play of the game it seems like. And you’re doing it against excellent football teams. I mean, it’s the SEC. I think one thing that the league’s not getting credit for is playing these games. If everybody we’re playing four, five, six games or something - who knows what the records would be. When you’re looking at all these teams in this league usually it’s the SEC, you expect most people to go 4-0 or 3-1 outside this league. You start now throwing 4-0 onto the current win totals and you’d be pretty surprised. It is such a huge challenge. You’re talking top to bottom the best league in college football. When you are that top to bottom there is no breather when you’re playing an all-SEC schedule. There’s no chance to catch your breath. It’s a huge deal for our guys to come win the league with that type of year we’re going through.” Dancing in locker room or subdued? “No … I think our guys are excited. Our guys are happy. This is what we work for is this opportunity to go win the East. But I think our guys are also very driven. We’re going to this win, it’s a very celebratory atmosphere in there, but I think our guys also know they’re going to be ready to get to work next week and get better. I think the goal is the win the East, because that’s what we can control coming into the season. You go to our guys and they want to accomplish an awful lot more than that. But that’s all we can control coming into the season and we were able to do that. Now we have the opportunity to control being SEC champions. That’s the next step. We got to start preparing for that two weeks from today.” What mean to get to your first SEC title game as head coach? “It means a lot. I think you guys know me, I’m a perfectionist, like I’m critical of every little detail that goes on during the game and I’m starting to analyze all the different ways we can get better. So Scott Stricklin came up and told me to put a smile on my face and make sure we enjoy this and put a smile on our face because this is what we work for. I’m thrilled. This is it. I came to Florida to have the opportunity to win championships. That is the reason that I came here. Now we’re SEC East champs. Now we have the opportunity to go be SEC champs. That’s what you work for all the time. That’s what we worked for since the day I got here a little over three years ago.” Trask’s pooch punt? “Yeah, right, you need a Heisman moment. So maybe that was his Heisman moment pinning deep on the pooch punt down near the end zone.” Jimmy Sexton season right? “Yeah, all those guys get hard at work. I don’t know. You know what, this year … I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. It’s such a unique year. I know ADs don’t want my advice, but I’d be very cautious off making … understanding what everyone had to go through this year to have too quick of a trigger on what you’re doing. I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Scott yet, but I think I should be safe. We’ll see. Hopefully you’ll see me back in orange and blue next year. That’s more of a question for Scott (Stricklin) than me. I don’t control that; he does.” “Hold on.” Strickin steps in and gives a thumbs-up. When you know you can score and throw at will, what goes into mindset of slowing game down? “You’re trying to manage the game at different times, manage different situations. I think you guys know we want to try to stay balanced. We didn’t do a very good job of running the football at all tonight. That’s on us. We’ve got to be better running the ball. We’ve got to be more physical up front. We’ve got to do a better job of running the football and establishing the run. I wish we could score at will. I don’t know if there’s a game this year we left more points on the field than we did tonight. Really disappointed that we left all those points on the field offensively. I’m looking at this, to score 31 points that was disappointing for me with the opportunities that we had to go score a lot more points during this game.” Trey Dean working his way back in tonight “I mean it just shows, we talk to all our guys, and to say that you’re down to your third-string safety, we like to roll guys in and we play a lot of players. You come in and late in the week you lose Shawn Davis and then third play of the game you lose Rashad Torrence. When you get there, there is no more rotation. Part of it I’m wondering what’s next? The next guy in the game was probably taking all scout team reps the week before, the whole week. For what we’re doing. I think Trey Dean, I guess that’s the benefit of having multiple guys as starters. What we do there we start to lose the depth when we get down and get knocked down that way. A guy like Trey Dean, we have a lot of confidence in. He’s played a lot of football. He’s an experienced guy and he would normally rotate in a bunch. I guess calling him a third-string guy is probably a pretty inappropriate thing to do. But really, to me, it does, over the course of the game it’s just something else that’s just added to it and you’re like holy cow. Part of me is not like Trey Dean’s in the game. Part of me is like, what’s next? Like I said, the next guy going in has probably been on the scout team a couple of weeks.” Right side of the OL seems to struggle, gave up another sack today. Pro Football Focus says RT has given up 32 pressures, 20 hurries, 9 hits, 3 sacks, have you thought about changing that spot? “On the offensive line, we’ve had injuries. We’ve had problems that way, so probably not. We’re trying to get our best guys on the field. I don’t think, that’s cool, Pro, I don’t know. The hard one to me, I think our sack came on a miscommunication on the quarterback. Does Pro Football Focus know what play we called and that we missed the snap count? Not to take it that way, but there are, the statistic part is great in college football and in all of football. I love the statistic part but there are also some other things that go into it that you look at. Once again, we’re always trying to have our best five on the field at the same time. We try to roll some guys in there to get them going and do what we can do.” What does it mean to bring the program back to Atlanta and to try and make more memories here? “I think it’s awesome. For us, this is where we want to be. We want to be playing in Atlanta in early December. This year happens to be mid-to-later December. That’s always, that’s the goal and that’s the Gator standard. That’s what it’s about. I’m excited to get back. We’ve had two great trips there as an assistant coach and it’s an awesome game, a special game. It’s still and it will be again this year. We’ll enjoy that tonight, but we’ve got another huge game at home, and one of the things we always want to do to be successful, you want to win in The Swamp. We have the opportunity to have an undefeated season at home next week, so that’s going to take over our focus starting tomorrow.” Hold your breath to hope you get to ATL healthy? “It is what it is, and it shows that … I certainly hope that people look at things and say you’re playing a 10-game SEC schedule, you know? We’re going to play a championship game, 11 SEC games. Never been done in history. Be interesting to see in the league if you didn’t do that this year, like some other leagues are doing. For us, we’re going to come out there. We’re going to play next week, find a way to get ready, get to work tomorrow on playing LSU, playing the defending national champion tomorrow or next week. That’s what makes this league so great. That’s why you look at recruiting classes, why do people want to come play in the SEC. you look at, the most NFL talent comes from the SEC, because this is where it’s at. It’s most like the NFL from week in and week out. You’ve got to play your A-game. This year playing 10 games shows that, you know? It shows what an unbelievable league this is from top to bottom.” Have any NFL teams reached out to your camp? “No, I haven’t talked to anybody from the NFL. But they’re like in the middle of their season still. I’m just happy to be the head coach for the Florida Gators right now, getting ready to go to Atlanta and play for an SEC championship. That’s what we’ve worked really hard for. I’m going to really just enjoy that.” Would you have been in favor of following the ACC and not playing next week because it’s meaningless? “You know. I don’t care. We want to play. We’re competitors. We want to go play. So I think a lot of that will determine … What the College Football Playoff committee does will determine the future of college football this year. Do you schedule a tough schedule, or do you try to play as many easy games as you can to make sure you don’t lose? You know? Or do you go out and play the hardest schedule and get rewarded for it? We’ll see. I think that will determine the future of college football. I’m a big believer in go out there and go compete. Go play the toughest schedule you can, and hopefully college football rewards you for doing that. The benefit for us, I truly believe our destiny’s in our own hands. We’ve got the opportunity to go undefeated at home next week. We have the opportunity to be SEC champions. You do that, I imagine, we’re going to have an opportunity of going on and playing even bigger games.”

The History Former Florida Gators receiver Matt Jackson once told me, “Osama Bin Laden stole a National Championship from me.” Those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it; it’s a lesson as old as history itself. And it’s true. We should know our history to keep it from happening again…but when it comes to the gridiron, often the only history that matters is the history you’re currently in. Let’s review the historical facts, for posterity. In 2001, the Florida Gators were forced to reschedule their annual game against SEC East rival, the Tennessee Volunteers. The 9/11 terrorist attacks had caused the entire country to hit pause, sending people inside their homes and life as we knew it, just, stopped. The Florida-Tennessee game that would normally have been played in September was moved to the first weekend in December. Both teams came in 9-1, but Florida was on a collision course with the National Championship and Rex Grossman was a Heisman favorite. The Gators lost, 34-32 and Grossman lost the closest Heisman race of all time to Nebraska’s quarterback Eric Crouch, a race that was so argued and contested it makes the 2020 Presidential Race look like child’s play. Fast forward to 2020. The Florida Gators were forced to reschedule their annual game against SEC East rival, the Tennessee Volunteers. The coronavirus global pandemic COVID-19 had caused the entire country to hit pause, sending people inside their homes and life as we knew it, just, stopped. The Florida-Tennessee game that would normally have been played in September has been moved to the first weekend in December. Both teams come in on different trajectories, but Florida at 7-1 hopes to be on a collision course with the National Championship and Kyle Trask is the odds on Heisman favorite. Should the Gators be worried about history repeating itself? To be frank…no. This isn’t 2001. This isn’t the same Volunteers team. UT is starting a freshman quarterback today. And the players on this Gators team—well some weren’t even alive then. History means little on the field if it’s not on your mind. You know what history will be on the minds of these players today? That Florida has beaten Tennessee 14 of the last 15 years. The players on these teams know that last season the Gators stomped the Vols last season 34-3 and that Feleipe Franks and Antonio Callaway have ripped out creamsicle orange hearts in recent memory. 2001 the long ago odyssey won’t be on players minds today. It won’t even be on coaches minds since none on the sidelines were here during that time. But the recent history will be, and that’s what works in Florida’s favor. Says Mullen, “I hope anybody that played in that [2001] game is still cheering for us, if they're around. But I don't see that, it's all about us playing Tennessee this year and their team against our team. There's, you know, stuff doesn't really to me carry over. Like last year's game has no effect on it, year before has no effect and next year it being, it won't have any effect on this year's game. So, it's about our preparation and our execution in this game." The Weather The weather report for Knoxville today had not been good during the week. In fact Dan Mullen and players spent a significant portion of time discussing the possible changes if the weather report held for low temperatures and sleet. “I’m a Florida boy, South Florida boy, so I mean, I’ve been in snow, I’ve seen the snow, so I’m not strange to it, but playing in the cold, it’s different for Florida boys. We’ve just got to be hype and get that blood going, juices flowing, so we can come out strong,” joked linebacker James Houston. Laughed Mullen, “I’ll probably be bundled up with like hat, gloves and a big puffy winter jacket on. I've gotten used to the warm weather, that Florida weather. So, uh, but I think for our guys, you know I mean I don't think it'll be that big of a factor to be perfectly honest with you, I think, you know, it just kind of it is what it is.” There is a factor when playing in the cold. According to The Weather Channel, “When temperatures change by a factor of 10℉, pressure changes by a factor of 1 PSI. This means that an inflated football can actually lose pressure and become slightly smaller and under-inflated when the weather gets colder. Within an hour, a football’s air pressure can be reduced by 20%.” This was the basis of “Deflategate” with the New England Patriots. However, the weather won’t seem to be an issue. The sky is clear here in Knoxville with the only clouds placed there bean artist and seeming to hold no snow. The temperature is currently 53℉ and are expected to drop to 41℉ by 7pm which should likely be the close of the game. The East With a win today, the Gators will officially clicnh the SEC East and a spot in Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game. That could also have happened with a Georgia loss. The Bulldogs game against the Vanderbilt Commodores however has been postponed due to COVID-19 issues within the Dores program. If Florida loses to Tennessee today, they can still clinch the East with a win next weekend over LSU. Essentially a win in either this weekend or next will clinch the East for UF, regardless of any future Georgia wins. With a win over LSU this evening, Alabama can win the SEC West, setting up the most oft played matchup in the game’s history. Unavailable List 4 David Reese 6 Shawn Davis 7 Jeremiah Moon 17 Kahleil Jackson 21 Ethan Pouncey 54 Lamar Goods 55 Hayden Knighton 66 Jaelin Humphries 80 Trent Whittemore 95 Lucas Alonso