The Florida Gators made headlines twice on Monday and not in the way they would have liked. The Treon Harris sexual assault investigation is a very serious matter and not something to be made light of but a second situation on Monday was blown out of proportion according to Will Muschamp.
The University of Florida Police Department was called to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Monday night after reports that two men were having a physical altercation outside of the stadium. The report from UFPD stated that quarterback Skyler Mornhinweg confronted freshman defensive lineman Gerald Willis about a pair of missing cleats that Mornhinweg had been searching for. Words escalated into a physical altercation that led to Mornhinweg needing to go to the hospital for several lacerations on his lip. The entire thing could have and should have been avoided, “It was a tremendous misunderstanding,” Muschamp said. “I tell you what, we’ve made a big one out of this.”
According to Muschamp, Willis could not find his cleats before practice one day. The Gators have a machine that shoots air into cleats to dry them after practice. Not wanting to be late for practice, Willis grabbed a pair of cleats with the number 17 on them, assuming they were Jordan Sherit’s cleats. Willis and Sherit are friends and Willis’ intent was not to steal the cleats, just borrow them so that he would not be late to practice.
“Nobody stole anything. If anybody stole anything, they wouldn’t be on this football team anymore,” said Muschamp. “I can assure you of that. We had a disagreement and I wish it would have been handled a little bit differently.”
With the heavy undertones of the day on Wednesday, Muschamp made light of the “fight” on the SEC teleconference and again with local media. Muschamp recounted times that he and his brothers would fight — jokingly admitting that he swung on his brothers but never made contact. A reporter joked that his sister beat him up when they were growing up, “That doesn’t shock me,” Muschamp quipped.
Other than creating a minor distraction on a day where the University of Florida, Muschamp and the Gators had their hands full with an actual serious matter and investigation, this quarrel between teammates seems to be something that is not serious and shouldn’t have been made a big deal of.
Muschamp and the Gators do not know what the backup quarterback situation will be this week with Harris suspended from all team activities. Mornhinweg and freshman Will Grier have been splitting the backup duties this week in practice and the team is not ready to name a backup for this Saturday’s game against LSU.
Gerald Willis is coming off of a game against Tennessee that saw the freshman’s role increase and he is fully expected to participate and play this week against his hometown LSU Tigers.
Now if there is no DNA match on Treon’s problem we can finally get back to some normalcy…We can’t let the grass-chewer get out of here with win. Unacceptable. May the postive mojo in the Gator universe align with our collective goal; beat LSU.