By Will Miles
Football – Spring practice begins
It’s hard to believe that spring practice is already here.
2021 was such a weird season, with the end of the 2020 season coming so quickly in the Cotton Bowl and then there being no subsequent spring game. It felt like an eternity between the 2020 SEC Championship against Alabama and the Tide coming to Gainesville last season.
We’re back to a little bit of normalcy now for the 2022 year. Not only is the Orange and Blue Debut back, but things like media availability for both players and coaches has returned as well. That doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily learn more than we did the past two seasons when practices were more closed off due to the pandemic, but it is nice to have the familiar sights and sounds of a spring season back.
One thing to remember, regardless of what you hear, is that at this time of year, everything is fluid. Some might even call them spring lies. The reality is that the coaches are going to use the media to praise guys they think need to be praised and send messages to guys who need to be pushed. We all remember the reports years ago of Dre Massey or Andre Debose taking huge steps only to not see that translate on the field into huge levels of success.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t things to glean from spring practice. But it does mean that the things we learn are limited. I realize there is an unlimited appetite for Gator football, so enjoy what you see and you can probably draw conclusions from the things you see yourself. I just wouldn’t put too much stock in what you hear.
Football – Richardson Cleared
One thing that is really significant is that news came yesterday that Anthony Richardson has been fully cleared for spring practice.
As a guy who got limited reps last season – and was a backup when he was getting reps most of the time – being able to get these reps as a new system is installed is vital. I still think Richardson is gifted enough that even if he had missed this time he would have been okay, but now there isn’t any excuse. If he gets beat out, it’s because someone played better than him.
Richardson being available also means that Billy Napier will get a full look at who he has at quarterback. Dan Mullen was heavily criticized for playing players with seniority, but since Napier doesn’t have strong relationships with any of these guys, expect the best player to play.
That may or may not be Richardson. I hope it is because he definitely has the biggest upside of the signal callers on the roster. But now Napier gets a full look at everything he can do. Let’s hope AR takes advantage.
Football – Jones talked into staying
The opening of spring practice came with this nugget: Emory Jones was ready to transfer, but Billy Napier and Company talked him out of it.
To hear Jones’ telling, he met with the coaches but had already made up his mind and they changed it. That meshes with the announcement that he was going to enter the transfer portal right before the Gasparilla Bowl. That made sense given that he has less years of eligibility remaining than Richardson, he committed to Dan Mullen and the fan base was saying things about him that made his mom stay way.
I’m still not sure that Jones is in Gainesville when fall camp starts. I say that because this really is Richardson’s job to lose. Jack Miller is the handpicked guy to back-up Richardson if things go wrong. Jones is just an insurance policy beyond that. Florida isn’t going to have six scholarship QBs on the roster come fall, so something has to give.
But Jones also has shown outstanding character dealing with the criticism that’s come his way over the past year. I suspect that Billy Napier knows that quality is important as he transitions into the Florida job. Perhaps Jones can improve and earn himself the starting job. That isn’t going to be a popular thing with Gators fans – and probably means the departure of Richardson – but I admire that he’s sticking it out to try.
Basketball – Mike White Out
Many Florida fans got their wish when Mike White decided to leave Gainesville and take the head coaching job with hated rival Georgia.
The departure of White wasn’t a complete surprise. His teams have been trending in the wrong direction since 2017 and his inability to win with either high school recruited talent or transfer talent really sealed his fate. Like it or not, the “mid-major Mike” moniker wasn’t going to be something that was shaken without major success, and considering the lack of recruiting (41st and 51st nationally in 2020 and 2021), it was going to take a one-and-done star to make that happen.
White is a solid basketball coach, but not a great one based on what he’s shown in Gainesville. Too often he would win games he shouldn’t and lose games that he should. We saw that this season as Florida lost to Texas Southern but then beat Auburn with its season on the line.
By all accounts, White is a great person too. There was no shortage of media members who came out in support of White after his departure to laud how he does things “the right way.” Certainly, his handling of the scary Keyontae Johnson situation last year does reflect that.
But at the end of the day, White is a basketball coach who is paid to win basketball games. He didn’t do that enough for the Gators fan base, and while I don’t think the Florida administration was probably willing to pay a buyout to make him leave, I don’t think they’re heartbroken to see him go.
And that’s perhaps the thing that makes White’s tenure so polarizing. If White was a jerk who lost a little more, the decision would be easy. The fact that he’s a good person and just isn’t quite winning enough makes it hard.
Of course, those sorts of hard decisions are why Scott Stricklin gets paid what he does.
Basketball – Who’s Next?
White’s departure leads to the inevitable discussion of who the next coach should be. I think that’s an interesting discussion because it also leads to a discussion of what the Florida basketball program wants to be.
There are some fans who want to win no matter what. Certainly we’ve seen what that can look like at schools like LSU, who just let their head coach Will Wade go over allegations tied to FBI wire taps. Florida has previously taken those sorts of things very seriously.
But let’s also be honest with ourselves. College basketball isn’t the cleanest sport, and has been that way for a long time. Accusations end up getting leveled at a lot of programs and a lot of players, and while it is difficult to know what exactly is true and what is not, I’m left with the feeling that you have to bend and/or break the rules to truly win big.
This isn’t new. The Fab 5/Ed Martin scandal was tied to Chris Webber’s time at Michigan in 1991. You can Google just about any elite player at this point and there are rumors – and sometimes even lawsuits with affidavits – pointing towards being paid to play.
The hope is that NIL policies will help reduce that, but I’m dubious. Especially in basketball, the impact of one player has an outsized effect on the program as a whole. Memphis would have been a good team back in 2007, but the engine that made that team go was Derrick Rose and that’s not to single out Rose as there are tons of other examples of that. That means that there is incentive to get that one big player who can turn things around, and significant incentive to go outside the rules to get that done.
Just like the steroid controversy in baseball, the ones who break the rules force the ones who don’t want to into a choice: follow suit or get left behind. Unfortunately, that might be the decision the Gators have to make.
Basketball – Pitino?
If you make the choice that you’re going to follow suit, then the guy Florida should target is Rick Pitino.
I mentioned the Ed Martin scandal intentionally in the section above because that scandal was about more than just the $280,000 Martin admitted to giving Webber. The scandal was actually discovered after a few Michigan players – along with some recruits – were in an auto accident from a trip where they stopped off at Martin’s house. That trip allegedly included a party that involved drugs, strippers and alcohol.
I’m not saying that is the way you want to raise young men. I’m also not saying that Florida should aspire to duplicate those scandals. But if you make the decision that you’re going to keep up with the Joneses, then it becomes pretty easy to see why Pitino might have been convinced he needed to bend the rules as well. That includes allegations of setting up payments for elite prospects and accusations of failing to monitor his program during a scandal involving an escort service. The NCAA vacated the 2012 Final Four appearance and 2013 National Championship while he was at Louisville. He also had the extortion scandal that is the source of many Twitter jokes.
But Pitino wins. He won at Boston University (91-51). He won at Providence (42-23). He won at Kentucky (219-50). He won at Louisville (416-143). And now he’s winning at Iona (37-13). If you want to win, and win at all costs, there isn’t anybody out there better on the market.
I seriously doubt Pitino is on Stricklin’s list. I think the optics would be difficult for many Florida fans to follow. I’m not sure I want Pitino to be the coach given some of his skeletons.
Still, I’m left with this weird feeling. The reason Pitino finds himself at Iona is because his skeletons have come out of the closet for everyone to view. I suspect that most major college coaches have skeletons too, they just haven’t made it to the light of day.
Baseball – Ruminating on bad loss to Seton Hall
Florida heads into this weekend’s 3-game series with Alabama with a full week to ruminate on the loss to close its series with Seton Hall. That loss is the Pirates only win this season in 13 tries, and so does cast some concern on the baseball program as SEC play comes on the horizon.
One of the reasons for the loss may have been looking ahead just a bit. The Gators had defeated the Pirates in the first two games of the series and scored 27 runs in those two games. They also had Florida State coming up on Tuesday, a rivalry game for the players on both teams who know each other well.
But now Florida gets to stew on the loss to Seton Hall for a full week because the game against FSU was postponed. That means looking back at the 5 walks and 2 HBP they had in the 6-4 loss (compared to 3 K’s) and figuring out how to reverse that trend on the mound.
Florida is still looking strong with a 13-4 record, but these are the kinds of series you need to sweep. And while the 11-9 victory the day before against the Pirates was less close than the score indicates, giving up 9 runs is obviously not ideal.
We’ll see whether this is a harbinger of things to come as the Gators move into the teeth of the SEC schedule. I’m curious to see if they lay waste to the Tide in the first game this week. They will have had almost a week since the loss to Seton Hall, and I wonder how bad they’ll want to get that taste out of their mouths.
Softball – 22-2 (2-1 SEC)
The softball team took 2 of 3 games against Mississippi State over the weekend. The sole loss was a 1-0 defeat in Sunday’s game, bookending 8-4 and 3-0 wins on Saturday and Monday against the Bulldogs.
It’s hard to say anything too critical about a team that is 22-2. And you also shouldn’t take for granted winning series in the SEC. But Mississippi State isn’t that great of a team (16-10). And it is a little bit worrisome that after getting shutout on Sunday, the Gators won 3-0 with two homeruns in the final frame.
That does make me wonder whether this lineup is going to be prone to periods where it struggles to put up runs. Crooked numbers are important, but the innings where you sneak a run across two or three times a game are sometimes more important.
I’m probably reading way too much into this. A series win in the SEC and a 22-2 overall record makes me confident there is a lot of softball in front of these girls. But for a team with championship aspirations, the little edges become really important when you start playing the who’s who of college softball.
That’s the great part of the regular season: that you have the ability to fix those things before the postseason. We’ll see whether it improves as the SEC season swings into full gear.
Gator fans unreasonable?
One theme with Mike White’s departure that was consistent among a contingent of Gators fans and media was that White was railroaded out of Gainesville unfairly. I take umbrage with that.
Certainly, anyone threatening White’s family or saying nasty things to his kids should stop and hopefully be confronted, but the idea that the vast majority of Gators fans have unrealistic expectations is unsupported by one fact: their expectations have already been realized in the recent past.
Yes, it is difficult to follow Billy Donovan. Yes, in some ways it was unfair to expect White to reach those heights. But it’s not as though White had never heard of Donovan before he took the Florida job. He took the job knowing full well what the expectations were going to be, and perhaps more importantly, he took the money associated with the job knowing the expectations.
In all of the discussion, I haven’t heard anyone say that White should have stayed at Louisiana Tech. Why is that? I mean, why wouldn’t White have wanted to stay at a Conference USA school and win 72% of his games for the next decade instead of bolting to Florida? Could it be that he signed a six-year, $3.6 million contract ($600,000 per year) with LA Tech in 2014 and the extension he signed in 2021 with Florida paid him $3.2 million per year.
I’m not begrudging White the money. If the market will pay you that kind of money, good for you. But everybody who acts like that additional money doesn’t come with additional expectations is being disingenuous. $600,000 a year is a lot of money, more than most of us are ever going to make. But White could have stayed in Louisiana, parlayed his status as an up-and-comer into a salary over a million and been criticism and expectation-free for a long while.
Instead, he chose to move. I think you can make the argument that the expectations around sports at Florida and other major programs is unhealthy, but White isn’t stupid. He made a choice, just like he made a choice to move on to Georgia.
Roles in the media
I’ve been very interested in the level of shade thrown at Florida fans by various folks in the media in the wake of White’s departure. Tim Brando was pontificating on Twitter after the win over Georgia about how the “helmetheads” didn’t know college basketball. Pat Dooley called Gators fans “Gidiots”. I’m not singling those two out, as plenty more have come out in support of White with a simple basic idea: the crucible that is Florida football – and now basketball – is white hot because of misguided fans and that forces good coaches to leave.
I think there is a good argument to be had about whether the expectations for Florida’s basketball program are too high. I may disagree with that assessment, but I can have a good-faith argument about why I may or may not be right and listen to the other side as well.
But I don’t think that’s an argument that is facilitated by calling fans who want more than what we’re getting dumb. In fact, I think that fosters the bitterness that leads to the heat being ramped up precisely because those people who do want more feel ignored. That leads some of them to elevate their rhetoric in a way that begets a response, and the cycle builds.
That isn’t a defense of someone going after Mike White’s kids. But it is a defense of someone who goes on Twitter and says they would like to see a change. I think that’s a defensible position, and the scoffing by some with large microphones at the very thought of that position is a big part of what turns up the heat.
It’s no fun to criticize a coach. I wish everything was peaches and cream. And I get that there is a delicate balance between the access that you get, the relationships you build and a need for critical thinking within the media. But it also shouldn’t be lost on those same media members that the “First Take” culture of sports coverage that their generation has built thrives on creating conflict and taking sides.
Admittedly, this is a self-serving argument, but that’s exactly why I think we should all be thankful that we have alternative forms of media out there. There are entities out there that don’t rely on access and so can be more honest than others. There are folks who are trying to generate good content rather than just viral content and can explore the nuance of various arguments.
Follow those people. Support those people. Give them a larger microphone so that they can represent positions in a way that turns down the overall heat. Or keep watching those who already have the power and ignore dissenting opinions, but remember they’re just as responsible for the crucible as the fans they criticize.