By Will Miles
WCWS comes to end for Gators
The Gators softball team exited the Women’s College World Series with a 1-2 record, following up a win over Oregon State (7-1) with losses to Oklahoma State (2-0) and UCLA (8-0).
While that’s a disappointing end to the season for these ladies, it’s quite an accomplishment to end up in the top-8 of college softball and while Oklahoma and Texas are still playing to determine the winner, I think we all know this one is probably going to the Sooners.
But there’s a lot of hope still on the horizon. Lexie Delbrey emerged to throw 111 innings this season with a 2.26 ERA as a freshman. Junior Rylee Trlicek pitched 41 innings with a team best 1.71 ERA. And team ace Elizabeth Hightower has a COVID year if she’d like to come back.
More than anything, this season emphasizes the quality of the program that Tim Walton has built. This wasn’t the most talented softball team that he has had in Gainesville, but it was a fun one to watch. And with a few tweaks – and Oklahoma coming back to earth a little bit – and the Gators will be contending for championships soon.
Gators baseball season ends in the regionals
After a 5+ hour rain delay, the Gators baseball team lost a disappointing game in the regionals against Oklahoma 5-4. That put the Gators at 1-2 against the Sooners in the tournament and ends what had been a pretty significant turnaround for a flawed team.
The 4-run 8th inning for the Sooners will be the thing that fans remember, but it really shouldn’t be. Perhaps the thing we should remember is the 2-1 extra innings win over South Carolina to open the SEC Tournament. Without that win – and subsequent run to the championship game in the tournament – Florida wouldn’t have hosted a regional.
And that is really what the problem was with this team. They were talented enough to hang with just about anybody not named Tennessee, but they were also inconsistent enough to lose to just about anybody as well.
Kevin O’Sullivan is going to have to figure some things out, as his teams have underperformed recently, but I still think he’s about the best candidate Florida could have in the manager’s seat. But with Mississippi State winning the championship last season and Tennessee looking like the favorite this year, the competition in the SEC isn’t getting any easier.
Night game for Utah
It was announced this week that Florida’s game against Utah is going to be at night.
As a fan, this is great news. Not only do we get a full day to tailgate, but the game will be at a time where the temperatures in the stadium are tolerable. Afternoon games are fun, but early September is oppressive for fans, particularly if you want to bring a kid to see the Gators play.
On the converse side of that though, the oppressive heat would be a real advantage against the Utes. The average high temperature in Gainesville in August/September is 90 degrees, but that doesn’t do it justice given the humidity. The average high temperature in Salt Lake City drops from 89 degrees in August to 79 degrees in September. But that does mean that the Utes will have been practicing in the heat all through the summer and suggests that the advantage the Gators may have will be the humidity.
And that doesn’t go away at night. Anybody who’s lived in Florida for any length of time has walked outside at night and had their glasses fog up or felt the cloud of humidity immediately upon walking outside. In some ways, that’s an advantage in itself as you just expect things to cool off at night and it never really does.
Regardless, having the fans get lubed up all day and then filling the Swamp for a matchup with a team that may be ranked in the top-10 is a bigger advantage than the weather could ever be.
Recruiting Update
I’m as impatient as anyone when it comes to recruiting. It’s part of why I have spent so much time looking at stats to understand when a class definitively comes together. In my head, I know Napier needs more time…..but that doesn’t mean I’m not getting nervous.
At this time, Florida has 5 commits, is ranked 41st overall in the ranking and has an average player rating of 88.09, below last season’s rating of 88.61. That average player rating would have been around 22nd nationally last season.
Meanwhile, LSU – with new coach Brian Kelly – has 5 commits with an average player rating of 92.07, better than last year’s 91.42.
These things change fast, especially when you’re only talking about one commit. But the reality is that we all know that this particular recruiting class is key to both Kelly’s and Napier’s futures. To see the Tigers ahead in any capacity is worrisome, even if I know things are going to change over time.
I’ve said before that the stats say we can’t really get worried or excited until September 1. I believe that. But Napier is testing my patience and if the recruiting dominos don’t start to fall in June and July, there are going to be some grumblings that start around Gainesville.
I think he’ll get the job done. I think he’ll get those commits coming up. But it’s time to see it happen.
College Football HOF
Brad Culpepper, Errict Rhett and Tim Tebow are on this year’s ballot for the College Football Hall of Fame.
Tebow is a no-brainer as one of the best players to ever lace it up. Culpepper is known as someone who helped lead those Gators defenses in the early Spurrier years. And I know that Rhett had some good seasons, but I have to admit that I didn’t realize how good until I started looking at his resume.
The first thing that jumps out at you is the 4,163 yards. That’s a ton of yardage over a 4-year career, especially considering that Florida’s last 1,000 yard rusher was Kelvin Taylor in 2015 and Rhett did it twice and just missed the other two times.
But the other thing that jumps out at you is the accolades. Rhett played in a different era, but was a running back in the Fun ‘N Gun early days, yet still he earned a nod for first team All-American in 1993 as well as two first team All-SEC nods (1991 and 1993) with the Gators.
Two-time All-SEC players should be locks for the College Football Hall of Fame. We’ll see what that means for Rhett this year.
Speed Gate
Anthony Richardson was fined $349 and ordered to write an essay explaining why he was going so fast by an Alachua County judge this week. The punishment stems from his speeding ticket for going 105 mph outside of Gainesville earlier in the offseason.
This should put the bed the issue, which became an issue when others questioned Richardson’s leadership ability and/or readiness to be the starting QB in the wake of making a dumb decision. I’ll agree that Richardson’s speeding ticket was excessive. What I can’t agree with were the folks who compared Richardson’s speeding to the crimes that former Alabama wide receiver Henry Ruggs is charged with.
Ruggs allegedly got drunk and then slammed into someone well in excess of 100 mph, causing a fire that killed the other driver and injured a woman in his car.
That Richardson didn’t have something like that happen to him is a blessing. Hopefully he takes this opportunity to reflect on whether it was worth it, as many of us have in our early years when we’ve been pulled over. The difference is that when I was in college, $349 was a lot of money I didn’t just want to give away. In the era of NIL, that probably isn’t the case for Richardson.
Of course, I didn’t have newspapers and pundits hounding me for my mistakes either, so perhaps Richardson has more motivation to avoid another such event than I ever did.
Speed Gate – Part 2
One interesting thing to come out of Richardson’s legal troubles – at least to me – is that the reasons he got the homework assignment is because he wasn’t prepared for the hearing.
Whether that’s due to his lawyer not preparing him or because he didn’t prepare himself by taking his lawyer’s advice is something we can’t know, but out of all of the things that might be concerning about this entire escapade, that is the thing that worries me the most.
It’s not that Richardson had a lot to worry about. The worst thing he was going to end up with was a fine and an essay. But to have this drag on – and to have news of a previous speeding ticket (a much less egregious 90 mph in a 70 mph zone in Georgia) come to light – without having a reasoned argument that would satisfy the judge is an oversight that shouldn’t have happened.
More than anything, it ends up being a part of the story rather than Richardson taking his lumps and putting it behind him. Now there will be another story about the essay he submits, and potentially the judge’s reaction to it. There will be someone who starts digging about what happened in Georgia. It’s just a distraction that nobody needs.
In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t important. But Utah is on the horizon, and hopefully Richardson is much more prepared for that than he was for this hearing.
Over/Under 6.5
If you look at Fanduel right now, they have the Gators over/under win total at 6.5. That’s a little bit misleading because the odds for the over (-170) are much more punitive than the odds for the under (+145), but that’s a way lower total than I expected.
In fact, I don’t think there’s any way that Florida hits the under unless Richardson misses half of the season. In our Read & Reaction Preview Magazine, one of the stats that jumped out to me was that Florida ranked 61st in the country in points per game but 21st in the country in yards per play. That means that just better translation of yards to point – which normally track – would put Florida near a top-20 offense. If Richardson ends up a star, that potential goes up even more.
The point is that this team went 6-7 with a 1-4 record in close games and an offense that severely underperformed its underlying metrics. To go under that 6.5, the exact same thing would have to happen again, and I just don’t see that happening.
I don’t gamble a ton, but in my view that line significantly undervalues the Gators.
SEC Realignment – Part 1
With the SEC adding Texas and Oklahoma, there are going to be shake-ups in the SEC schedule.
This doesn’t really worry me that much considering what happened when the SEC went to 12 teams in the early 90s and then 14 teams a few years ago and the realignment that caused. Prior to the formation of the SEC Championship Game, Florida fans never would have considered LSU a rivalry. But playing them as a permanent cross-rival – and having so many of the games be memorable on a path to significant seasons for both – has led to it getting more and more intense over the years.
The same thing will happen with this round of realignment. Even if a permanent cross-rival is someone Florida fans feel no ill-will towards, that changes the minute you play a team every year. That’s particularly true when that team beats you a couple of times.
For years, Florida fans essentially ignored Kentucky. That was because the Wildcats just couldn’t beat Florida and it was an expected win. But now, with Mark Stoops’ squad having won two of the last four, that is a game we have to look at with a little bit of trepidation. That’s a reverse of what’s happened with Tennessee, where the Vols used to be a huge Florida rival, but now the Gators own the Vols and until that changes, it isn’t really that big of a game.
The rivalries will develop because the SEC is good. How that is aligned probably doesn’t matter all that much.
SEC Realignment – Part 2
Of course, that doesn’t mean I don’t have my opinions about realignment and how it should work.
There has been a lot of talk of doing away with divisions and going to 7-1 or 6-2 schedule (rotating games vs. permanent games) or even adding a ninth game, but what I haven’t heard mentioned at all is the idea of going to four divisions.
The NFL has this for each of its divisions, as it has four divisions each. You could then play the three teams in your division, and two teams from the other divisions based on last year’s record. Then the SEC Championship is a two-week extravaganza where the division winner with the best record players the division winner with the worst, and the 2 and 3-seed play each other as well.
This eliminates the Alabama-Missouri problems of the past and probably gives you better championships games. It also means that winning your division – even if it’s only 4 teams – is paramount. Finally, a two week SEC Championship Tournament would rake in the dollars, especially if you had a final four of Florida, Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma. That’s a better lineup than some of CFB Playoffs we’ve had recently.
Will it happen? I have no idea, as I’m sure there are a lot of politics involved. But maximizing revenue – not preserving rivalries – is going to be the goal of conferences moving forward. As I mentioned in the above section, we as fans will get used to it, especially if it means that the SEC ends up with an even bigger college football profile than it currently has.