Franz Beard’s Basketball Confidential

The Florida Gators should be getting an unofficial visit from one coveted big guy next week and there is some good news on the recruiting front for another big. If the Gators can land these two in the class of 2008, Florida might have another number one-ranked recruiting class.

The Gators will be getting an unofficial visit out of Colton Iverson (6-10, 245, Yankton, SD) next week and it is a very good possibility he won’t leave Gainesville without committing to Billy Donovan. Unless something changes between now and then, it’s pretty much Florida or Minnesota, Billy Donovan or Tubby Smith, sunshine and tanned girls in shorts or tundra and full body length down-filled parkas with fur hoods. Since he lives in South Dakota (I think Dakota is a Sioux word for perilously colder than a well digger’s butt) don’t discount the girls from the tundra. Comparatively speaking, Minneapolis is a resort to South Dakota in the winter. Still, I think Florida’s weather will be a lure just as it was when Al Horford made his decision. It was Michigan and butt deep in snow or Florida and shorts in the winter. Al chose shorts. I think Iverson will, too.

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Franz Beard
Back in January of 1969, the late, great Jack Hairston, then the sports editor of the Jacksonville Journal, called me on the phone one night and asked me if I wanted to work for him. I said yes. The entire interview took 30 seconds. It's my experience that whenever the interview lasts 30 seconds or less, I get the job. In the 48 years that I've been writing and getting paid for it, I've covered Super Bowls, World Series, NCAA basketball championships, BCS championship games, heavyweight title fights and what seems like thousands of college football, baseball and basketball games. I'm a columnist and special assignments editor for Gator Country once again, writing about the only team that ever mattered to me, the Florida Gators.