Fee Bartley joins the Spivey Senses podcast to discuss Will Grier

Former Florida Gators linebacker Fee Bartley joined the Spivey Senses podcast to discuss Will Grier’s suspension and what it means to the Gators going forward against the LSU Tigers and the rest of the season.

Andrew Spivey is also joined by Nick de la Torre to get his take on Florida Gators head coach Jim McElwain’s press conference, plus how he thinks Treon Harris can do on Saturday in Baton Rouge.

To finish off the podcast Andrew asked both Nick and Bartley what they would do to stop the LSU Tigers offense on Saturday and what the game plan should be for the Florida Gators.

TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew:                 Hello, Gator Country. You man, Andrew Spivey back. It’s Spivey Senses, but it ain’t so lovely today. As you can tell in the tone of voice, it’s been a bad Monday, and I can’t even be alone for this Monday. I have to bring in guest after guest. I’m lining them up. Nick de la Torre, I got to bring his Cuban self on this podcast. Also I’m going to bring on former player Fee Bartley. I’ll turn my attention to my first guest, Nick de la Torre. Nick, is it a privilege to be on my show, or what?

Nick:                         Misery loves company. That’s what they say. I feel like you’re just bringing me on to make you feel better today on a dark Monday for Florida fans.

Andrew:                 Can we have the belly rubbing again? I feel like that makes everything better.

Nick:                         You can find someone to rub your belly. It won’t be me though.

Andrew:                 Let’s just dive right on it. It’s one of those deals. I feel like we witnessed this a year ago with the Treon thing. You and I, I texted you this morning around 9:30 with a weird off the wall text that I got from a source up in Notre Dame, and we had talked about it for a while. Then when McElwain pushed back his press conference things just didn’t sit well with me. I felt like something weird was going on. Sure enough, it is. That was an emotional press conference. I’m not going to lie, very emotional from Will and from Coach Mac. I think it really showed the care Coach Mac has, giving Will a hug.

Here’s the thing that I think the best about this. I think we should applaud Florida. I think we should McElwain. I think we should applaud Will Grier for allowing Will to get up and give a statement. You see school after school nowadays these athletes when it is, but to me whether Will is telling the truth or not, you and I can’t judge it. We don’t know. We don’t know if he’s telling the truth, but whatever it is he was sincere about it. He addressed the problem. For me that meant a lot to me. What do you think on that?

Nick:                         I think it goes to, and I don’t know if it is Will’s idea or Jim McElwain’s idea, but I think it’s a good idea. It goes to the accountability things we’ve talked about on a smaller scale. The wide receivers, all of the graduate assistants and Coach Dixon keeping track of their drops in practice, and then putting it up for the entire team to see who’s dropping balls in practice. It goes to that kind of accountability. It’s part of growing up. Nobody is going to go through life unscathed and not make a mistake. The best thing you can do is to face those mistakes and face your consequences head on. It’s definitely not easy. It would have been very easy for Will Grier to not come today and say anything, and he wouldn’t talk to anyone from the media for another year. It would have been very easy for him to just disappear, fade away.

I think it’s a good idea on his part to face the music, as you can say and really own the mistake and take the blame. It’s also easy, a 19 year old kid, it’s easy to say, I did take this to somebody and somebody checked it off. Who? I don’t know. Somebody told me that it was fine. Kind of displace the blame. I think it shows a level of maturity to not try to push the blame off on anyone else and say I know I was supposed to take any supplements to the medical staff and have them check them. I knowingly bought something and took it without doing that, so this is on me.

Andrew:                 You and I talked about this a lot. I feel like you and I know a lot of, and you were an athlete, there’s so much. I told you off the air. I had a buddy of mine who took cough medicine because it had a sleep aid in it. He was suspended from baseball in Division II because of that. I’m taking up for Will in any means. He should have had it checked off, but to say that he willingly went out and got drunk and drove or willingly went out and bought weed, I don’t put this in the same instance.

My issue with this whole situations is this. A year’s suspension for this, in my opinion, is diabolically stupid, idiotic, any word you can say. A guy can illegally go buy marijuana, illegally go buy drugs that are not legal in the country, and get suspended for one game. A man can go to the store, buy a supplement that you and I can go to the store and buy legally, and he gets suspended for a year. You can me, he should have known this. You know you’re buying drugs illegally. It doesn’t make sense to me. You can’t make me understand the NCAA. In my opinion it’s stupid.

Nick:                         Yeah. Getting into the banned list, run you through it real quick without being too boring. The NCAA bans the following classes of drugs: stimulants, anabolic agents, alcohol, beta blockers, diuretics and other masking agents, street drugs, peptide hormones and analogues, antiestrogens and beta II agonists. Under that it says, note: any substance chemically related to these classes is also banned. Under that, note to student athletes: there is no complete list of banned substance. The NCAA is basically saying we’ve banned so much stuff that even we can’t keep track of it, which goes back to saying and them teaching, I mean the coaching staff and the compliance and the trainers, trying to teach the players take the decision out of your hands. Bring it to us. You don’t need to know what’s banned, just bring everything to us. To me, I agree with you. You’ve got instances where why can’t Will play during the appeal process?

Andrew:                 I have no problem with that.

Nick:                         You can steal something and be, now it’s not the NCAA it’s a state legal system handling that, but to me I just don’t understand it. The NCAA has so many rules that just don’t make sense, and this is one of them. I not taking any blame. I think all of the blame on this falls on Will Grier’s shoulders. It’s kind of a situation where you don’t have to agree with the rules, but you have to play by them.

Andrew:                 This is another thing, and I hate to bring this up, but I feel like I have to. Steve Sarkisian, he’s just released, fired, today for alcohol. He willingly put his team in harm’s way by being drunk on the football field and while he’s in charge of his team on a flight home is drunk. The NCAA knew about this. USC gave him a leave of absence, but the NCAA didn’t even suspend him here. I’m not trying to take up for Will Grier. I’m just trying to understand the NCAA and their stupid policies. I can’t understand it.

Nick:                         It is un-understandable. I might have made up a word, un-understandable.

Andrew:                 Before we get Fee Bartley, former Gator, on, he’s got a lot of things to talk about with us. Let’s just move on a little bit. It’s been a whirlwind of a day. We’ve had a couple things and been able to think about it, not as much as I want to, and I’m sure you’re the same way. Just going real quick on Treon Harris. It’d be different if it was a guy that hasn’t played, but Treon has been on the biggest of biggest stages. Neyland Stadium, first game ever. He’s been on the big stage. He has played in games. You have a football coach in Jim McElwain who understands how to make a game plan around his quarterback. Florida’s not in as good a shape as they are without Will Grier. I’ll admit that, but is Florida done, buried? I don’t think so.

Nick:                         Don’t make me bring out my south Florida bias here, Andrew. Like you with your Tennessee, I am always ready to let you know that players from south Florida are just generally better at everything.

Andrew:                 It’s not even so much the south Florida thing. Treon Harris, for instance, has played in big games in high school, but just look at his freshman year. He played in the biggest of big games. Someone asked me this, and I hate to bring this up with the way the situation’s going on, but someone asked me today on a radio show out of Pensacola. They said, will the team rally around Treon? I said, I’m going to be honest with you. I think the team probably backs Treon Harris, the receivers back Treon more than they backed Will Grier at the beginning of the year. You look at it. Brandon Powell, a guy he played youth football with. Antonio Callaway, someone Treon calls his cousin. Demarcus Robinson, they’re boys. They threw around a lot in the summer. This team had rallied around Treon probably more than they rallied around Grier, because of last year. I don’t think the team rallying around Treon is going to be a problem.

Nick:                         No. I think that that was what Will Grier had to kind of overcome. There’s a difference between what you do in practice and what you do on Saturday. It’s kind of like, to use a war analogy, you’ve got a certain relationship with the guy that you went through basic training with, and you’ve got a different relationship with the guy that you were in the trenches with. The players liked and respected Will Grier because they’d seen what he had done in practice and in leading the player run practice things, but he redshirted. He hadn’t gone to war with them, as a figure of speech. You can’t see my air quotes here. He hadn’t gone to war with them yet on Saturday. So they knew what kind of competitor Treon was on Saturday, and that’s where that kind of relationship came from.

I think if you would’ve asked the players off the record, of course, they would have said that a lot of them would have rather Treon would have started from Day 1, because they knew what they were going to get from him from jump. I think that Will has kind of overcome that. Diving into the end zone head first, getting hit, taking all these licks from guys, clearing coming up off the turf in pain after taking hits and staying in the game, refusing to come out. I think he’s earned that respect. Do they need to rally? No. I think Will has just gotten to that level of respect through his play on Saturday that Treon already had from the players.

Andrew:                 This is going to sound crazy when I say it, and I can’t believe I’m saying it, but going to LSU Treon has more experience in this big atmosphere than Will does.

Nick:                         Yeah. I did a little question and answer with a Baton Rouge newspaper. They asked about the crowd noise, stuff like that, and I mentioned, Treon Harris was in school for about six weeks before he went on the road to Tennessee and two 4th quarter scoring drives to beat Tennessee for the 10th straight year in a row. Treon is from an area in Miami that is not easy to grow up in. Tragedy happens on a daily basis. Treon lost a cousin in the spring. Tragedy is not something that happens every once in a while for people from that area of Miami. It’s a daily occurrence. There’s not much on a football field that will rattle Treon Harris, because of what he’s seen in his day to day life growing up in the area of Miami where he grew up.

Andrew:                 Adversity.

Nick:                         Can you replicate 100,000, because they’ve increased the stadium seating to 103,000 in Death Valley, can you replicate 103,000 drunk LSU fans for a Top 10 matchup between undefeated teams? Can you replicate that? No. Does Knoxville live up to that? Probably not. This is probably going to be the most raucous, hostile environment that any of these players will ever play in, but to me the way Treon’s grown up, the kind of person he is, and the things he’s dealt with on a personal level, there’s nothing that a fan sitting in the front row can say to him that will rattle him, and I don’t think that stage and that environment is too big for him.

Andrew:                 He’s faced adversity. That’s the biggest thing. Here’s the fact of the matter. The team has to play well around him. That’s Will. That’s Treon. That’s whoever it is playing quarterback on Saturday. The offensive line’s got to play well, and quite frankly, the game is going to come up to the defense. I don’t care if it’s Will Grier playing quarterback or if it’s Treon Harris playing quarterback. If the defense doesn’t play well against Leonard Fournette the game’s not going to be won. The Florida defense has to win this football game, whether it is the 2008 Urban Meyer offense or if it’s the 2015 TCU offense, this defense has to play well, or Fournette runs them out of the building.

Nick:                         Yeah. Jim McElwain was really excited about this too. This is why I love LSU vs. Florida. This is why I love SEC football. The SEC’s kind of gotten away with it with some of the spread offenses, but you look at Brandon Harris, and he threw for over 200 yards against South Carolina. That’s nice. I think there’s two reasons why LSU did that last week. One, you’re playing a dumpster fire of a defense in South Carolina, so you think that you can get Brandon Harris some confidence, and you should be able to complete passes against them, and two, you want to put it on tape.

LSU’s not going to beat Florida through the air this year. They’re not going to beat many teams through the air. They are a very one dimensional football team, but that one dimension revolves around the best player in college football in Leonard Fournette. This, to me, is the matchup. This is old fashioned SEC football. This game is going to be won in the trenches. This game is going to be physical. Hide your kids, hide your wife. Make sure the kids are to bed. Not for the faint of heart. This is a big boy football game that’s going to be won for LSU on the ground. Florida’s going to have to find some success through the air as well as on the ground.

Also I’m interested to see what kind of option game gets moved in. Will Grier has shown, and you and I never said that he was an immobile quarterback, but he’s proven to people who didn’t think he could run that he can run. Harris is a more natural runner, a more elusive runner. It’ll be interesting to see how much option, read option stuff, gets put into the offense this week going up to LSU. We saw a great offensive game plan against Ole Miss where they ran east and west and ran Ole Miss’s defense sideline to sideline, and that really tired them down. You saw Robert Nkemdiche sucking wind on the sideline. How much will Florida try to do that as well to try to slow down LSU’s front seven?

Also, time of possession. I know it’s a stat that Gator fans hate, thanks to Will Muschamp. Time of possession is helping Florida’s defense this year. It’s not the same time of possession where Florida would run 39 seconds off the clock to run a ball to the middle, and then wait 39 seconds to run a ball to the middle again. They’re doing it differently this year. There is some hurry up stuff. Time of possession to keep Florida’s defense fresh. Leonard Fournette’s a guy that will make you want to stop hitting him and stop getting in front of him. You can kind of delay that the longer you keep the defense fresh.

Andrew:                 Now that you hit on the point of the Xs and Os we’re going to bring in Fee Bartley here in just a second. Last little thing that I want to say real quick on that. I wonder what goes through Antonio Morrison’s mind, because he’s a guy that I think likes to get hit. Does he sit there and lick his chops?

Nick:                         This game is Antonio Morrison.

Andrew:                 I was about to say. This is Chicago style fist fight that Morrison likes. Could we see a Morrison, just give me this picture real quick. It won’t happen, but it could be funny. The spikes Marino hit, what if Morrison was to pop Fournette and just stand over him like, sit down, boy.

Nick:                         I don’t think that happens. I think you might get a Tim Tebow, Eric Berry kind of collision where the guys run into each other, and they both kind of just fall off to the side and nobody gets the advantage. I don’t think there is a player in college football that would hit Leonard Fournette, drive him onto his back, and then stand over top of him.

Andrew:                 For LSU’s extra point can we have Oklahoma drill between Fournette and Morrison, the winner gets the point. Then we can turn it around and go KT or somebody else versus someone. We could have Demarcus Robinson versus Jamal Adams, best dance contest, because we know Adams likes to dance after he supposedly got hit last year. We could have a dance off for Florida’s extra point, and we could have Oklahoma drill. Nick, you know, Morrison’s a bad MF. I hate to say that word.

Nick:                         He is a bad dude on the football field. He loves contact. I can’t stress it enough. These are the games that Antonio Morrison signed up for when he came to play football in the Southeastern Conference. This is what football is to Antonio Morrison. If Antonio Morrison had his way, there would be no five wide. There would be no spread option offenses. There would be no passing at all. You would have to run the football, and he would enjoy every single hit, whether he got the best of it or he got the worst of it. Antonio Morrison was made for this football game.

Andrew:                 Yeah.

Nick:                         I get the first pick this week for players, and Antonio Morrison will be my player.

Andrew:                 Okay. Real quick I want to say this one more point that I think we’ve forgotten. I totally forgot about it, but McElwain being on staff with Kevin Steele. You do not know how big of an advantage that is for Florida. Do not know how big of an advantage that is for Nussmeyer and McElwain to know his tendency. That is very huge. Nick, our man Fee Bartley is waiting. He’s ready to come on. I’m tell you, this guy is one of the smartest guys I know. Nick, I told you yesterday on Sunday afternoon, Fee and I spent over an hour talking Xs and Os. Let’s just go to Fee. Let’s let Fee talk some game here with us. Let’s bring on Fee Bartley now.

We’re back with my man, Mr. Fee Bartley. Fee, how does it feel to be joining me on my podcast? Do you feel like a lucky man or what?

Fee:                          I don’t know how to answer that at this point. I’m just going to be nice.

Andrew:                 I thought we were boys, but I see right now. Fee has turned his back on me. He must be a Tennessee Volunteer. I thought you were a Florida Gator, Fee.

Fee:                          Andrew, it has been a pleasure meeting you and getting to know you over the last couple weeks.

Andrew:                 Definitely. Fee, bad news kind of came around the program. To me, I’ve been around it a little bit as a coach, but you’ve been around it far more than I could ever think about it. How does a team deal with adversity like this? What do you think has gone on in that meeting, went on in practice, and what do you think goes on the rest of the week?

Fee:                          I think you go through the whole emotional gambit. When I was at Florida we were having a pretty good year going, and all of a sudden we lose the head coach. We lose the starting quarterback, the backup, including Shane Matthews to a situation we don’t even want to get into anymore. You get pissed off at the guys about the situation, but then you go on the practice field, you’ve got to focus to try to find ways to step up and get it done.

Andrew:                 You’ve been able to see this a lot. You and I talked about this with Grier and Treon. I told this to Nick beforehand. It almost seems like Treon is kind of the more experienced guy going into this game. From the outside looking in, and from what you know, what do you think Treon’s mindset is? How much does being on the practice field going through the drills with the guy really get a guy prepared?

Fee:                          It’s everything. You get to see it. You understand what’s going to happen. You’re able to anticipate what’s going on, understand where you’re supposed to be, where your guys are supposed to be. It becomes second nature when you get on the field. Game time comes, you’re all clicked in. You’re zoned in and know where you’re supposed to be, especially if you prepared and you understand what the coaches want you to do.

Andrew:                 Right. You being a defense guy. This in my opinion is a defensive football game. Defense loves this kind of football game. If you were drawing up the game plan for this week, what would be your game plan if you DC Fee Bartley instead of DC Geoff Collins? What would the game plan be like in your book?

Fee:                          What we’d tried to do against Tennessee. I think we have a bunch of defensive ends up front. We have a bunch of big bodies that we can move to linebacker, like Cox playing as Sam linebacker this week to play 4-3 or some kind of over slide. Put him at the line of scrimmage over tight end. What’s going to be different, what we haven’t seen a lot of is the fullback. Fullback leads inside Powers. Fullback come around tackles off our guard. [inaudible] big body to be able to lead those fullbacks, which LSU’s going to do a lot of. [inaudible] Plug up the middle so that our boy can run the ball down, which he does best.

Nick:                         That’s what I wanted to get into. We were talking about that. In my opinion, if Antonio Morrison was the president of football there would be no passing. There would be no five wides. There would be no option. You would have to run the ball, and this is what Antonio Morrison signed up for. This is why he left Illinois to come down and play football in the SEC. I know Brandon Harris passed on a pretty putrid defense in South Carolina last week. So did Drew Lock, who didn’t have that kind of same success against Florida. I really think LSU will be one dimensional. That one dimension is Leonard Fournette, which is a pretty good dimension to rely on, but do you see this as a game that Antonio Morrison was born to play in?

Fee:                          This is Antonio’s forte. Let me run and go hit something. [inaudible] Protect Antonio make him have to be going sidelines and be able to meet Fournette in the hole and backed up by our safeties who I don’t think are going to be afraid of this guy. I don’t see Neal backing down from Fournette. I think they’ll give Fournette everything, and I think Morrison will also. [inaudible]

Nick:                         Florida’s defense has kind of had some freedom to do what they want, starting up front with Alex McAllister said he’s allowed to swim when he wants to, rip when he wants to, stuff like that. How important will it be to kind of rein that in? You don’t want to chop their nose off to spite the face. How important will it be for Florida to stay gap sound, to stay assignment sound when you’re going up against an offense and offensive player like Fournette?

Fee:                          My thing about it, I think we need more movement in this game. Switch the gaps. Getting in the back field and not letting the big fellow get any movement going forward. Stop that movement. You should see a lot of stunts going in, slant. [inaudible]

Andrew:                 That’s kind of what you and I talked about this yesterday. The Eagle front that they’ve been running, in my opinion is good against this team, against a team like LSU, because Florida does have big safeties in Marcus Maye and Keanu Neal. Daniel McMillian in my opinion is a really good what you call the rush end or the Joker, outside linebacker in the defense in the bear front. Muschamp did recruit really good defensive guys for this style of offense. How big do you think that the defensive line has to readjust their mindset going into this week? Is it something they can just turn on and off, or is it something they’re really going to have to focus on this week of not getting out of their lanes, playing disciplined football?

Fee:                          I think it’s going to be a mindset, starting actually yesterday. This is where you need to be. When we call a slant I need you to get across that face. I need you to penetrate. I need you to put your big boy pants on getting these guys, stop the movement. Don’t let them get any movement, and really focus on being where you’re supposed to be in defense. I look at our guys we have available to put up front. Like me and you talked about, you’ve got a chance to put Cox at a strong side linebacker, Bullard at a defensive tackle, maybe Brantley at 1-technique, Ivie at a 1. Have Sherrit or McMillian come up the corner and just needing a fullback or a guard in the back field. You have a chance to put some big bodies up front and slow it down, as well as you’ve got two regular safeties who aren’t scared to hit anybody.

Andrew:                 Right. Going in, you’re focusing on Fournette, of course. Would you blitz a lot? Would you do more run blitzes, or do you think it’s better staying home, just playing a base defense in this game? Are the run blitzes from the safeties good in this game? I haven’t watched enough of LSU to make that call. You have watched a little more. What would you say?

Fee:                          I’d say you mix it up. It’s like everything. Collins has been doing a great job of mixing it up. I think you run blitz on a couple of downs to slow Fournette down. [inaudible] Let Harris get into any kind of rhythm, and about getting the run game established or letting him feel comfortable over short passes in pocket. You back off. You blitz. [inaudible]

Andrew:                 Right. Last little thing before we get you off of here, what has been your take of this season from Jim McElwain? What is your impression of this team so far? Are you shocked that they went to 6-0? Did you see that there was talent just needing a new face of the program?

Fee:                          I knew we had some good guys watching practice. I knew some guys on offense just wasn’t getting the encouragement or the opportunity to shine. Get a good coach in to know how to manage the team, knows how to get a guy up and ready to play. I can’t sit here and honestly say I knew we’d be 6-0. That would just wrong. My thing this year, I thought we’d be 8-4. We’d get one of these young quarterbacks up and going, and we’d really put ourselves in a good situation down the road to compete for the East. We’re still competing for the East now, but it’s way ahead of where I thought we’d be right now. The biggest surprise, and I said in my article the other day, was Summers and this offensive line. We had some losses against Missouri, but there are fewer and fewer communication breakdowns. The guys were communicating. They were hitting people. They were coming off the ball as a unit. We are way ahead of where I thought we’d be.

Andrew:                 Right.

Nick:                         Florida’s kind of a year early, kind of what you alluded to there, a year early in this rebuilding process. With this being a minor setback here.

Andrew:                 Fee, real quick. You’re a former player. With Coach Mac do you like the way he’s handled this program? Do you like the approach he has? Is it something you’re proud of?

Fee:                          I’m proud of the coach knowing you’ve got a good guy like Mac out there. I’ve watched the Kelvin incident, and that was way overblown in my opinion. Other than that he’s handled every situation with as much class as you could ever hope for. The thing I look for, the guys played and are back to fun playing on that Swamp on Saturdays. The energy was just drained out of the Swamp in the kids and the fans watching us play for a while under that guy I won’t mention. With McElwain it seems like the agility goes out and just the happiness is still there. I heard an article last week, it’s okay to win. It’s okay to be successful and go out and do the things you were brought here to do.

Nick:                         So much when you’re losing the way that Florida did the past two years, you kind of are just waiting and standing on eggshells. We’re winning right now, but how are we going to lose this one? It’s almost relearning that confidence. Like McElwain says, not being afraid to be great. Not being afraid to win. It sounds stupid. What do you mean, not being afraid to win? That’s why you’re playing. Through conditioning and losing you kind of lose that confidence, and you have to relearn it.

Fee:                          We always talk about as a group, all ex-players, the difference between when Coach Hall was here, Darnell and whatever and assistant coaches approaching the game. [inaudible] It was a whole different mindset what they said in public, in private in how we approached the game. I think it’s like, let’s go out there and have fun and enjoy ourselves, but we’re playing to win. You feel that when they take the field. You feel that when the offense takes the field. [inaudible] You didn’t feel that with Will Muschamp.

Andrew:                 Right. That’s the thing I say as well. It’s a confidence around. Fee, we appreciate you coming on so much. I know the fans are looking forward to reading your next story. We really appreciate it. We’re going to have to make this a weekly thing getting you on. Thanks so much for coming on.

Fee:                          You’re welcome.

Andrew:                 Talk to you soon, Fee. Nick, that was Fee. The man’s a really good interview, a great guy to talk to, knows his stuff a lot. Quick thoughts on what he said. Anything that stood out to you?

Nick:                         He’s just a very knowledgeable guy, a former linebacker, very knowledgeable about the game of football. Very knowledgeable and very passionate about the University of Florida. I think any time you get somebody who not only has knowledge of the game, but is also knowledge of the game that coincides with Florida I think any time that person talks you kind of make sure you’ve taken a Q-Tip to your ears. Make sure they’re clean so you’re hearing everything he says.

Andrew:                 He had a good point. I brought the question up to him about respecting the coach, because I think that a lot of former players lost respect for Will Muschamp by the way he would handle winning, and I don’t mean winning games, but never showing confidence. I asked that question wanting to hear what Fee, a former player, said, because Fee’s a very passionate Gator fan. When you get to talk to him, as you heard in that, he’s a very passionate fan. I kind of wanted to hear what he had to say. I really liked his quote. He said, he liked that there was confidence, that the guys played hard. That’s the utmost respect for a guy like Jim McElwain.

Nick:                         Yeah. I think these guys, obviously Will was very emotional today during the press conference. He didn’t answer any questions. We didn’t expect him to, but very emotional. You can kind of see Jim McElwain just put his arm around Will and be there to comfort him. I think that’s something the players see, and that they like about Jim and that they respect about him as well.

Andrew:                 One thing to remember here. There’s been crazier things to get a team to rally around. Going to Death Valley rallying around a fallen teammate that is no longer able to play for a suspension could rally the team around. I do expect the Gators to go into Death Valley and do expect a battle.

Nick:                         Jim McElwain said, I promise you we will run out of the tunnel, or walk, or I’ll yank them out of the tunnel. We’ll be there on Saturday.

Andrew:                 Here’s the thing for me. I said this to you off the air when we were talking earlier. Had this been Will Muschamp’s football team no way shape or form, I ain’t going to lie to you, I wouldn’t be headed to Baton Rouge this weekend.

Nick:                         I’m trying to get some beignets.

Andrew:                 You’re a skinny fat boy. I’m a fat boy that doesn’t like to eat, and I’m fat. Who knows? I do think that there’s a confidence there, and Florida will have a good game plan. If they execute it, that’s another question. Defense has to win this football game. Nick, we got a great week. I said it on Twitter today. It’s a big week for the Gators. You and I have a big week. As ya’ll know.

Nick:                         Big week for the podcast.

Andrew:                 Big week for the podcast, but you and I, we’ve kind of got to jam everything up, because you and I will be taking a three day work trip.

Nick:                         We watch football for a living, so everything is kind of a vacation. You get some days like this where it rains on vacation, but you and I will never complain about our job. We’ve got a pretty cool job.

Andrew:                 Absolutely. Real quick, we’re going to have Billy Horschel, former Gator golfer and FedEx champion. He’s going to join us for the Wednesday podcast. We’ll tape that on Tuesday. If anybody is listening to this podcast, and you want to tweet any questions to Billy, shoot them at myself @AndrewSpiveyGC, Nick @NickdelaTorreGC, or on the website www.GatorCountry.com. Nick, you have another guest coming on on Wednesday. Who is that?

Nick:                         Who did you tell them already? We have a surprise too.

Andrew:                 Bill Horschel is that one, but you can give them.

Nick:                         We’ll be getting on Ross Dellenger, he writes for LSU. Had the chance to meet him at SEC Media Days. He and I would tweet back and forth at each other during rain delays and pitching conferences, mound visits while he was covering LSU baseball. Have built a nice little relationship through that. He is very knowledgeable about everything LSU, and we will bring him on. Very happy to have him on.

Andrew:                 I think we should keep one as a surprise.

Nick:                         We should keep the second as a surprise. Somebody else attached to LSU, another LSU guest.

Andrew:                 He’s a big boy.

Nick:                         So it’s not Les Miles?

Andrew:                 Les Miles is weird.

Nick:                         You had one job.

Andrew:                 I had one job. That’s right. You can’t make me do everything, Nick. I just don’t know, Nick. I just don’t know. I’m not being prime time this week. That’s the word for this week, prime time football. My word this week is prime time. It may not be hip, but I do consider myself to be the greatest prime time, the goat, whatever. Hit me up. Let me know how goat I am. Nick, let’s just go ahead and get off this podcast. Maybe we can end this bad luck today and give it back to Tennessee.

Nick:                         How do we even end this. We’re not even on my podcast. I’m a guest on yours. Does the guest sign out?

Andrew:                 I’ll let you give your few magic words. Then I’ll close my show.

Nick:                         You always ruin my close. We should just drop the mike. Drop the mike with stay classy.

Andrew:                 There’s nothing classy about anything I say.

Nick:                         Some of the things that I say are classy.

Andrew:                 Yeah, but when do I say anything classy?

Nick:                         I would venture to say never. I’m using an absolute, but I would venture to say never.

Andrew:                 It’s not very often that I’m very nice. I’m not a very nice person.

Nick:                         Gator Country, do as Andrew says, not as he does. That means, as always, you stay classy, Gator Country.

Andrew:                 Guys, as always, recruiting mailbag will be on Thursday for you guys. Hit it upon Twitter or message board. Give me your recruiting questions. Maybe I’ll have another guest next week, if not you get to hear my boring voice break down the game from last week. Sorry we didn’t break down the Missouri game. A quick couple thoughts. I thought they played really well against a very good defense. Grier at times didn’t set his feet, but overall it was good. Getting Fee, getting Nick on to talk about the big news was kind of more important. Hope you guys check out our podcast the rest of the week. As always, Butch, Mark, you’re no good. Go Braves.

 

Andrew Spivey
Andrew always knew he wanted to be involved with sports in some capacity. He began by coaching high school football for six years before deciding to pursue a career in journalism. While coaching, he was a part of two state semifinal teams in the state of Alabama. Given his past coaching experience, he figured covering recruiting would be a perfect fit. He began his career as an intern for Rivals.com, covering University of Florida football recruiting. After interning with Rivals for six months, he joined the Gator Country family as a recruiting analyst. Andrew enjoys spending his free time on the golf course and watching his beloved Atlanta Braves. Follow him on Twitter at @AndrewSpiveyGC.

3 COMMENTS

  1. AS the reason that PEDs are punished more harshly that off the field criminal charges is because they affect the game. You would have to be incredibly naive to think that Grier did not know what he was risking. It was a mistake. The stakes are high and he wanted to be a star.

    • I understand your reason but until we know what he took then we are just speculating that it was anything that affected the game.

    • We will likely never know, but I think it is a safe assumption that it was some type of muscle gainer/workout supplement. The players know that all medication goes through medical staff, and the only reason not to go through them is if you are trying to get away with something.