StLGator

Not arguing that CBN is a great OC. Only making the point that the Gators didn’t lose any close games LY on account of his poor play calling, as O’Gara just intimated. The D and STs were responsible for ALL those losses. To me, that means CBN should’ve unloaded play calling duties in order to free more of his time to oversee the D and STs. He won’t be able to excuse poor play on the part of those two units TY on account of being tied up with the O play calling.

“I was wrong about Graham Mertz last year… Now you add DJ Lagway into the mix as the Gatorade National Player of the Year and you’re cooking with gas.“ I was about to ask, who are you and what have you done with O’Gara? Then, he took his obligatory shot at CBN’s play calling and I realized it’s the same old Connor. Aside from an occasional, unnecessary gimmick play, there’s not much wrong with CBN’s play calling. The problem with any HC calling plays today is that it keeps him from focusing on other areas of the team that need more of his attention right now, like D and STs. CBN better make it all work this season, because there will be no next season for him to fix more boneheaded D and ST plays this season. Nobody will care how difficult the schedule was.

Marsh, Napier NEEDS to prove he’s a great play caller, if only to be able to claim he was unfairly fired by Swinney as OC all year those years ago. I guess that firing must’ve scarred his ego. You’re spot on about Defense being the key to 8 or more wins for the Gators this season. Fail in that for the 3rd year in a row and it won’t matter whether Napier calls a good Offense or not. He’ll be gone in November. I know not to make too much of spring games, but here’s a worrying stat. The Gator O’s combined for over 600 yards of total offense last Saturday. Not an auspicious start for the D’s.

AFan, throwing AR-15 to the Dawgs didn’t save Mullen’s job in 2021. Repeating that desperate move with Lagway won’t save CBN’s job in 2024. CBN’s fate is firmly tied to cleaning up his D and ST play. A true frosh QB won’t save his bacon if those other two units continue their clown show performances of the past 2 seasons. The Gators must play fundamentally sound football in all 3 phases and win more games than they lose. Occasional brilliant play by Lagway won’t change the fact that after three full years, the Gator D and ST’s will have been as awful as they were the day CBN was hired. That’ll brand him incapable of improving them and therefore unqualified for his job in the long run.

O’Gara’s take on the QBs is more of his usual idiotic drivel. I agree it deserves no positive comment. Truth was referring to the outsized difference better defensive play will make this Gator season. O’Gara at least referred to it.

100% agree with this too!

100% agree.

I hate putting up any kind of high expectations on this Gator team full of question marks, but it’s just simple math. Given the five opponents they’ll face in November, they must find a way to be 5-0 by the time they get to Rocky Top on 10/12 to even get a shot at 8-4. THAT won’t happen if Lagway finds himself QB1 any time this season.

True! They get Florida instead.

Well, this one should. The key to success for the Gators this season is improved defensive play. The third level may have played soft at times, but at least they had two picks, which are 2/3 of all they had the last 13 games. That includes last spring!

Once again, Truth shines a light on the most relevant factor for the Gators headed into this season. Gotta give O’Gara some credit though. At least he mentioned it.

With all due respect to O’Gara, I just don’t see Lagway beating the Mertzinator out this season any more than Tebow beat Leak out in 2006, regardless of how hot CBN’s seat gets. As for winning the Heisman, Lagway certainly has the potential to do it some day, but not this season.

For what it’s worth, I enclosed the CBN comment in quotes to imply those are not my words. However, Truth or gaga will happily own up to it.

I’m with Humper here. If the Gators don’t arrive in Knoxville no worse off than 4-1, they may be headed towards another mediocre season and we may be shopping for a new HC before Turkey Day. On the other hand, both the Gators and Vols have a better than fair shot of arriving at the 2nd Saturday in October no worse off than 4-1. That would make for great drama on Rocky Top… again!

Don’t forget, Graham the Mertziless more than carried his own weight and that of much of the Gator offense last year. Too bad that “loser of a HC” the Gators have couldn’t figure out how Mertz could QB the defense as well. We’ll just have to wait and see if all the changes made to the defense will lead to better play on that side of the ball this season. If it does, a few SEC bergs may want to hide their women and children before the Mertzinator rains fire and brimstone on them. There! Will that do?

JTF, we football fans take a very dim and parochial view of other college sports. However, for the court system to declare that athletes are employees, entitled to a larger share of the TV pie, they have to deem a free education, including room, board and a stipend for other expenses, insufficient compensation for representing the schools at ALL sporting events. While that may be true for football players, the universities can clearly show that they put ALL their revenues from ALL sports into a single pot and then divide it up among all the sports proportionally, in the form of scholarships and other expenses to run the programs. A football scholarship is not worth more or less than a swimming scholarship. Note that excess salaries for some coaches are funded by boosters, via the same mechanism that now funds NIL for players. So, I don’t see any bleeding heart judge declaring football players employees in order to turn them into instant millionaires at the expense of losing funding for Title IX ladies’ sports. Free TP player movement and full exploitation of NIL opportunities will be compensation enough for football players… at least until some arrogant boosters drive some power hungry AD to unilaterally expand the meaning of a valid stipend expense doled out to some players. Some may claim that buying parents a big house near the university, so they can watch junior play ball, is a valid expense for junior to expect as part of his scholarship. That’s when the real chaos will be unleashed!

Marine, I agree with you about the need for rules. However, I don’t believe most P2 universities are ready to give up half or more of their TV loot to the football players in exchange for rules. Threatened chaos in the form of a few rogue schools trying to buy NCs will be needed to force them to come to the negotiating table. Never underestimate the greed factor when arrogant people are in charge of the purse strings and the rules. That is how we ended up in this mess in the first place.

Yet, the NFL is even more popular than CFB. We old fashioned fans tend to make too much of the school affiliations. For the modern fans it’s just about winning and losing as a team. Who cares who the warriors are, as long as our tribe beats your tribe to a bloody pulp.

Part of my point is that by the time Tennessee and Virginia get done with the NCAA, their “rules” will have about as much import as the laws in the Confederate Constitution. Conferences, by virtue of controlling the TV money, will still have some clout over their member schools. But, ND (for example) has its own TV football contract and isn’t a member of any conference. If they choose to start paying their players in order to field an all-star roster, all the other conferences will have left as leverage is their option to avoid scheduling ND. However, such a move would be tantamount to an act of financial war. ND is probably a poor example, but it makes my point that, after the NCAA is fully neutered, it’ll take just one arrogant university to break ranks on the 100+ year agreement of not paying players to bring real chaos to college sports. ND is certainly arrogant enough. Once football breaks ranks on that old paradigm, all the other college sports will be sucked into the vortex created. Not much good will come out of it.

At the center of the college sports paradigm is the concept of the STUDENT-athlete (emphasis on the student part.) To date, universities have held the line on to only using their own funds in strictly defraying the costs to a student-athlete of attending, progressing through and eventually graduating from their university with a degree, in exchange for their full participation in extra-curricular activities called “sports.” The student-ATHLETE (emphasis on the athlete part) may profit from his/her on-field fame by entering into NIL promotional agreements with individuals and organizations outside of the universities. NIL compensation comes from sources outside any universities they choose to attend and play for. The Transfer Portal today is driven by the ACADEMIC calendar, not by any particular sport’s calendar. The fall TP window opens up at the end of fall semester and players must sign their new scholarship and NIL agreements and be enrolled in classes before the spring academic semester begins in mid January. The spring TP window opens up at the end of spring semester and players have to sign their new scholarship and NIL agreements and be enrolled in classes before the fall academic semester begins in mid August. As long as no universities (like Notre Dame) go rogue, decide to turn their student-athletes into employees and starts paying them for their athletic services whether they attend classes or not, the scholarship/NIL agreements model for CFB will settle down and become workable mainly because there is a limit to the depth of booster pockets (big oil money aside.) The glaring weakness of this paradigm lies in the huge TV deals specific conferences and individual universities are entering into for football only. That wad of cash may tempt individual universities (e.g. Notre Dame) to over emphasize football at the expense of all other scholarship sports and begin using TV money to pay their football players, thereby gaining a NY Yankees like recruiting advantage over other schools, particularly public universities that are constrained in what they may do to compete athletes by state and federal legislation. When the Tennessee NIL lawsuit against the NCAA finally gets decided or settled in court, the last strings the NCAA has to limit what individual universities may do in the realm of player compensation will be cut. At that point, the Notre Dames of the CFB world will be liberated to do whatever they deem desirable in terms of football player compensation and commensurate TV broadcast deals. THAT will be the day the real wild-wild west of college sports will begin in earnest.

This was meant to be a reply to PT.

That may be because football is still a team sport and Cox always plays for Cox.

He may get more carries playing on a team that may be trying to run out the clock in 4th quarters of games where they have a big 2nd half lead Nash. Those opportunities didn’t come up very frequently at UF because of the absence of a defense that could hold any lead.

Both Umanmielen and Etienne were facing contract seasons this year and must’ve sincerely believed they wouldn’t look as good at Florida as elsewhere. It remains to be seen whether they perform better at their new schools. Napier came into the UF job believing he could delegate on-field coaching to his assistants and they let him down. That’s on him for not hiring the right assistants and for not staying on top of their on-field details the way Saban and Smart did and do.

Umanmielen and Cox both have the same deficiency in common. Neither was very good at holding the edge against the run. And it’s been poor run stopping that has doomed the Gators’ defense the last four years. Maybe, “better coaching” at Ole Miss will help Princely improve his run defense. If that happens, then his comments now are more grist for the “Fire Billy” mill. If it doesn’t happen, he may have to take a closer look in the mirror. 2024 will be a revelatory season for both the Gators and Mr. Umanmielen.

The days of star football players being dismissed from teams with championship aspirations for these sorts of misdemeanors are long over. Our society now values shining contributions on the field far more than it deplores poor examples being set off the field. This will be tut-tutted, then quietly swept under the rug. It will be interesting to see just how many more carries ETN gets at UGA than he got at UF. He would’ve gotten more plays on the field at UF if only he could pass block competently. Perhaps, UGA’s OL is so good that they don’t need the RB to block blitzers, or their RB coach is better at teaching him how to pass block effectively. If that’s the case, he may find himself on the field for more pass plays, which will lead to more trap and draw runs, as well as being targeted on more swing and screen passes. If he doesn’t get more plays on the field than he got at UF last year, he can console himself with being on a team with a real shot at a couple of rings, before taking his poor pass blocking techniques to the NFL.

Pitching is everything, especially in CBB. Both the Tigers and Gators lost a lot of quality pitching after CWS seasons last year. Both teams have talented but young arms to replace them. However, if you just compare Caglianone’s pitching performance yesterday to his performance in the final CWS game vs. LSU last year, it’s easier to understand why both staffs are struggling this year. It’s all about the difference in experience. It’s a long season and both teams have great coaches who know how to develop pitchers. Hopefully, both staffs will round into shape bu the time we get to May.

Pithy… it is not.

Both those arrogant schools were invited to join the SEC and declined due to having no desire to compete. Now, they should be made to live with their choices.

Broken leg. Out till next season.