During a storied career, there may be no better picture of the Tim Tebow legend than the rainy day in Tallahassee that born "The Braveheart Game." BY KASSIDY HILL GATORBAIT COLUMNIST In "Braveheart" (1995), Mel Gibson as William Wallace stands before his men and asks them “are you ready for a war?” And to war they go, Wallace painted and bloody, mud and muck and battle colors running down his face and entire body, his passion fueling them as much as any military plan. The movie is full of historical inaccuracies but the man was real as was his war and the depiction of him in a Scottish skirt and blue paint does give an accurate feel at least to the legend. Many have tried to replicate it; few have been successful. Tim Tebow was successful. No, we’re not talking about his Halloween costume in an unquestionable Willam Wallace get-up as an ode to his favorite movie. We’re talking about the rainy day in the state’s capital, when Tebow led a band of men on a mission to Doak Campbell Stadium and cemented himself as myth and legend. It was the 2008 regular season finale. The Florida Gators had their eyes set on the throne as one of the best college football teams of all time. They had lost a game earlier in the season, a humbling defeat in battle, but they used it to regroup, reassess and make a better plan to win the war. Heading into Tallahassee against the No. 23 Seminoles, the No. 2 Gators had already locked up a trip to Atlanta the following week to face Alabama in the SEC Championship. A win over in-state rival FSU would definitely help in the BCS rankings where UF was No. 4. But a win the next Saturday over undefeated Alabama would arguably be enough to slip into the title game. So a win over the Seminoles was about pride…but it was about a lot of pride. Before kickoff, FSU head coach Bobby Bowden knew it was going to be a problem. “I don’t know what part the weather played, it wasn’t to anybody’s advantage, wasn’t to their advantage, wasn’t to our advantage. I don’t know what that meant, I didn’t like it and I don’t think Urban probably liked it either.” Florida head coach Urban Meyer stood on the other side of the field and watched the rain fall, watched it accumulate and began to worry. “I know a big part of our game is speed and I sat out there and just stared at that field as it started getting about two to three inches deep of water,” recalled Meyer after the game. Current head coach and then offensive coordinator Dan Mullen joined him. “I remember going out for warm-ups and there was standing water on the field. It was like ankle deep,” said Mullen while remembering the game in 2018. “So I come back in after warm-ups and I'm trying to take my shoes off and clothes because I'm sopping wet. I was just trying to put on something dry, probably going to get wet again. But I'll put something dry on for a little bit and I'm sitting around, and Urban is freaking out.” Meyer wanted to run the ball the entire time. He felt it was the only option in the deluge. And Florida did run the ball well and often, to the tune of 317 rushing yards, their third highest rushing output of the season. But Mullen had just watched warm-ups and in his trademark laid back style, he told Meyer he had a different plan in mind. “'What are we going to do? Come on in here, let's look at the game plan. We're just going to snap it to Tebow and let him run up the middle every play,’” said Meyer according to Mullen. But the young offensive coordinator persisted, “And I'm like, 'Yeah, we do need to change. I looked at our script and I said, 'We gotta throw a lot more.' I thought we could. We're going to really throw it around a lot today. “And in classic Urban fashion, he’s like, his head’s about to explode. And I’m like, I’ll be honest with you a ball did not touch the ground in warm-ups. For whatever reason, we are on throwing it right now, and it’s raining. So I said, I think we can open up, it’s an advantage to us because we know where we’re going if they’re slipping and sliding, we’re running the routes, we know where we’re going. We were throwing and catching the ball in the heaviest part of the rain that it had all day.” Mullen’s plan worked, so much so that he admittedly used it again to defeat South Carolina 38-27 during a tropical storm in 2019. Back in 2008, Tebow went 12-21 and three touchdowns through the air. He connected with Aaron Hernandez twice and the Gators defied physics and opposing strategy to put up 185 yards in the pouring rain, in route to 502 total yards of offense. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a better leader,” remarked Bowden after the game. “After Ole Miss beat them, he stood up and told the press, ‘I’ll never let this happen again’ or something like that. ‘Ya’ll won’t ever see this happen to us again’ or something like that. By golly he lived up to it. He directed everything out there. He’s a tremendous player and a tremendous leader.” But it was Tebow’s 80 yards and a touchdown on 16 carries that will be the lasting image. Slipping, sliding and purposely bulldozing his way through a defense that Meyer called “one of the Top 10 defenses” Tebow became covered in the garnet paint that covered the battle field. It dirtied his jersey and his face, the deep red giving the appearance of a bloodied warrior. It was amplified as this young and fearless leader ran down the sidelines, jumping and yelling to pump up his team and fans. A year and a half ago, while compiling an oral history on the 2008 season, I asked Tebow about that day, the game that has since been dubbed “The Braveheart Game.” In true Tebow fashion, when away from the gridiron, he took a beat and pondered thoughtfully on his answer. Then quietly he responded about that moment when he went running down the field, a football reincarnated Willam Wallace. “You feel it, I’d play with so much heart and there’d be adrenaline so I’d never really like think through all the stuff I would do.” While he may not have stopped to think through it all the stuff he would do, that day what he did became legend. A 45-15 win, in route to a National Championship. The Florida Gators were ready for a war that day and that season. Luckily they had the perfect man to lead them into battle.

Forever known as the Oh-Fours. And forever known for Oh-Six and Oh-Seven. BY AINSLEE LEE GATORBAIT COLUMNIST One was from the Dominican Republic, another was from Ft. Lauderdale, one hailed from Portland, Tenn., and one claimed to be from Hell’s Kitchen. When Al Horford’s mother realized that he had potential on the hardwood, she sent him to fertile basketball ground in Michigan to live with his father. Taurean Green spent much of his childhood in Orlando, but claims loyalty to Fort Lauderdale. Corey Brewer has southern roots planted in Tennessee. And Joakim Noah calls Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan home, despite growing up in France. But come 2004, each of them shared a common residence: Gainesville, Florida. The four hoop stars entered the world of “Billy Ball” after Billy Donovan and the Florida Gators posted a pedestrian 20-11 record in the 2003-04 season, which included a first-round exit in the NCAA Tournament after a loss to the Manhattan Jaspers. When they arrived on campus, they quickly deemed themselves the “Oh-Fours”. Despite their diverse backgrounds, the Oh-Fours stuck together like glue. It was always the Oh-Fours, and if they needed a fifth, it was Lee Humphrey. Anthony Grant, an assistant coach at Florida from 1996-2006, can recall the freshman quartet rushing to his office to let him know that they beat the veteran players on the roster. “Hey, we just played against the veterans… coach, we beat them. Coach, we beat them two out of three,” Grant remembers hearing, as told by James Bates’ short documentary “Here Come the Gators: The Oh-Fours.” The sound of a basketball pounding against the floor of the O’Connell Center often interrupted Matt McCall’s midnight homework sessions. The culprits were usually the Oh-Fours. “Those four guys were in the gym playing two on two as freshmen,” McCall, who was a student manager for the team from 2002-06, said in the documentary. “And they would be battling… That’s kind of when you knew that these guys were a special group.” Heading into the 2005-06 season, the Oh-Fours’ sophomore season, there were gaping holes in the Gators’ lineup. As a result, expectations were in the basement. Despite the outside noise, those on the roster were convinced otherwise. Horford and Noah were riding with Humphrey in his old Jeep on the way to a team function, when at a stoplight, Humphrey told half of the Oh-Fours, “Hey, I think we’re going to be pretty good,” Horford recalls. It was early in the 2005-06 season, at a preseason tournament, when Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples quickly realized the team’s high ceiling. “I remember watching them warm up,” Staples said. “And just thought… these guys are maybe a little different.” As Donovan put it, if the Gators could have five guys scoring in double figures, they’d be alright. “Those box scores were amazing,” Staples said. “It didn’t matter who was a star. Nobody cared… they just wanted to win.” Seventeen. The Oh-Fours and the Gators jumped out to a 17-win start to their sophomore season -- marking the best start in program history. After a 24-6 regular season finish, Donovan and the Gators ran away with SEC Tournament before securing a three seed in the NCAA Tournament. In Minneapolis, the Gators stormed past South Alabama and UW-Milwaukee by a combined 48 points, before squaring off against Georgetown. “In the tournament, it was amazing how easy it seemed for them,” Staples said. “The one game that they really got pushed was in the Sweet Sixteen against Georgetown.” After proving to be three points better than the Hoyas, the Oh-Fours and the Gators were slated to take on Villanova, a No. 1 seed who eliminated Florida from the tournament a season prior. The Wildcats proved to be no match for the streaking Gators, who secured their ninth straight win with a 75-62 victory, sending them to the Final Four. Standing between Florida and a National Title appearance was George Mason, the “Cinderella Story” of the tournament. “And the clock is about to strike midnight on Cinderella,” Mick Hubert, the voice of the Florida Gators, said as the buzzer sounded, capping off a 73-58 Final Four win. UCLA was next. And the program’s first National Championship was hanging in the balance. As the buzzer sounded, confetti fell from the rafters and Joakim Noah chomped at the Florida fans that had made the historic trip to Indianapolis. Sixteen points separated the Gators from the Bruins as Donovan, the Oh-Fours and company marched to a 73-57 victory. Back in Gainesville, with new hardware to add to the trophy case, the Gators celebrated in the O’Connell Center. And as Staples remembers, there was a “buzz in the building that something was up.” Four of the country’s finest college basketball players, who were now eligible for the NBA Draft, would each have a chance at the microphone. “It’s been a great two years here for me, and Jo, and Corey,” Horford began. “I feel like we’ve accomplished everything we needed to.” Horford and his trio of brothers had done everything they had needed to. You play college basketball to win championships. The Oh-Fours had done that. “Hold on, here,” Noah said, snatching the mic. “What do you guys want us to do?” The O’Dome erupted. Prior to the Elite Eight game, Noah asked Horford a similar question. “I’m having too much fun here,” Horford told Noah, who had asked if he was eyeing the NBA Draft. “I think I’m going to stay.” Noah, Horford and Brewer were widely expected to be top-10 draft picks. When Brewer, whose father was ailing with diabetes, decided to return for his junior season, the rest of the Oh-Four quartet followed suit. “So you want us to play here next year?,” Noah asked the O’Dome crowd. “Well let it be done then.” From that point on, the Oh-Fours had taken a “football school” and spun it on its axis. Though across the street, The Swamp was graced with National-Championship-talent, faces of the hardwood were also recognized on Saturdays. You know you’re successful and you’ve accomplished a big thing around Florida if during football season, all the fans recognize you and embrace you and congratulate you. Despite the paparazzi, Donovan, the Oh-Fours and the rest of Florida’s roster knew that there was still work to be done. Now, instead of expectations being in the basement, like the year prior, a target was painted on the team’s back. “Now you’re really under a microscope,” Donovan said. “We’re going to play some good games. We’re going to play some bad games. It’s a long season.” The 2006-07 season was similar to 2005-06. There was a hot start, a slump at the end of the regular season and another SEC Tournament title. This time, the Gators held the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Regional. And this time, Florida’s route to the Final Four was like a hot knife cutting through butter. The Gators beat Jackson State, Purdue, Butler and Oregon by a combined 66 points, before sliding to the championship with a 10-point win over UCLA. A matchup with Ohio State in the championship game was likely the greatest test for Florida. But even so, the Buckeyes found themselves on the short end of the stick. The Gators did it. Billy Donovan did it. The Oh-Fours did it. They say winning back-to-back national championships is hard. The Oh-Fours fooled everyone. They came together, by way of three different states and two different countries. They converged in Gainesville. And they left together. Forever known as the Oh-Fours. And forever known for Oh-Six and Oh-Seven.

What made Taurean Green special and therefore a huge part of the Florida Gators basketball's success? It was a little tough love and a huge chip on the shoulder. BY FRANZ BEARD GATORBAIT COLUMNIST Before he left home to embark on the best three years of his basketball life, Taurean Green got sage advice from Big Sid. Big Sid is Sidney Green, Taurean’s dad and a former All-American at UNLV, 10-year NBA veteran and Division I head coach at both North Florida and Florida Atlantic. Big Sid tends to speak from experience of getting chewed out by the likes of Tark the Shark among others. Taurean tends to take whatever his dad says as gospel. “My dad always told me when I was growing up that you have to be coached even when your coach is hard on you,” Taurean says. “Before I left for Gainesville he said, ‘You have to let Coach Donovan coach you. If he’s yelling at you he’s not trying to tear you down, he’s trying to make you better. Be a sponge. Listen. Tough love will make you better.’” Tough love. “The Love Boat” could have been filled with all the tough love Taurean Green got from Billy Donovan at the University of Florida. Donovan was hard on Green, perhaps harder on him than any other point guard he coached at the University of Florida. Sometimes Green would resist. “I can be stubborn,” he says, but stubborn only made Donovan push harder. When Green dug in his heels, Donovan pushed back, often calling Green any one of a couple dozen nicknames. The one Green remembers most is “Numbnuts.” All he has to do is close his eyes and take a mental journey back 13 years and he can hear that clear as a bell. There was method to what seemed like Donovan’s madness. This wasn’t just a case of tough love. This was a case of toughening up the kind of point guard Donovan knew the Gators would need to become special. To go from good as the Gators were in Green’s freshman year of 2005 to the great they were in the back-to-back national championship seasons (2006-07), they had to have a true floor general unfazed by crowds in hostile arenas or big moments with national television audiences watching. Taurean Green was that guy. In Florida’s two national championship runs, the Gators went a combined 68-11, finishing the 2006 season with an 11-game winning streak and the 2007 season by winning their last 10. Florida became the first team since Duke (1990-91) to win consecutive national championships and only the sixth team in NCAA history to repeat. No one has done it since. All five Florida starters averaged double figures in those two seasons. Green averaged 13.3 per game in both years, leading the team in scoring in 2007. He led the Gators in assists and he’s the one starter who never missed a game. In many ways you could say he was the glue guy who held the Gators together. There wasn’t another point guard on the team who could have gotten the job done if Green had gotten hurt or missed a game for any reason whatsoever. Green was thought of as somewhat of a consolation prize in a 2004 class that included Al Horford, Joakim Noah and McDonald’s All-American Corey Brewer, a fact that only made the chip that is permanently lodged on Green’s shoulder grow exponentially. Donovan went hard after Jordan Farmar (UCLA), Darius Washington (Memphis) and Jason Horton (Missouri) and the four of them actually met up at Florida’s elite camp in the summer of 2003. Of the four, Green was thought to be the fourth best and that only made the chip on his shoulder swell to enormous proportions. “I knew I had to prove myself,” Green remembers. “I knew I wanted to go to Florida.” The motivation came when Donovan told them he liked all four of them but would give the scholarship to whoever was first to commit after the camp. Green had an outstanding camp and showed his worth when matched against Horton in pick and roll reads, Green made all the right decisions and was easily the better player. He wasted no time in committing to the Gators. What happened at that elite camp was a foreshadowing of what was to come for Green in the 2006-07 national championship years. After a freshman year in which he backed up All-SEC Anthony Roberson for a Florida team that won the SEC Tournament, Green became the point guard in a starting five that included Horford, Noah, Brewer and Lee Humphrey. In those two championship seasons, all five of them averaged in double figures. All five were tenacious defenders. All five of them were committed to doing whatever it took to win. “I think that’s what is so great about our team,” Green says. “We had so much chemistry. I’m not sure there will ever be another team with the kind of chemistry we had. Nobody was jealous of each other. The only thing we cared about was winning. We had the ability to lock in … I mean completely lock in and do whatever had to be done.” Horford was the jack-of-all-trades big man who could grab a rebound and break out of the pack on the dribble to lead the fast break. Noah was an extraordinary post defender through whom the entire offense could run if teams tried to stifle Green at the point. Brewer was the most feared perimeter defender in the country and a ferocious dunker when finishing the fast break. Humphrey was such a reliable, accurate three-point shooter that defenses stretched, opening the floor for the other four. And then there was Green, a consistent three-point shooter, an underrated defender, the guy who ran the offense and the one guy who could bring the air back in the room after Noah had sucked it all out with his bigger than life personality. After the SEC Tournament in Atlanta in 2007, Noah put on a show that left Verne Lundquist speechless when he danced in celebration of Florida’s championship. In the locker room post game, Green threw a couple of verbal gallons of ice water on Noah. Sitting in the locker next to Noah’s, Green told a gathering of reporters that (a) Noah can’t dance and (b) Noah doesn’t win most of the arguments because he (Green) wins them. Then he reached through the throng of reporters surrounding Noah and tapped him on the shoulder. “Jo, you can’t dance!” Green said with a smug little green. The imp had spoken. Noah shouted back, “I can dance! Yes, I can dance! What a hater! You’re a hater!” There would be no further argument, but Green offered a consolation, sort of pumping some air back into Noah’s balloon when he offered, “You can sing, Jo, but you really can’t dance,” to which Noah replied, “I can sing. I can really sing.” Three weeks later the Gators completed their second straight six-game run through the NCAA Tournament. They were back in Atlanta where they destroyed UCLA in the semifinals and then whacked Ohio State in the championship game to complete a season in which the Gators began and finished the season ranked number one. In retrospect, Green understands it might not have been possible except for Donovan’s steady diet of tough love and a helping hand from Big Sid. “Coach Donovan was getting me ready for the big games and the big moments,” Green says. “As a team, we weren’t afraid of the big games. We lived for them. I lived for them. I had that chip on my shoulder and we’d go up against someone like Kentucky and Rajon Rondo. I’d hear all week how Rondo was going to bust my ass.” At the O-Dome in February of 2006, Green went off for 29 points, four rebounds, nine assists, a blocked shot and three steals in leading the Gators to a 95-80 win over UK. Two weeks later in Lexington, Green held Rondo to four points. Whenever the Gators were going to play some highly-regarded point guard, Green knew exactly what was coming from coaches and teammates. Big Sid’s contribution – maybe his most important among the many he made as the team dad during the three years Taurean was at UF – was when he made an impromptu trip to Gainesville in 2007 after the Gators had lost three out of four games in surprising February mini-slump that had the national media talking that the pressure of a repeat was just too much. “He brought a video with him and showed it to us,” Taurean recalls. “In those three games we lost, we didn’t look like the GatorBoyz. We looked like a team that was tired of playing. My dad showed us video of how much fun we had when we were winning and he reminded us to find the joy in playing together again. That was the kid of thing he did for us a lot. He would make these trips up to Gainesville when we didn’t expect it and it gave us a dad to love on. He’s this big teddy bear anyway and he was always there for us.” The Gators never lost again in 2007 after Big Sid helped bring back the joy. Maybe it was because the five guys who started in 2006 and again in 2007 knew this was the last rodeo that the Gators dominated their way to another national championship. Brewer was the Most Outstanding Player in the tournament but it could have been Horford and it definitely could have been Green, who scored 99 points in the six games while teaming with Humphrey to limit opposing guards to 35-116 shooting (30.7%) from the three-point line. In Atlanta, UCLA and Ohio State combined to go 9-46 (19.5%) on three-balls. It was a fitting close to a Florida career for a player who learned that tough love put him in position to do something very few guards ever get to do – lead their team to consecutive national championships. It helped that the chip on his shoulder never departed. “What I remember is we’d always hear the analysts on TV or read about how this guy or that guy was better than me,” Green says. “Every time I had to battle against someone they had ranked higher than me, it got me going. Yeah, it’s all about the team, but I got that chip on my shoulder. The more they talked, the bigger it got.” * * * Three days after the Gators bushwhacked Ohio State, Horford, Noah, Brewer and Green announced they would not return for their senior season at Florida. Horford, Noah and Brewer became lottery picks. Green was chosen in the second round by the Portland Trail Blazers. After one year in the NBA, Green made his way to Europe where he’s been playing ever since. He’s spent the last 12 years playing in Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Israel. It’s a different game than the NBA, but one in which Green has thrived. “Think of Europe as more a combination of the NBA and college basketball,” he said. “In the NBA it’s more of an isolation game where one or two guys are going to carry you. In Europe, it’s not unusual for the best teams’ top scorer to average something like 14 or 15 points a game. The pace is different. The way the ball moves and gets shared is different. Some think it’s not physical over there, but that’s not true. It’s very physical, but the game is different than the NBA, that’s for sure.” It’s a game that he has yet to decide if he will go back to once the COVID-19 pandemic allows life to get back to normal. Tauren is the president of Green Sports Management. He and his partner will represent and train players for both the NBA and Europe. It’s a promising enterprise that energizes him the way facing some highly ranked point guard used to when he played for the Gators. But whatever happens next, whether it’s full-time into sports management or back for one last fling in Europe, nothing will ever top the memories of the championship teams at the University of Florida. “I remember like it was yesterday,” he says. “We made a lot of great memories together. Some guys wait all their lives just to be a part of a championship once. We did it twice in a row. Not many guys can say that.” And, in no small part to a heavy dose of tough love and a chip on a shoulder that never went away.

URBAN MEYER: “I’M THROUGH WITH COACHING” In an 15-minute interview I did last week with Urban Meyer for an article I wrote for Gator Bait Magazine about Chris Rainey, we talked about coaching, more specifically if he ever gets the urge to coach again. “I’m in a good place where I am right now,” Meyer said. “My health is good and I don’t have the headaches. I’m enjoying what I get to do on Fox (he works with Brady Quinn, Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush on a game day show that blows the competition away) and I’m looking forward to doing that again. My family is happy and I’m enjoying the time I get to spend with them. “So, do I miss coaching? I do sometimes but not enough to come back. I’m through with coaching. I’m comfortable saying that. I like what I’m doing and I’m enjoying this phase of my life.” I believe Urban when he says he won’t be coaching again. I think he is at a place where he understands he doesn’t have anything more to prove. He’s won three national championships – two at Florida, one at Ohio State – and has coached one of the two or three best players in college football history in Tim Tebow. His career winning percentage of 85.3 (187-32 record) is exceeded among Division I coaches by Knute Rockne (.881, 105-12-5) and Frank Leahy (.864, 107-13-9) and 21 former Meyer assistants are or have been head coaches. Maybe the only remaining challenge will be a place on Florida’s Ring of Honor. There are still plenty of Gator fans who resent that Meyer ever left Florida, but what he did in six years (65-15 record, national championships in 2006 and 2008) is unprecedented. Personally, I think it’s time for UF fans to bury their grudges and while we hope Dan Mullen will lead the Gators to national championships, nothing is guaranteed. I’m not sure people realize how hard it is to achieve what Urban did in those six years. I think it’s time we recognized him for it by a place in the Ring of Honor. And while we’re about putting Urban in the Ring of Honor, it’s about time for Lomas Brown to have his name up there now that he’s a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. HOPE FOR 12 BUT FIGURE IT WILL BE A 10-GAME SCHEDULE Athletic directors and conference commissioners are planning like there will be a 12-game schedule, the idea being it’s a lot easier to prepare for business as usual and adapt than the other way around. Maybe it’s optimistic to think that a 12-game schedule can be played but general consensus is there will be football in the fall. On his radio show, Dan Patrick said what he’s hearing is a consensus for a 10-game schedule. “We’re going to have 10 games with a later start,” Patrick said on his show Monday, adding that games with D1AA schools would be eliminated from the schedules. The NCAA is already talking about six weeks to get ready for the season. Although some schools might have their campuses open in early July, realistic expectations should be somewhere around the first of August, which would mean a September 19 opener. That would accommodate a 10-game season. For the SEC and ACC, a 10-game schedule would allow two non-conference games. For the Pac-12, Big 12 and Big 10, which play 9-game conference slates, one non-conference game would work. For some schools it won’t be that difficult to trim the schedule back, but there will have to be some manipulating to make it work for everyone. Here is a look at the Southeastern Conference and what a 10-game schedule would likely look like for each school. Alabama: If it’s a 10-game schedule with no D1AA games allowed, Alabama is going to have to find an extra game to replace that November 14 game with UT-Martin. With a September 19 start likely if it’s a 10-game schedule, then Georgia will X out Georgia State on September 12 and open its season with Georgia in Tuscaloosa. Kent State on September 26 will be one of the non-conference games. Alabama has an open date on October 31 and November 14 will also be open. Arkansas: The trip to Notre Dame on September 12 will be out of the picture and there is no way for Notre Dame to fit that game into its schedule any other date. The Hogs have a D1AA game with Charleston Southern on October 3 and the other non-conference game is Louisiana-Monroe on November 21. There is an open date on October 24, so Arkansas will have to find an opponent to play then or else on October 3. Auburn: The D1AA game on the schedule is September 5 (Alcorn State) so that’s not going to be a problem. The Tigers have North Carolina on the schedule in Atlanta on September 12 and there is not another date that game can be rescheduled. Southern Miss on September 26 and UMass on November 14 will get their paycheck games. FLORIDA: Scott Stricklin will have to pay South Alabama some cash to make a 10-game schedule work for the Gators. D1AA Eastern Washington will be dropped on September 5 and the September 12 game with Kentucky will be backed up to September 19, a slot currently occupied by South Alabama. Instead of Florida on September 19, South Alabama can reschedule its September 5 season opener with Southern Miss to the 19th, replacing D1AA Jackson State on the USM schedule. Florida’s non-conference games will be November 21 against New Mexico State and November 28 at Florida State. Georgia: Georgia’s schedule is easy to fix. Just X out Virginia on September 7 and D1AA East Tennessee on September 12. Of course that means no warmup games to prep for Alabama in Tuscaloosa on September 19 but that’s the cost of doing business this year. The non-conference games are Louisiana-Monroe on September 26 and Georgia Tech on November 28. Kentucky: This schedule will require a little manipulating but it’s do-able. Eastern Michigan on September 5 will be dropped as will D1AA Eastern Illinois on October 10. The September 12 game with Florida will be backed up to September 19 in Gainesville which will require Kent State to play at UK on October 31 when both teams have an open date. The other non-conference game is the season-ender at Louisville. LSU: The schedule is a real dilemma for LSU with the first three games UT-San Antonio and Texas in Baton Rouge and then Rice on September 19 in Houston. Then there is D1AA Nicholls State on October 3. The choice for Texas will be simple. Bump UTEP off its September 19 schedule and play LSU in Baton Rouge. Neither UTSA nor Rice have a compatible open date so LSU is going to have to come up with an opponent for October 3 or else October 31. The problem with that October 31 open date is it’s the week before LSU travels to Alabama. Mississippi State: It won’t be a problem to eliminate the first two games (New Mexico on September 5; at NC State September 12). Tulane comes to Starkville on September 26. The problem will be finding a D1 opponent on October 10 (open date) or on November 21 to replace D1AA Alabama A&M. Missouri: Missouri’s D1AA game (Central Arkansas) is the season opener so that will be easy to replace. The SEC opener with Vanderbilt is scheduled for September 12 and since neither Mizzou nor Vandy have a compatible open date, that means some schedule juggling. Mizzou will need to eliminate Eastern Michigan on September 26 and that means Vandy will need to X out a home game with non-conference Colorado State. Missouri’s other home game is a road trip to BYU on October 10. Ole Miss: This one is simple. Ole Miss lops off the season opener with Baylor in Houston and then the D1AA game on September 12 with Southeast Missouri. That leaves non-conference games with UConn (October 24) and Georgia Southern (November 21), both in Oxford. South Carolina: Ray Tanner needs to be checking out who’s available on October 17 (open date) and November 21 to replace D1AA Wofford. He will have to eliminate Coastal Carolina and East Carolina in the first two games of the season and neither one of them can reschedule due to their conference obligations. Non-conference Clemson on the road is the final game of the season. Tennessee: The Vols can eliminate their season opener with Charlotte then move the Oklahoma game (in Norman, September 12) back a week by ditching D1AA Furman in game three. That leaves the Vols playing Oklahoma and Florida in their first two games, not the ideal way to start the season. The other non-conference game will be Troy on November 21. Texas A&M: The Aggies can eliminate their D1AA opener with Abilene Christian and then North Texas the week after. That will make Colorado on September 19 the season opener with the other non-conference game October 10 against Fresno State in College Station. Vanderbilt: Vanderbilt’s season opener is with D1AA Mercer so that’s easy to eliminate. The Missouri road trip on September 12 will have to be moved back to September 26 although that means eliminating a home game with Colorado State. The non-conference games will be Kansas State on September 19 and Louisiana Tech on November 21. RANDOM THOUGHTS: Dan Marino’s #13 jersey will remain retired with the Miami Dolphins. Tua Tagovailoa, who wore #13 at Alabama, will wear #1 at Miami … Frank Gore will sign a 1-year contract to play for the New York Jets. He trails only Emmitt Smith and Walter Payton on the NFL’s all-time rushing list … They’re playing professional baseball in Korea but in empty stadiums with cardboard cutouts for people in the seats. Cheerleaders and umpires wore protective masks … Louisville is the latest school to get hit with a notice of allegations from the NCAA as a result of the college basketball corruption probe. Louisville is the seventh program (Kansas, NC State, Oklahoma State, South Carolina, Southern Cal and TCU are the others) to be served with an NOA. Arizona, Auburn and LSU are among those waiting for their NCAA shoe to drop.

STRICKLIN FOCUSED ON FOOTBALL ON SEPTEMBER 5 Hope for the best, plan for the worst. In the case of Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin the hope is that the Gators will be kicking off the college football season as scheduled on September 5. Since there is no way to ensure the COVID-19 virus will be well on its way to eradication by that time, Stricklin is making alternative plans in case the September 5 goal is unattainable. Speaking on the Sam Pittman Show (96.1 FM Talahassee), Stricklin said, “I hope we can do it [play football] in a way that it’s always looked, but really at the end of the day it’s not up to us to decide that. It’s up to the health experts and how the virus is in our community or our state at that time.” The state begins a phased in re-opening of the economy starting today. If all goes well and the economy opens up more, things should get back to normal and that will allow students and athletes to return to campus. As much as Stricklin would like to see a return to normal, he knows there are no guarantees. “I can tell you that we’re making plans as if it’s going to happen, and if we have to adjust an alter those plans we’ll figure out a way to do so,” he said. WHOEVER ADVISES NEMBHARD AND MANN: DO THE MATH Andrew Nembhard and Tre Mann are among the 163 underclassmen who have entered their names in the NBA Draft. Neither one of them shows up on any reputable mock or pre-draft evaluation. The two Gators whose names figured far more prominently – Scottie Lewis and Keyontae Johnson – both declared their intentions to return to the University of Florida well before the deadline on April 26. If Nembhard and Mann get wise counsel, they will return for another year of college basketball. The key is being surrounded by smart people who do the math and advise accordingly. This is what the math tells us. There are two rounds in the NBA Draft, 60 selections in all. Those 60 selections will be filled by seniors who have exhausted their college eligibility, some 50 or 60 internationals who have submitted their names and of course, those among the 163 underclassmen who will be lucky enough to hear their names called. Some of the underclassmen who aren’t drafted will land in the G League, where salaries are in the $50,000 range. There are no guarantees that the undrafted underclassmen will have a job there, however. A few, mostly second rounders, will get two-way contracts which pay substantially more and allow the NBA team to bring them up during the season for which they will be paid on a per-game basis the rookie minimum. Meanwhile, the G League is out there trying to cherry pick top high school kids to come spend a year in the minors, learning the ropes and getting ready for the NBA. The G League is paying Jalen Green something like $500,000 to skip college and play for an elite developmental league team. Isaiah Todd also is skipping. His deal is for something around $250,000 if he hits all his bonuses. That is a lot of money if you compare it with Pell Grant money and cost of attendance checks that go with room, board and tuition you get with a college basketball scholarship but will it last a lifetime if Todd, for example, doesn’t play for a coach in the G League that can bring out the best in his talents? The assurance of a college basketball scholarship is you have time to develop. In the G League it will be a Rawhide mentality: “Head’em up and move’m out.” In other words, if a kid like Todd gets $250,000 but doesn’t respond to coaching or is overwhelmed by the competition, he will be on a short leash. A bad or mediocre first year isn’t going to necessarily guarantee there will be a year two much less a contract of anything near the same size. On his weekly show, Kentucky coach John Calipari spoke out about the G League going after high school kids. “My issue with the G League trying to entice players by giving them more money is not the kids that you’re getting,” Calipari said. “It’s the thousands of ninth and tenth graders that think that’s how you’re going to make it when you and I know it’s going to be like 2%. We’re not talking 50. It will be thousands and thousands and thousands.” Calipari has a track record of taking a high school kid and in one year preparing him for a huge NBA contract. If we’re talking coaches in the G League, they aren’t there because they have any kind of track record preparing kids to be first round draft picks. If they had that kind of record they would already be coaching in the NBA and not beating the minor league bushes. “I want to see in the next four or five years the kids that chose to go to college, how they did,” Calipari said. “The money you’re going to get [from the G League] is negligible compared to what you will get if you are really good and get to your second [NBA] contract.” A guest on Calipari’s show was NBA legend and hall of famer Charles Barkley. While he knows first round money or years in the NBA can set someone up for life financially, he also knows how few actually make it. Barkley said, “We spend all our time talking about the small little percentage of guys who want to go to the NBA. I only concern myself with all the other guys, all the other young black men who go to college. I’m worried about the 99%. We’ve got to make sure these young black kids get their education because that’s going to dictate their future.” What all this tells us is it’s high time either the NCAA does something constructive when it comes to finding a way to partner with the NBA because the current one-and-done rules aren’t working well at all nor are rules that don’t allow a kid to return to school if undrafted. If the NCAA doesn’t have the fortitude to change the rules, then it’s time for a good portion of Division I schools to break away and set up an organization with common sense rules. Something similar to the baseball draft rules would seem to work well for college basketball. In baseball, a kid can be drafted straight out of high school but isn’t required to sign. Once the kid goes to college, he either has to stay three years or until he’s 21, whichever comes first. Getting drafted straight out of high school worked well for some of basketball’s best players of the past 25 years but Barkley notes that for every success story there were many more failures. ‘People look at Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant and LeBron (James),” Barkley noted. “They don’t look at the rest [of the high school guys] who sucked who came to the NBA. They’re not physically, emotionally or mentally ready to play in the NBA. I think they should have gone to college for two years.” SOME SEC FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL STUFF Alabama: Forward Galin Smith, who has played in 94 games in his Alabama career, has placed his name in the NCAA transfer portal. He averaged 3.1 points and 2.5 rebounds per game last year. Arkansas: SEC co-player of the year Mason Jones has signed with an agent so he is sticking in the NBA Draft. Isaiah Joe remains in the draft but he hasn’t signed with an agent so he could still return to school. Auburn: Regarding the possibility that former Auburn QB Jarrett Stidham will be the replacement for Tom Brady with the New England Patriots, AU coach Gus Malzahn says, “The moment won’t be too big for him.” Georgia: Forward Rayshaun Hammonds will sign with an agent and remain in the NBA Draft. Unless something changes drastically between now and the time the NBA drafts, Hammonds will go undrafted although there is a chance he could make it into the late second round. Kentucky: Two Kentucky defenders entered their name in the transfer portal over the weekend. Freshman defensive tackle Cavon Butler and third-year sophomore defensive end Davoan Hawkins are entertaining offers to see if the grass really is greener somewhere else. LSU: Every single draft-eligible player was either selected by an NFL team or signed a free agent contract. LSU became the first team in draft history to have a quarterback, running back and wide receiver drafted in the first round. Mississippi State: Former quarterback Keytaon Thompson will be a grad transfer to Virginia where he will have two years of eligibility remaining. Former O-lineman Brevyn Jones will be transferring to Illinois. Missouri: Missouri has agreed to a four-game football series with former Big 12 Conference rival Kansas. The two teams will play home and home in 2025-26 and again in 2031-32. Ole Miss: Athletic director Keith Carter believes students will be back on campus in July. His hope is that football will be played on Labor Day Weekend but says other options are being discussed in weekly teleconferences with the rest of the SEC. South Carolina: Former South Carolina wide receiver Bryan Edwards, picked by the Las Vegas Raiders in the third round round of the NFL Draft, tweeted out, “Say what you want Coach WMuschamp will never tell you a lie.” Tennessee: After a rather strong recruiting week, the Vols have moved up to #3 nationally in the team rankings by 247Sports. They have the top-ranked 2021 recruiting class in the SEC. Texas A&M: Texas A&M chancellor John Sharp plans to open all 11 university campuses in the fall and is planning for a college football season. Vanderbilt: Since the Ivy League doesn’t athletes to play four seasons over five years, Columbia kicker Oren Milstein is now a grad transfer to Vandy. He has three game-winning kicks in his career and holds six Columbia kicking records. RANDOM THOUGHTS: The Jacksonville Jaguars have declined the fifth-year option on the contract of running back Leonard Fournette. It’s likely the Jags will trade Fournette so they can get something in return rather than let him become a free agent after the 2020 season … Andy Dalton signed a one-year contract with the Dallas Cowboys to back up Dak Prescott … The Detroit Lions have declined the fifth-year option for former Gator middle linebacker Jarrad Davis. Davis, who is the Lions team captain, will be a free agent after the 2020 season.

Depending on the day, sometimes we flourish, other times we flounder. It can feel like a nightmare in which our country and our world are being defeated by invasive, alien germs, or borderline depression brought on by fear which can drive us to the wall. Other times, small blessings can ignite joy. And a simple act of kindness, random call from a friend or the glory of a fresh new morning sunrise can calm our souls. Deep feelings abide. Call it Quarantine Schizophrenia. We eat, drink, read, pray, watch Netflix and Amazon Prime, walk, eat again, phone a friend, water our new tomato plant, watch any re-run of any sporting event, settle for a lousy movie, snack, pray some more, check email, check snail mail, perhaps stretch, contemplate what’s for dinner, watch or listen to any talk show, and generally stay busy to avoid thinking the worst. Memo to self: Stay busy. Self-pity and fear are agents of destruction. Right now, with my business on hold and my world upside down, I yearn for the day when we’ll have college football again. We are so hungry for content that many of us watched almost the entire three days of the NFL Virtual Draft, which proved interesting for Gator fans that saw C.J. Henderson go to the Jaguars. Then six other Gators were chosen which tied Florida with Georgia for the second most SEC players. Funny, I don’t even watch the normal NFL Draft past five picks -- but I stayed tuned to this one. After seven weeks of self-quarantine with my wife Joni -- we’re feeling healthy and blessed but quite often needy -- small pleasures mean everything and tiny bits of progress feel monumental. Some days I’d just settle for a hug from one of my kids or grandchildren. We dare not curse the darkness. I try to remember that through some bad times great discoveries have been uncovered. (Supposedly in 1665 during the Plague of London, mathematician Isaac Newton invented or advanced previous theories on calculus or physics or gravity – or one of those math things.) So when you’re having a bad day, invent something! Or write and record a song, which my friend Terry Bradshaw did. I was having one of those down days last week when a call came from the most upbeat, spirited friend I know. For more than three decades, Terry Bradshaw has been a blessing to many, but especially me and my family. He always makes me laugh, usually inspires me to words and definitely leaves me better than he found me. The generosity of his spirit makes his wealth seem the equivalent of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. There was no real cause for me to be down or dispirited that day, except I was about to indulge myself in bit of self-pity. I’d had no luck qualifying for any of the SBA loans, had seen neither hide nor hare of my stimulus check and there was no sight of any sponsorships for @TheBuddyMartinShow or any new advertisers for my college sports magazine @GatorBaitMedia.com. Like about most of America, my future was cloudy and finances we spotty, at best. To quote that shop-worn cliché from Dickens, these are “the best of times and the worst of times.” And for me, life had just started getting a bit better. Terry is quick to share whatever he’s got with those he loves – material or spiritual. He hands out blessings like Johnny Appleseed. Turns out, I needed it that day. It was Week 4 of our self-imposed quarantine and maybe Week 2 1/2 for Terry and his wife Tammy on their 800-acre ranch in Thackerville, Okla. This time we were talking a little politics, a bit of football and weighing in on family and faith matters when Tammy walked into the room and blurted out: “I’m going Quarantine Crazy.” I’m not going to try and convince you that bells and whistles went off, but Terry and I gave each other a virtual high five over the phone and both concluded there was some poetry in that statement. So Terry blurted out: “That’s a country song!” A week or so later, after he and Tammy had called their songwriter friend Jimmy Yeary, they would meet in Nashville at a recording studio with one sound engineer and knock out Terry’s vocals in under an hour. Then the Bradshaws flew back to Oklahoma. Terry is no stranger to music, having covered the Hank Williams song “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” which made it to Billboard’s Top 20 in 1976. Last year he began a regular show in Las Vegas at the Luxor and was planning to do more touring BTCV (Before The Corona Virus). The man can sing. I’ve heard Terry belt out tunes spontaneously, anywhere and everywhere, for over 30 years. In New York taxis … walking down Sixth Avenue … on the golf course. For three years on Sunday autumn mornings when we walked in the New York CBS Broadcast Center where we worked on “The NFL Today,” we would break out in Vince Gill’s “When I Call Your Name,” echoing down the hallways of the CBS Broadcast Center in two-part harmony. A few days ago, Terry sent me a cut of “Quarantine Crazy” written by Yeary, who had also penned Rascal Flatts’ No. 1 “Why Wait” and the incredibly sad-but-tender No. 1 platinum hit by Lee Brice “I Drive Your Truck,” among others. I was impressed with Terry’s vocals on this one. And this new song, a parody about life in Pandemic exile, wasn’t too shabby. Pretty dang good, I thought. But I wasn’t prepared for the media onslaught that was about to happen. A few days later a friend texted me to say that the Fox Show “The Five” had just teased Bradshaw’s guest appearance at the top of the show. So I flipped it over from The Paul Finebaum Show and, sure enough, there he was, live from home on “The Five.” The first sentence was about the song and Jimmy Yeary. And then he said, “I was on the phone in my office with Buddy Martin, a really great sportswriter I’ve known for 30-something years. And we were talking football, and Tammy’s in the kitchen and she hollers at me and says, ‘Terry! I’m going quarantine crazy!’ I said, ‘Quarantine crazy? Hey, that’s a country song title.’ I said, ‘Buddy, I’ll call you back.’” Now excuse my vanity, but imagine my surprise and glee to hear Terry’s high praise on national TV. He did it again and again in national interviews to the point where it was almost embarrassing … on Fox News, Fox News business, Colin Cowherd -- and later he repeated it in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine. NFL Legend Terry Bradshaw Now Has a Quarantine-Themed Country Son I must admit I loved it. I loved the attention, but more importantly I was deeply touched by his generosity. Really, there was no reason for me getting all that pub because I had little or no role in the song, except as a cheerleader. All of which caused me to gush to Joni: “I think Terry is the most generous friend I have.” “The BEST friend you have,” she shot back. “Well, maybe – but certainly the most generous,” I countered. I could recite many other instances of generous gestures by Terry, but let’s just start with this: Him insisting that he wanted to be a regular weekly guest on my small-town radio show (without pay) for over three years -- acting like it was a big deal to him. At a family wedding in Dallas, he announced a group of about 40 well-wishers. “Really?” one of them asked. “Where’s it going to be on?” – (expecting a reply of “New York” or “LA” or “Fox” or “ESPN.”” “Ocala, Florida,” they were told. Crickets. How about the gift of a car – a used Tahoe that he no longer needed on the ranch and which I now drive as my main vehicle? All we had to do is pick it up at the ranch on our way back from Denver. After dinner that night, we played cards and Terry offered: “How about coming to Hawaii for a family wedding in two weeks?” he asked. What followed was a trip on a private plane to Hawaii and two weeks in a 5-star hotel. Then Terry showed up in 2019 for the Ocala Quarterback Club’s presentation of The Scot Brantley Trophy during “An Evening with Terry Bradshaw” – paying his own way and volunteering to return every year for it. I could go on, but you get it. Most generously, Terry has this knack of showing up at just the right time and making you forget about your crappy day, after which you just wish he lived next door to you. This taught me, once again, that even in the worst of times the true definition of a friend is somebody who appears unexpectedly to lift your spirits without wanting anything in return. It is upon these gracious gestures and generosities we can bond our lives with strength to pay it forward. That kind of contagion would serve us all. Even if I’m not a “really great sportswriter” anymore – or even if I never was one – I felt like it that day. Watch the First Trailer for Terry Bradshaw's New E! Reality Series The Bradshaw Bunch

CHAOS, CHAOS AND MORE CHAOS Thursday was just another day at the office in the world of sports. The NCAA Division I Board of Directors says it doesn’t back any change to the current transfer waiver process, potentially torpedoing a May 20 vote in which it was expected that the main body of NCAA institutions would vote to approve a one-time, no-waiver transfer for athletes in every sport. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey threw out the idea on 1010-XL in Jacksonville that maybe not every SEC school would field a team in the fall. Big 12 commissioner Bruce Bowlsby expressed fear that the COVID-19 virus would come back in the fall and eliminate a playoff. Iowa president Bruce Harreld said he anticipates the Hawkeyes will be on campus, ready to resume training on June 1. Matt Hayes, the senior football writer for Bleacher Report, told Buddy Martin that college football needs a czar to oversee the sport and the right guy for the job is Jeremy Foley. Got all that? Let’s start with the NCAA, which, if you are old enough to recall, Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth once deemed “The National Communists Against Athletes.” Just a week after the Transfer Waiver Working Group recommended the full body of the NCAA vote to give every athlete in every Division I sport the right to transfer once without having to sit out, the Board of Directors voted to keep the status quo, once again proving the NCAA is absolutely clueless. Coaches can leave any time they perceive there is a better opportunity. They aren’t penalized for leaving but the kids they recruited and left behind are more often than not. It’s only right that kids have the same option for a one-time transfer without penalty. The smart thing to do – I realize it’s the NCAA that we’re talking about so smart might be a rather poor choice of words – would be to vote to change the process but do it a year from now. Instead of rejecting it, tweak the wording a bit. Make the rule apply to the 2021 season, therefore giving plenty of time to take a pro-active stance for coming up with a set of guidelines that actually work. By keeping the current waiver rule in place, we’ll see more kids like Justin Fields who can afford a good lawyer get a waiver just by threatening to take the NCAA to court and more kids like former Georgia tight end Luke Ford, denied a waiver even though he wanted to be close to his ill grandfather. So, once again, when faced with a situation that actually helps kids, the higher-ups at the NCAA vote status quo. * * * During his conversation on 1010-XL in Jacksonville, Sankey stated that it might not be necessary for the SEC to cancel its entire season if perhaps a couple of schools can’t field a team. “It there’s a couple of programs that aren’t able, does that stop everyone?” Sankey asked. I’m not sure it does but the ability for us to stay connected will remain important.” What Sankey was alluding to is the fact that not every state may be open for business in the fall due to decisions by state governments to remain on lockdown and of course, the possibility that some schools might delay the start of their academic school year beginning until January or even later. As strange as it might seem to have football minus certain SEC schools, there are 14 in the league so there is room to adapt. Maybe it’s a bad example, but the Southeastern Conference operated just fine without Kentucky basketball in 1952-53 because of point-shaving scandal and discovery that Adolph Rupp played ineligible players even though Rupp and his coaches knew they hadn’t made grades. So, could the league get along if maybe Arkansas or Kentucky football were not allowed by their state governments to play? Absolutely. It would be strange, but it could work. * * * Bowlsby brought up a legitimate point about the COVID-19 virus perhaps making a comeback. Bowlsby’s big concern is in the months of November and December when the weather is colder and conditions are conducive for the virus hitting pandemic levels again. “If the virus comes roaring back in the traditional flu and virus season in November, December, through March, I wonder if we’re going to get basketball seasons in,” Bowlsby said. “I wonder if we’re going to get the [College Football Playoff] in; I wonder if we’re going to get the NCAA Tournament in.” Bowlsby also says that a split schedule fall-spring for football is being looked into but says that is a “fallback position.” *** Meanwhile Iowa president Bruce Harreld has targeted June 1 as the date to get his school’s players back on campus and practicing. He thinks 6-8 weeks of practice and conditioning needs to take place before games can be played although he’s not at all certain if games should be played with fans in the stadiums. Thursday evening Harreld did say “first priority is the health and safety of our student athletes and fans.” As a state, Iowa has never been under a stay at home order. Finally, Matt Hayes thinks college football needs its own czar to take charge during troubled times. His candidate for the position is former Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley. Personally, I think college football needs someone who is not from the NCAA to direct things. I would like the see college football free itself completely from the NCAA and operate as a separate entity. The NCAA does not control the College Football Playoff so why should it make the rules for Division I? If the lower divisions want to remain under control of the NCAA, fine, but let Division I set its own rules and regulations without the NCAA to interfere. Of course, if that were to happen, it’s highly likely that Division I would shrink. A 100-team model would work just fine. Go to an 11-game regular season schedule, eliminate games against D1AA and add an extra week to the playoffs. As for Foley, he would be an ideal czar. I’ve said for years that for the many things Jeremy did for the University of Florida during his 25 years as the athletic director, the best thing was running as clean a ship as you were going to find anywhere in college sports. Florida went from a school where it was perceived anything goes to one that complied with the rules. Put him in charge of college football and Foley would run a tight, clean ship and there is something to be said for that. UF HOOPS: CASTLETON OFFICIALLY IN, KOWACIE REEVES COMMITS Thursday was a good day for Florida basketball coach Mike White. Michigan transfer Colin Castleton (6-11, 235, JR) signed his papers so he’s officially a Gator now and White got a commitment from 4-star wing Kowacie Reeves (6-6, 175, Macon, GA Westside). Unless the NCAA voting body overrides the vote of the Division I Board of Directors, Castleton will have to sit out the 2020-21 season. Whether he plays this year or next, he will have two years of eligibility remaining. Reeves was long expected to choose the Gators. When he pulled the trigger on his commitment Thursday, he selected Florida over the likes of Stanford, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Stanford, Clemson and Georgia Tech. He is an outstanding scorer with good range out to the three-point line and the ability to put the ball on the deck and get to the rim. Reeves is the #35 player in the Rivals.com rankings and #67 in 247Sports.com. Florida’s next serious target is Warren Lynn Kidd (6-10, 220, Gainesville, FL/Bradenton, FL IMG Academy), ranked #82 nationally by 247Sports.com. RANDOM THOUGHTS: Wake Forest Gump wasted little time replacing Danny Manning as head basketball coach. The choice is Steve Forbes, who was 130-43 in five seasons at East Tennessee State. Forbes was an assistant to Bruce Pearl at Tennessee and won a national juco championship at Northwest Florida State before working a couple of years for Gregg Marshall at Wichita State … The Cincinnati Bengals didn’t draft Joe Burrow with the intention of sitting him, which is why the Bengals are talking to the Jacksonville Jaguars about trading Andy Dalton. Given the choice of Gardner Minshew III and Dalton, the Jags need to stick with Minshew. I’ve seen enough of Andy Dalton to believe you can’t win with him … NASCAR will resume racing May 17 at Darlington, minus the fans, of course … The Little League World Series has been canceled due to COVID-19 … I still think Major League Baseball should have stripped the Houston Astros of their 2017 World Series … I think LeBron James is a great player, one of the ten best to ever play in the NBA. I don’t think he’s as good as Michael Jordan or Wilt Chamberlain though. In my mind those are the two best and nobody else is close.

There are some days Dan Mullen still wakes up at 3 a.m. He’ll sit there for a couple of hours, letting his mind readjust to the new normal that resembles nothing like what he’s been used to since he was a teenager. “I’m somebody that probably since I was 15 years old, I’ve gone to work every day. Whether it was having a job when I was in high school, going to college and summer jobs and all that. Just kind of being thrown off in this way.” Now the Florida Gators head coach is finding a groove with a new schedule while the world deals with the spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. A day in the life of Dan Mullen now looks something like this. He gets up and goes for a run or has a morning workout. He holds Zoom staff meetings at 9am a couple of days each week. He’ll take the Mullen’s dog, Heisman, for a walk. He helps his son Cannon with his homework—he’s still trying to figure out the “new math” he admits—and he’ll even become the P.E. and dance teacher for his daughter Brynn. There’s a lot of time spent on recruiting. And he’ll try to pop in on the Zoom position meetings when possible. “I kinda just come in with no video, no audio. I just sit, kinda like sitting in the back of the room. But I get to do it for, you know usually we’re all always meeting everybody at the same time. I can sit in during the day and I can sit in on three or four different position meetings every day. And you know so that’s pretty good learning for me and learning what our players do and what’s going on with all of them. So that’s kinda exciting. And it is. I mean the ability to learn, we’re trying to make the most out of this.” And then he spends time hanging out with his family. “There could never be enough though. Never,” says his wife Megan, popping into the Zoom call that Mullen was conducting with local reporters from his kitchen, giving credence to the at-home feel everyone’s lives have necessarily taken during this nation wide quarantine. Mullen’s staff is notoriously allowed more family time than most college football programs. But when the entire life shifts to the kitchen counter, things are bound to look different. So the Gators coaches are guiding everything they do between themselves and players by one question. “When this is over, are we gonna be the team that’s prepared?” That begets more questions of course, and Mullen explains those are what then drive the individual areas of focus. "Are we the team that continued to stay in great physical shape. Are we the team that put in extra conditioning, extra training. Are we the team that spent extra time learning and maximizing what we can do and maximizing ourselves of what we can do so we’re a better football team when we get back together than we are when we left.” Strength and conditioning coach Nick Savage talks to every guy on the team at least once a week and has set up a private YouTube channel where they can watch the workouts he wants them to do at home. And once the SEC allowed Zoom position meetings, the ability to at least go through the playbook became possible. As such Mullen says the’ve done all of the installation they would have done during spring practice, but are still searching for new ways to teach. Related: Nick Savage Training Gators From Afar Amid COVID-19 “We’ve installed everything. I think the issue is, I mean everyone’s a different type of learner so you know if you’re a kinetic learner, I mean it's a very difficult time for you. If you’re a guy that needs reps on the field, it’s a difficult time for you. So you know I think when you look at how guys learn that way, we’re limited in how we can teach. So we’re trying to maximize what we can do instead of worrying about what we can’t do.” There still will have to be on-field workouts for any hope of a football season though. The SEC head coaches have been conducting conference calls with the league to discuss what would be needed to safely field a team. As Mullen explains, eight weeks is ideal, six is doable, four is pushing. “Obviously the sooner we get our guys back, the better, the less time you need. Is there—because part of it is, 'can you get away with four weeks of practice?' Yes, if you had two or three weeks of 10 guys at a time in the weight room. Or, you know, some other sort of physical testing and training.” The states of Florida, Georgia and Tennessee have began to open back up sooner than others. But all 14 schools—spread amongst 10 states—will need to have an equitable plan. Meaning if one teams returns to their facilities and by proxy their practice fields, the other 13 need to be able to as well. “I would say I’m much more hopeful than optimistic,” admits Mullen. “I think right now we have such trying times, there’s so much going on, there’s so much we’re still learning, we don’t know about, that it is hard to project where we’re going to be four months from now. If you look four months ago we were in a very different place in this country than where we are right now. So, to say where we’ll be in four months is hard to do. But I’m certainly hopeful. I’m sure as everybody is out there. Hopeful that we find a vaccine and a cure. Hopeful that people are working hard to limit the spread of everything going on. Hopeful that people are trying as best they can to follow the regulations and making the most out of each day that’s going on. And hopeful we get back to whatever our new normal is going to be, and that includes having a football season this fall. “For our team, I think the one positive thing is, we've established within our program that we have high expectations as a program and our individuals within our program have high expectations in themselves. So, I don't know if that makes us better equipped to handle what's going on. I don't know if anybody's really like, to say this is a great advantage for us with everything going on. But I do certainly think the expectations that we have within our program and in our team - that our players have themselves, the experience our coaches have, that we have great teachers - that we're making the most out of this time.” The likelihood of life returning completely to what it looked liked before is low, and maybe that’s for the best. There are positives from this time we can take into life post COVID-19. But no matter what the new normal might become, sports will return. And that will provide something better than normal. It will provide hope. East coast native Dan Mullen knows the heady power that sports can hold. “The image of what sports was able to do, even though sports returned, of seeing President Bush out there throwing the first pitch of the World Series after 9/11. After you go through massive tragedies there's so many things that sports bring back together. Just the lasting memory of what sports are that are so special.”

There was a time when Chris Rainey would tell you there was no life without football. “It was all I had,” he says, his face lit up by that perpetual grin, but these days and times, there is much more than football. He’s happily married, just witnessed the birth of his fourth child, a beautiful daughter. He’s got a degree from the University of Florida. When football ends, there is even a plan. The kid who used to say “It’s good to be Chris Rainey” still thinks it’s good, only now for reasons he never thought possible only a few short years ago. Life without football. Rainey has experienced that three times in his life, once at Florida, two seasons in the NFL. At UF he was suspended five games in 2010 for a threatening phone call to a woman he was involved with. He was arrested for simple battery in 2013 that resulted in an abrupt end to a promising career with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Given a second chance with the Indianapolis Colts and then a few weeks later by the Arizona Cardinals in 2014, Rainey was cut twice. He was one of several involved in a rather dumb prank that got him cut by the Colts. He was on the practice squad three weeks with the Cardinals when cut again. “Three strikes and you’re out so they say,” Rainey says. “I guess you could say I was rock bottom.” For Rainey at the time, rock bottom was life without football. His brother called from South Carolina. You might remember him as “He Hate Me” from the days of the original XFL with the Las Vegas Outlaws. His name is Rod Smart and after that year with the Outlaws he put together a 5-year NFL career where he was a kick return specialist of some repute. Rod offered Chris a place to live and a chance to get his head together. They trained together on a daily basis, did a lot of talking and that led to a good bit of soul searching. While figuring out what to do next, the Canadian Football League came calling, offering Rainey a lifeline, a sanctuary where he could put past mistakes behind him. Neither the crowds nor the paychecks in the CFL can compare to the NFL but the NFL doesn’t have a 55X110-yard field with those extended end zones, either. For someone with Rainey’s world class speed (he was timed more than once just below 4.3 in the 40 and was a member of an NCAA championship track team at UF), the CFL is a match made in heaven. He has become a legitimate star in Canada, first with the British Columbia Lions in Vancouver and then last year with the Toronto Argonauts. When football resumes, he will be back in Vancouver. Along the way he has made peace with God, found the love of his life (wife Jennifer) and has a newborn daughter named Mikailyenn, their fourth child (son Makari and daughters Isabella and McKinley are the other three). Once again he can say “It’s good to be Chris Rainey,” only now he appreciates what he has. Of course, if you know the Rainey story then you, too, can appreciate that he is in a good place. Everybody remembers the Chris Rainey who led Lakeland High School to three state and two national championships. They remember how electric he could be when he had the ball in his hands at Florida where his 2,464 rushing yards still rank ninth all-time and his combination 3,259 rushing-receiving yards rank eighth. What they don’t know is that his life has been spent climbing one mountain after another, each one seemingly steeper than the last. Let’s start at the beginning. Rainey was born in prison. For the first 20 years of his life his father was in prison. Too often while growing up in Lakeland home was on the streets and a bed was a sofa offered by a friend’s mom. Football became his lifeline. His motivation was his dog and his grandmother. “When I ran, I had it in my mind that people coming after me were going to take my dog or my grandmother away from me so I wasn’t going to let that happen,” Rainey says. “I know that sounds funny maybe, but to me, that’s all I had.” He ran so fast and was so elusive that college recruiters overlooked the fact he was only 5-8 and 156 pounds. Urban Meyer is one of the ones who noticed. In the spring of 2005 at the end of Rainey’s sophomore year at Lakeland High School, Meyer offered Rainey a scholarship to play for the Gators. Without any hesitation, Rainey accepted to become the first commitment of what was to become a legendary 2007 Florida recruiting class. That 15-0 season when Rainey was a sophomore was the first of three unbeaten seasons for the Dreadnaughts, who won 45 straight games and national championships in 2005 and 2006 to become one of the truly legendary teams in Florida high school history. Rainey was chosen to the US Army All-America team and he had stacks of offers from the top programs in the country, but he never thought of going anywhere but Florida. When he first recruited Rainey, Meyer didn’t know the entire Rainey story, but the more he learned, the more he gravitated toward the kid with the never-ending smile. “The further you dove into what he went through as a child just breaks your heart,” Meyer said. “He lived on the streets and for awhile he lived in a cardboard box. No kid should ever have to go through that. There were times he didn’t eat for days. Lisa and Rob Webster (mother and dad of Maurkice and Mike Pouncey) opened up their home to him when he was in high school. They gave him a real home where he had relationships and meals to eat and love. He needed that. You know what’s remarkable? For all those bad things that Chris had to go through, he isn’t bitter. He’s always smiling, always such a pleasant and happy guy to be around.” The closer Meyer got to Rainey, the more Rainey wanted several of his Lakeland teammates to be Gators so he started recruiting them. The Pouncey Twins were lifelong Seminoles as were their parents and sisters. Ahmad Black grew up dreaming to play for FSU. Paul Wilson was the son of a former Georgia wide receiver. Steve Wilks and John Brown had other schools on their minds. One-by-one they turned their attention to UF, in no small part because of Rainey’s insistence. The twins committed to Meyer after they made a last-ditch effort to salvage their lifelong love of FSU. During an impromptu visit to Tallahassee, Bobby Bowden couldn’t remember their names. They were stunned so Rainey convinced them to stop in Gainesville to meet with Meyer on the way back home. They stopped and within a couple hours committed to UF. Days later, Black said yes followed by Wilson and Wilks. Brown waited until National Signing Day in 2007 but he, too, became a Gator. Of those seven, there were three All-Americans – Maurkice and Mike Pouncey and Ahmad Black – and an All-SEC in Rainey. Wilson and Wilks had their UF careers ended abruptly by injuries. Brown struggled in the classroom and transferred out after taking a redshirt in 2007. “Do you know how remarkable that is?” Meyer asks even today. “A third of our recruiting class went to the kids from one high school and four of them become vital contributors to a national championship team in 2008. We don’t win the national championship without those kids. It says a lot for the kind of coach Bill Castle is at Lakeland. They were all good kids, all of them great athletes.” While at Florida, Rainey became a fixture at the Meyer home. Rainey still calls Meyer “my second dad” and Meyer still refers to Rainey as “family.” Because Chris was family and because he knew the whole story about the tough life Rainey had growing up on the Lakeland streets, Meyer was both heartbroken and at the same time determined to help when Rainey was suspended five games in the 2010 season. Rainey says he was “in love for the first time in my life” and was hurt when he lashed out with a threat on the phone. This was the week of the Tennessee game. Rainey found himself in the Alachua County lockup and there were demands from all over the country by writers and fans alike that he be dismissed from the football team and taken off scholarship. “This was so uncharacteristic of Chris,” Meyer said. “We weren’t the least bit afraid of him being at our home with the kids. He’d go swimming in the pool with them and I’d come home sometimes and there would be Chris and Nate (Meyer’s youngest) watching a video together on TV. I was just devastated when he was arrested.” Rather than dismiss Rainey, Meyer pleaded his case to athletic director Jeremy Foley. Meyer was passionate about finding a way to help Rainey learn from the situation without losing him. Having painfully endured the death of Avery Atkins in the summer of 2007, Meyer couldn’t bear the idea of what might happen if Rainey was cut off from all that was important to him. Foley and Meyer agreed to give Rainey a chance to redeem himself. Counseling was a requirement along with strict behavioral guidelines. One misstep and Rainey would be gone. He would have to earn his way back onto the team. The suspension lasted five games, three of which the Gators lost including last second defeats at the hands of LSU and Mississippi State. Watching the Gators lose and knowing he could have helped win the games tore Rainey apart. “I almost want to cry now just thinking about those two games,” Rainey said. “I let my team down. I let my coach down. I let me down.” When he came back from suspension, Rainey played well the rest of the season, particularly in Florida’s 34-31 overtime win over Georgia, a game in which he ran for 84 yards and a TD, caught two passes for nine yards and ran back six kickoffs for 148 more. Meyer retired from UF after that year, but Rainey was a model citizen for Will Muschamp in 201, earning All-SEC honors as the Gators’ leading rusher (861 yards) and receiver (31-381). Rainey also completed his degree from the University of Florida. “Coach Meyer made me believe I could do that,” Rainey says. “Nobody thought I could do it. I did that for me but I did it for him, too.” Having that Florida degree is just one more proof for Rainey that there is life after football. There was a time when a college degree seemed unattainable but now he is a graduate of one of the top public universities in the United States. There was more than one time when he thought there was no life other than football. While football was and remains an integral piece of the Rainey puzzle, it is no longer all there is. He has a wife. He has kids. He is happy. Football may or may not be a part of whatever is next but if it is not he knows that won’t be the end of the world “If there’s another mountain I got to climb, I’ll just climb it,” he says. “I’ll be all right. My family will be all right. You know something, God is good.” It’s still good to be Chris Rainey.

In 2009, my dad was a plumber by day and a closeted FSU fan by night. Meanwhile, back at home, he had an 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son who claimed loyalty to the Florida Gators. And after growing up in the “glory days” of Florida football, his kids were slowly growing into their shoes of Gator fandom. My brother and I’s loyalty to the Gators hails from my maternal side of the family. But with numbers stacked against him, my Seminole father was forced to keep his eyes and ears open when it came to Florida football. I can’t tell you how many times my dad would come home from work and tell us about his run-in with a Gator fan. Sometimes that meant my dad and his customers exchanged friendly jabs, while other times my dad would come home and tell us these tall tales from The Swamp he heard while repairing a toilet. Except one run-in with a pair of Gator alum resulted in more than just tall tales and fables. It probably started like any other dispatch. My dad responded to a call and likely commented on a piece of Gator memorabilia that the couple had in their home. One thing led to another, and my dad was learning that the Garner’s graduated from the University of Florida in the 1950s, where they met. They were also current season ticket holders for Florida football. Truth be told, my dad is a pretty admirable and charming guy. He’s got quite the rapport with his customers. And his relationship with the Garner’s was no different. Well, it was a little different. At one point, my dad took my brother and I to meet the Garner’s in their home in The Villages. This was new -- we’d never met one of dad’s customers. But he made it a point for us to meet the older couple after they had offered us a set of tickets to see the Gators take on the FIU Panthers on November 21. Come game day, we met the Garner’s at a Burger King in Gainesville to retrieve the tickets, where my dad got a different kind of ticket for not wearing his seat belt before he even left the parking lot. As a family, we watched Tim Tebow and the Gators march to a 62-3 victory over the Panthers. It was the only time I ever got to see Florida’s third Heisman winner in a live contest. And that alone was priceless. But the Garners, Mrs. Garner specifically, didn’t stop there. Six months later, for my 12th birthday, Mrs. Garner and my dad were working together on a birthday surprise. And in just my second visit to the Garner's home, I left with my favorite piece of Gator memorabilia. As a cross-stitch expert, Mrs. Garner had framed a Tim Tebow-themed embroidery for my birthday. Listing Tebow’s accolades as a Gator, in addition to his famed eyeblack bible verses (as requested by my dad), the piece of art is one of two of its kind. Rumor has it, the other is owned by Tebow himself. But the fact that the one gifted to me is highlighted on my living room wall is no rumor at all. And now, all that I can hope for is that a plumber will ask me about it in the future. Life in a divided household wasn't all that bad for Ainslie. When she wasn't bantering back and forth with her dad, she, her younger brother Chase and her dad would spend a lot of their time on Lake Weir in her hometown of Weirsdale, Florida.

In the offseason between 2007 and 2008, strength and conditioning coach Mickey Marotti had two numbers in his head. Forty-two, and one-hundred-eighty-eight. At the time, the numbers represented reps in the weightroom -- 42 lifts at a station, and 188 pushups and crunches. But the digits’ real meanings were born on October 27, 2007 in Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. On third and goal, Georgia’s Knowshon Moreno dove over the ninth-ranked Florida Gators’ defensive line -- drawing first blood in 2007’s edition of the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. A diving touchdown from Moreno wasn’t all that abnormal. But the chaos that followed was abnormal, even for the Florida-Georgia rivalry. “Watch this for excessive celebration,” CBS’ Verne Lundquist said. “We might have 15 hankies in the air on this one.” Meanwhile, on the field, the Bulldogs’ sideline had been cleared. And every player wearing silver pants was stomping around in the end zone. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9qm8JROXWc] “I don’t know if I’ve ever been more angry,” Urban Meyer told the SEC Network in 2019. “I kept grabbing our guys, I thought there was going to be a fight. I thought the benches were going to clear, and they probably should have.” The Bulldogs were coming off of three weeks which saw them lose 35-14 to Tennessee, squeak past Vanderbilt 20-17 and prepare for the Gators with a bye week. Georgia’s Mark Richt knew his team needed motivation now more than ever. “Again, I was expecting the 11 players on the field to be doing the celebrating, not for the bench to clear as it did,” Richt told ESPN afterwards. “I understand that the entire team running on the field created the potential for an altercation and that excessive celebration is not in compliance with the Southeastern Conference sportsmanship policies and expected standards. My only intention was to create enthusiasm.” For the Bulldogs, the message of enthusiasm was signed, sealed and delivered. Moreno rushed for 188 yards and three touchdowns that day, while quarterback Matthew Stafford tacked on three more passing touchdowns as Georgia danced past Florida 42-30. One-hundred-eighty-eight.  One pushup and crunch for every yard Moreno rushed. Forty-two. One rep for every point the Bulldogs scored. But was taking the loss on the chin and using it as motivation enough of a response? The short answer was no. "That wasn't right. It was a bad deal,” Meyer said in Buddy Martin’s “Urban’s Way”. “And it will forever be in the mind of Urban Meyer and in the mind of our football team. ... So we'll handle it. And it's going to be a big deal." Just as they were in 2007, the Gators entered the 2008 season with great expectations. Florida was just two years removed from its second national title and Tim Tebow was coming off of a Heisman-winning campaign from the season prior. However, guarding the gates of an SEC title and an opportunity for their second national championship appearance in three years, the Gators had to get through the Bulldogs. While the Florida-Georgia game is always circled months in advance for both squads, 2008 was different. September 27, 2008 proved troublesome for the Gators and the Bulldogs after each of them lost conference games that day. Coming into Jacksonville, Florida had a black eye in the form of Ole Miss, while Georgia’s took the shape of the Crimson Tide. In 2008, the arms race for the SEC East title was as tight as it's ever been. Perhaps the difference was the motivation Florida had leading up to the contest. The image of 70 Georgia players romping around in the end zone was burned into the minds of Gators players. And after a long offseason of workouts, there was no forgetting about it. Just like the year prior, on November 1, the tone was set quickly. On the second play of the game, Florida linebacker Brandon Spikes leveled Moreno and made sure that his presence was not only known, but was to be remembered. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QY-laDyAd4] From then on out, the Gators continued to capitalize on the Bulldogs’ mistakes. Georgia kicker Blair Walsh missed two field goals, Moreno couldn’t haul in a go-ahead touchdown and Stafford threw an uncharacteristic three interceptions. Meanwhile, Florida scored on four Georgia turnovers, Tebow was responsible for five touchdowns and Percy Harvin tallied two scores and 99 yards on just seven touches. Georgia couldn’t stop the bleeding soon enough. And if Urban Meyer had anything to do with it, he’d let the Bulldogs bleed out completely. With a 49-10 Gator lead, everyone on Florida’s side of the stadium had stuck around, while Georgia’s sideline had its back to empty, teal seats. With under a minute to play and two timeouts in his back pocket, Meyer finished the football game his way. Milking the clock and allowing his team and its fans bask in the glory of a massive, top-10 rivalry win, Meyer called his final two timeouts. Each time, Florida running back Emmanuel Moody ripped off huge chunks of yardage. “The rules say you get three timeouts each half,” Richt said following the routing. “And they used two of them.” Forty-two pushups. One-hundred-eighty-eight reps. And two timeouts. Urban Meyer and the Gators handled it.

The 2020 NFL Draft was good to the Florida Gators as Dan Mullen’s squad helped set multiple records. The Southeastern Conference made it 14 straight years with the most draft picks of any league, 63 in total, one short of the 64 record set by—you guessed it—the SEC in 2019. The SEC had six of the Top 10 picks, including Gators corner CJ Henderson at No. 9 overall to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Here is the Gators full list of draftees: C CJ Henderson, 1st round, 9th overall, Jacksonville Jaguars WR Van Jefferson, 2nd round, 57th overall, Los Angeles Rams DE Jabari Zuniga, 3rd round 79th overall, New York Jets EDGE Jon Greenard, 3rd round, 90th overall, Houston Texas RB Lamical Perine, 4th round, 12th overall, New York Jets WR Freddie Swain, 6th round, 214th overall, Seattle Seahawks WR Tyrie Cleveland, 7th round, 252nd overall, Denver Broncos In a receiver rich draft class, Florida was the only school to have three wideouts drafted. It’s the first time since 1978 that the Gators have sent three receivers to the league through the draft and UF now joins Tennessee and LSU as the only SEC institutions to have three receivers drafted in more than one year during the modern draft era. It’s the first time since 2009 that the Gators have had more than one receiver drafted. That 2009 draft class featured Percy Harvin and Louis Murphy, both products of their offensive coordinator, Dan Mullen. The three drafted receivers along with Josh Hammonds immediate signing with the Jaguars as an undrafted free agent, means that all four senior receivers found an initial spot on NFL rosters. Strictly production wise, the run on Gator receivers—and particularly Jefferson in the second round—was labeled as puzzling by analysts and pundits. The 11 receivers taken before Jefferson averaged 67 receptions for 1,066 yards and 10 touchdowns. Jefferson posted 49 receptions for 657 yards and six touchdowns in 2019. But those now preparing to live out their dreams don’t care and for Dan Mullen and position coach Billy Gonzales, it’s point proven of a message they’ve been preaching since arriving back in Gainesville. Trust us to split the reps, they preached. Make a commitment to do this truly as a team and while your statistical numbers will go down, your overall positive tape will go up and it will work out better for the team and individually in the long run. “I think it’s a huge deal,” said Mullen while on a Zoom call with local reporters on Monday. “When guys look at it—and our guys, thankfully they bought into it and now they all reap the rewards on it and I think that especially, you know you get out on the recruiting trail and you’re looking at people that are—you’re calling these different receivers and they’re like ‘well coach this school, they had the one guy get all these catches’ and I said ‘ok well what if you’re not the one or how many different people are saying they are the one?’ And you come play at Florida, you’re not only gonna get coached, you’re gonna get developed. “[Here, you] have the opportunity to go and get touches on the field and the opportunity to go on to the next level and play in the NFL. And I think that is one, that’s such a huge selling point. I think now it’s a really easy selling point for our younger guys at this point cause they saw ‘hey these older guys all bought in. They bought in to go out there, play as hard as you can, don’t worry about your individual stats. Hey get involved in special teams. And now four of them are moving on to the NFL. "I think one of the other big point that is really, you know I’m gonna promote that has been kinda overlooked is not only did we have four go to the NFL, all four have graduated college. And I think that is something that is really special and unique.” Henderson’s selection in the Top 10 was another selling point for something Mullen and staff have been trying to explain to their team for the past two and a half years now. If you’re going to leave early, make sure it’s worth the risk. A year ago, leading into the 2019 draft, five juniors elected to forego their senior year and declare early for the pro’s: Chauncey Garnder-Johnson, Jawaan Taylor, Jachai Polite, Vosean Joseph and Jordan Scarlett. Taylor fell out of the first round into the second but started as a rookie. Gardner-Johnson was taken in the fourth round but started seven games while heavily contributing in all 16. Joseph and Scarlett both landed on rosters in late rounds and contributed enough to be resigned. Polite was projected as a first rounder but fell to the third. He bounced among three teams in as many weeks and now sits on a practice squad. At the time Mullen wouldn’t name names but made it clear he thought too many of his players were listening to the wrong council on whether or not they should leave early. He has consistently preached that if you’re going to declare as a junior, you should be positive that you’ll be a first or second round pick and that you won’t be pushed down by a crowd of others at your position. The difference in those picks versus others amounts to millions of dollars. Albeit, guys like Gardner-Johnson look to be playing themselves into a better contract after their rookie ones are finished—but that last five years. When it came time to declare for the 2020 NFL Draft, only one Gator junior put his name in the ring; corner CJ Henderson. He was a projected first round pick and the perfect example of what Mullen was trying to show the guys in his program. Henderson gauged his draft grade, gauged the amount of other corners available in the draft, knew his tape could back up his grade, performed well at the Combine and proved his early departure the right choice. Mullen couldn’t be prouder. “The year before we had several guys leave early for the draft. No body went in the first round and so there’s some, you could look maybe some good, maybe some bad decisions. But I think you look at the roster this year and I think the guys making good, positive decisions in what they do. That’s what you want, guys that are going to leave early, have that opportunity to leave early, to go be a top 10 pick, absolutely. “I think CJ handled it the right way. His family handled it the right way. They made very informed decisions and made a great decision for his future and for their family’s future, to have a long, lasting impact for his family in generations to come.But I think they are, I think he is a guy that's going to have the opportunity, just because of his attitude, not just his talent, but his approach within his preparation, how he handles himself on a daily basis. He’s certainly going to have the opportunity to start Day One.” Mullen admits between the 12 first round picks he now has to his name and 10 to defensive coordinator Todd Grantham’s that it’s a nice recruiting tool. Right or wrong, a program is often defined by the amount of players it can send to the NFL. With seven players drafted this April and many more signed as free agents, the Florida Gators are well represented in the NFL. After two full seasons under Dan Mullen’s Gators program, the messages from the head coach are being heard, the buy-in is high and the pay-off is evident.