By Will Miles
Jason Marshall commitment
Last week, Florida fans got a surprise. 5-star cornerback Jason Marshall (29th nationally ranked player) committed to the Gators.
It was a surprise for a few reasons. First, it wasn’t clear that Marshall was going to commit this early. But it was more of a surprise because the prevailing wisdom was that Marshall was going to follow Palmetto High School teammate Leonard Taylor to Miami.
Instead, this is a major recruiting win for Dan Mullen. Not only did he get a big-time prospect to come to Gainesville, he kept him away from the rival Hurricanes and established that Florida is going to be a competitive force on the recruiting trail in Miami.
Any 5-star commit is a big deal, but there’s a big difference between a 5-star player in Jacksonville or Lakeland and a 5-star player in Dade County. Those guys usually end up Hurricanes, so Mullen being able to pry Marshall away is significant.
Corey Collier commitment
Marshall wasn’t the only Palmetto High player to choose the Gators. 4-star safety Corey Collier also chose to matriculate to Gainesville.
The same comments about recruiting in Miami apply for Collier that apply for Marshall. While Collier isn’t as highly rated as Marshall, that’s actually because there is disagreement in his rankings for the various recruiting services. 247Sports has Collier as the 179th ranked player while Rivals has him as the 17th overall player.
That kind of disagreement is actually a good thing for a recruit. What it means is that he’s likely a player with big-time physical skills who needs some work at the edges. This is the kind of player that Dan Mullen is going to excel with. He clearly develops players at a rate higher than his peers, so I’m more inclined to believe the Rivals ranking here than the 247Sports ranking.
Even with all of that, Collier still ranks as 83rd overall nationally in the 247Sports composite, and top-100 players are really, really good. So parse the rankings all you want, but end of the day, Collier has a chance to be a high-level NFL prospect, and Florida can use that at safety.
No, this doesn’t make recruiting elite
Gator fans certainly puffed out their chests on Twitter after the commitments of Collier and Marshall, and deservedly so.
But you don’t want to rate a recruiting class based on one or two players. Instead, you want to look at the overall strength of the class to define whether it is an elite class or not. The reality is that even after the commitments of Marshall and Collier, Florida’s 247Sports average player rating is at 89.87, which is currently 15th in the nation.
Yes, Florida is ranked 6th on 247Sports overall right now, but much of that is because the Gators have 25 commits against 12-18 commits for many of the teams with higher average player ratings.
Truly elite classes have average player ratings around 93-94. That’s where teams like Georgia, Alabama and Ohio State typically end up. Florida has been at 90.75, 91.06 and 90.7 under Mullen the past three years, so this year is right on-track to end up where it has the past three years.
What that means is that the Gators are adding a bunch of really good players, but the amount of really good players being added is still trailing some of its chief rivals.
Georgia has averaged 15 4-star recruits while Florida has averaged 15.3 from 2018-2020, so at that level, the teams are equivalent. But the separation comes with 5-star commits, where Georgia has averaged 5.3 while Florida has averaged 0.3.
Again, this doesn’t mean that Mullen can’t recruit or that the commitments of Marshall and Collier aren’t a big deal. But it does mean that Florida still has work to do to be considered elite on the recruiting trail.
I hate the Big 10
If there wasn’t any doubt before, the Big 10 completely reinforced that it is comprised of a bunch of weasels.
After leaking that they wanted to cancel the season to test the waters after the SEC released its schedule last week, they then proceeded to cancel the season on Tuesday. The SEC, ACC and Big 12 have to be ticked at their “partner”.
Let’s be clear. There will be no spring football. It doesn’t make sense from a logistical standpoint or a safety standpoint, and I don’t see how anything is different with the virus in March compared to where things stand now.
Young people will still be overwhelmingly unaffected by the virus. Ohio, Michigan and Indiana appear to have weathered outbreaks that have occurred in those regions. Athletes are still going to be safer within programs than they will be in the general campus population or at home.
Maybe the Big 10 has a bunch of information we don’t have. Maybe they made the right decision. But right now, it looks like they jumped the gun in the same way that they did announcing that they would play conference-only play a while back and put their “partners” in a tough situation.
The SEC moved back its start date to allow for more information gathering prior to making a decision like this. The fact that the Big 10 decided to act unilaterally isn’t something that the SEC is going to forget.
When it comes time for Super Conferences, you can bet that the ACC, SEC and Big 12 are going to remember how they were treated by the Big 10 and Pac 12 during this entire situation. And those conferences better watch out, because College Football is dominated by the south.
If they get frozen out, those conferences are going to turn into the Big East pretty quickly.
10 game SEC schedule
Follow the TV money when you try to understand why the SEC set its schedule the way it did.
Some people are going to complain that the big boys got favorable treatment with the two games being added. Certainly, that’s true when you consider that the next two teams in the rotation for Florida are Alabama and Texas A&M and instead Florida got A&M and Arkansas.
But I think it’s wise to look at it this way. The SEC has a vested interest in making sure that there is a high-level game of the week for TV purposes with this revamped schedule. Florida, Georgia, Alabama and LSU move the needle, not just in those team’s towns but nationally. So Florida vs. Arkansas is going to attract viewers as will Vanderbilt vs. Alabama. What won’t draw the same ranking is Alabama vs. Florida and Vanderbilt vs. Arkansas.
So I think the schedule was adjusted so that the SEC can minimize the Vanderbilt/Missouri vs. Arkansas/Ole Miss match-ups. That means those teams have to play the big boys and there needed to be some rearrangement. It makes it look like the schedule is favoring the big boys and in some ways that’s true.
But the reality is that these kinds of things are always about money and never about an individual program.
Franks back to the Swamp
One of the side benefits of Arkansas being on the schedule is getting to see Feleipe Franks in the Swamp one more time.
I’ve been a Franks fan for a while, not really because of his level of play but because of how he handled himself throughout the endeavor of being the starting QB at Florida. He took the heat when Jim McElwain would not. He kept playing hard even as he struggled, going so far as to shush his home fans.
But end of the day, he got better and he helped set a path for Florida that leads to guys like Jason Marshall and Corey Collier looking at Florida as a prime destination.
You never want to see someone end their career on an injury, especially one like Franks suffered against Kentucky. So it’s going to be fun to see him run out on the field again in Gainesville in some ways to finish what he started.
I’ll be rooting against Arkansas. But I’ll be rooting for Feleipe Franks.
Kellen Mond vs. Todd Grantham
Kellen Mond is an okay quarterback. But he’s not a great one.
Todd Grantham is a good defensive coordinator. I’m not sure he’s a great one.
If anything, Grantham has struggled against really good quarterbacks. Guys like Joe Burrow, Jake Fromm and Drew Lock have picked his defenses apart. But Mond does not appear to have that ability.
That’s why I’m happy with the addition of Texas A&M. Florida is going to go to College Station with a reduced crowd or empty stadium, is going to face Mond whom Grantham should be able to stop, and is going to bring a senior QB in Kyle Trask who excels on third down.
The reality is that going to 10 games makes Florida’s schedule stronger than it was prior to the change. But adding A&M and Arkansas is about the best-case scenario for the Gators.
Gators ranked 8th in poll
Not that it matters with the Big 10 and Pac 12 finking out, but Florida started the season ranked 8th in the Coaches Poll.
If that seems a little bit low, it’s because the Gators were ranked behind Penn State and LSU. The Nittany Lions lost to Ohio State and Minnesota last year, so two of the better teams in the Big 10. The same can be said for Florida, so likely this was just a conference statement (i.e. the Big 10 is weaker than the SEC, so Florida starts out ranked lower).
The LSU ranking is an interesting one. The Tigers received six first-place votes, so clearly there are people who just vote for the previous national champion regardless of turnover. Because this isn’t even close to the same team that won the title last year. Not only is Joe Burrow gone, but so is 75% of the starters.
We saw with Florida in 2007 that just winning a championship doesn’t mean that success translates the next season. The Gators went 9-4 that year, and that was with Tim Tebow winning the Heisman Trophy.
I’m not particularly worried that Myles Brennan is going to win the Heisman, so I suspect LSU is going to struggle. I can understand why Clemson, Alabama and Georgia are ranked in front of Florida. I’m not so sure about LSU.
True risk and risk of liability
COVID-19 has forced us to ask questions about risk and liability.
Likely it wasn’t just the risk to the players and coaches that caused the Big 10 and Pac 12 to cancel their seasons, but the liability did as well. It’s an interesting thought experiment because there are unintended consequences to every action like this, and I certainly hope they have considered those consequences.
From the looks of it thought, I doubt they did.
Wisconsin AD Barry Alvarez announced that his players are going to stay on-campus and continue strength training and practicing even though the season has been canceled. It seems ridiculous that you could have that position and believe that playing a game once a week puts the players or staff in any more danger.
This doesn’t mean that I think the virus is a hoax. I understand it is real and that it is contagious. But I also understand that it disproportionately affects older people. The question then is how much risk is appropriate when we’re trying to decide who should and who shouldn’t be participating in society?
The reality is that if colleges are going to have students back on-campus, the same safety and liability considerations should apply for those individuals as well. If not, then the cancelation doesn’t have to do with safety, but something else.
Player empowerment (#WeAreUnited and #WeWantToPlay)
That something else appears to be money.
The combination of coronavirus and the racial unrest that has occurred in the U.S. over the past few months has led to players looking to organize at least in some capacity. While there are issues with unionization that could prevent it from happening, the players are starting to make demands of the power structure through the #WeAreUnited and #WeWantToPlay movements that are going to fundamentally change college football.
The cynic in me believes that the Big 10 and Pac 12 didn’t want to rush through concessions to the players in order to play this season and cede power that they currently have. It’s the equivalent of an owner lockout at the professional sports level.
The virus gives some cover for the conferences to figure out how they want to respond and what they’re willing to compromise on. It also means that they can avoid giving up concessions driven under the guise of player safety that are really about power.
It’s probably not a coincidence that these conferences were announcing their schedules until confronted by the #WeAreUnited issues and all of a sudden changed their tune. Maybe I’m wrong. This is all just conjecture.
But based on the comments from its own administrations, I can’t imagine the change in heart is due to safety.