By Franz Beard
A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:
TWENTY-FIVE DAYS … AND COUNTING
As Matt Hayes pointed out in his Saturday Down South column on Monday, May 1 is just around the corner, a day surpassed in importance only by college football’s two national signing days. May 1 is the last day to transfer and be eligible to play in 2022 without going through the waiver process. For a school like Florida where Billy Napier says we can expect the Gators to dip into the NCAA transfer portal for 10 or more plug and play types, May 1 is every bit as important as the two national signing days.
Napier inherited some very talented kids when he took over as Florida’s head coach, but unfortunately, he doesn’t have enough to compete at the highest level in the SEC where Alabama and Georgia back up their first teamers with 30 or 40 former recruits who were all rated four stars or better when they signed out of high school.
When he talked to the media after Florida’s first spring scrimmage last week, Napier said, “We need players” and the place he’s going to get them is the transfer portal.
“Now, I think the approach is going to be, you know, acquire as many good players as we can at any position, right?” Napier said last week after Florida’s first scrimmage. “So, you know, we're thin and we need help in a lot of different spots.”
A lot of different spots? Figure he needs at wide receivers, at least one so fast he can turn out the lights and be in bed before the room gets dark (Okay, I stole that line), a tight end who can double as a third tackle when he’s not terrorizing the middle of the field in the passing game, three offensive linemen of which one has to be another tackle, three or four defensive tackles including one who can play both inside and outside, an inside linebacker who is 240 or so pounds and capable of stepping into a hole without getting knocked on his keister, and at least one safety and one corner of the big, fast and physical variety.
Napier dipped into the transfer portal back in December and the result was six who are practicing this spring and who will factor in the fall. Six isn’t enough, however. Ole Miss, as Hayes pointed out, has 12 who have played in 263 Division I football games. High school kids require time to develop. Experienced transfers can fill an immediate need.
“We were fortunate to get six [transfers] at mid-year,” Napier said last week. “All six have contributed to the team in a positive way. I was talking the other day, what if we didn't have those guys? What would practice be like? So, I think we need to continue to acquire more talent. I think that's the name of the game. So we'll evaluate and we're gonna recruit and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to add a handful of players to the team."
The portal has indeed changed the way recruiting is done throughout college football. Before there was a transfer portal, replacing kids who quit, transferred out or became academically ineligible was extremely difficult. Now that there is a portal, there is ready access to immediate help. The flip side of that is because kids have the freedom to leave without a compelling reason other than they want a fresh start somewhere else, there is more attrition than ever before. That Florida will give scholarships to five walk-ons this spring and Napier is planning for 10 or more transfers tells us there are more holes in the roster than we dared imagine back in January. We don’t know how many are taking medical redshirt or how many have been encouraged to “retire.” Napier is a smart guy. He knows the portal giveth and the portal taketh away. He’s going to be searching for players, but he’s probably going to lose a few, too.
Napier has 25 days to figure out who’s staying, who’s leaving and where he needs to go to fill out his roster with quality players.
UF BASEBALL: GATORS HAMMER FAMU, 13-3
The Fabian brothers and BT Riopelle homered Tuesday night to pace the Gators (19-10, 3-6 SEC) to a 13-3 non-conference win over Florida A&M, a tuneup game for the key SEC series with 2nd-ranked Arkansas (21-5, 7-2 SEC) starting Thursday night (6 p.m., SEC Network).
For Jud Fabian, who had also had a single and a double, the home run was his 13th of the season, which leads the SEC and is tied for second nationally. Deric Fabian hit his third homer of the year and Riopelle hit his seventh, a grand slam in the 6-run fourth inning. The Gators have hit 57 homers this season, which is third nationally.
It was a 16-hit night for the Gators, paced by three hits each by Jud Fabian, Wyatt Langford and Josh Rivera.
Nick Pogue got the start and picked up the win with three perfect innings. HBC Kevin O’Sullivan split the remaining six innings among Nick Ficarrotta, Tyler Nesbitt, Phil Abner, Timmy Manning and Blake Purnell. Manning was the only one to have any problems, giving up three runs (only one earned) and three hits in the eighth.
UF SOFTBALL: NO. 8 GATORS TAKE ON NO. 2 FSU TONIGHT
There isn’t a team in the country with a tougher week than the Gators, who play host to 2nd-ranked Florida State (35-2) tonight (6 p.m., SEC Network) and then take on 4th-ranked Alabama (31-5, 8-4 SEC) this weekend. Beating FSU is important for both state and national prestige, but Alabama sits on top of the SEC with the Gators (30-6, 7-5 SEC) one game behind at the midway point of the SEC schedule.
UF MEN’S GOLF: BIONDI LEADS GATORS TO SECOND PLACE FINISH AT CALUSA CUP
Fred Biondi birdied five of the first eight holes Tuesday to pace the 16th-ranked Gators to a second place finish at the Calusa Cup in Naples. Biondi was five under for the tournament (211) to finish in a tie for individual honors. Ricky Castillo finished -1 for the tournament to finish in a 7th-place tie. The Gators had a team total of 864, eight shots behind tournament champ Georgia Tech.
Next up for the Gators is the Southeastern Conference Championships at St. Simon’s Island April 20-24.
SEC FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL
Alabama: Former 4-star wide receiver Argiye Hall is no longer listed on the Alabama roster. Apparently Hall didn’t know it. Reportedly, he plans to visit both Florida and Miami.
Arkansas: Au’Diese Toney will not use his COVID year to return to Arkansas but instead has declared for the NBA Draft and will hire an agent. Toney averaged 10.5 points and 5.2 rebounds after transferring in from Pittsburgh.
Auburn: Not that anyone should be surprised but Jabari Smith has declared for the NBA Draft after averaging 16.9 points and 7.4 rebounds as a freshman while making 42 percent of his 3-pointers. He has a legitimate chance to be the first player selected.
Georgia: Kirby Smart says that quarterback Stetson Bennett IV is “playing the best football he’s played since he’s been here” … Former Florida, now Georgia, basketball coach Mike White lost three players to the transfer portal on Tuesday including Christian Wright, who played in all 32 games while averaging 5.3 points and 2.2 rebounds in 22 minutes. Also transferring out are freshmen Tyrone Baker and Cam McDowell. Baker played in three games while McDowell played in seven.
LSU: Linebacker Josh White announced he is transferring to Baylor to play for Dave Aranda.
Ole Miss: Three-time SWAC Defensive Player of the Year Jayveous McKinnis is transferring in from Jackson State, where he averaged 12.4 points, 10.3 rebounds, 2.9 blocks and 1.2 steals per game last season.
South Carolina: HBC Shane Beamer was pleased with the pass protection from his offensive line in the Gamecocks’ first scrimmage of the spring. Overall, Beamer said the defense was ahead of the offense.
Tennessee: Guard Kennedy Chandler, who is projected to go in the first round, has declared for the NBA Draft. He averaged 13.9 points, 3.2 rebounds, 4.7 assists and 2.2 steals per game.
Texas A&M: Jimbo Fisher says the quarterback battle between LSU transfer Max Johnson, Haynes King and freshman Connor Wegman will continue into the summer.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: One of the most successful NCAA Basketball Tournaments is behind us. Counting the four play-ins, we got 67 games in three weeks with a Final Four that produced two epic games, North Carolina’s win over Duke in the semifinals and the Kansas win over Carolina in the championship game. Mark Emmert, being the incompetent boob that he is, will probably try to take a victory lap. He shouldn’t, not after deferring handing the trophy to Bill Self and then calling the champs the “Kansas City Jayhawks.”
Maybe Emmert goofed. Maybe he intended to do that as a way of insulting Self, who may very well be guilty of all the things he's accused of in those five Level I violations. The only one who should feel insulted is Mark Emmert, who will praise a biological male for winning a national championship in swimming that should have gone to a woman and yet doesn’t have the guts to shake the hands of a coach on the biggest stage in all of college sports.
Enough about Emmert. Although the incompetent NCAA leaders before him all had a hand in what’s about to happen, Emmert will be the one who gets credit for being the torpedo that sunk the ship that has ruled collegiate sports for far too long.
The NCAA Tournament proved one thing: It is time for the College Football Playoff to expand. Four teams won’t get it, eight is not enough, and we can argue whether 12 or 16 is the right number until the cows come home, but we need those extra teams. I’m old enough to remember when the NCAA Basketball Tournament expanded to 32 teams in 1975 and then three years later to 48. In 1985 the tournament expanded from 48 teams to 64. Four play-in games were added in 2011. With each expansion some “purists” have claimed the tournament is being diluted. Sure, it could be tweaked but the overall product has gotten better and more interesting with each expansion. It is the best three weeks in all of college sports because it leaves the door open for a Butler or Loyola to make the Final Four or for a Saint Peter’s to bushwhack a Kentucky team that everyone had penciled in as a potential national champ. Like every Cinderella in the years before that has captured the nation’s imagination, the clock struck midnight for Saint Peter’s but not before 300 or so schools from St. Somewhere Else asked the proverbial question, “Why not us?”
The Final Four this year was four bluebloods who have won multiple national championships. We’ll probably get four bluebloods when the College Football Playoff expands to 12 or 16 teams, but that’s not the point. It is possible that one of these years Cinderella’s carriage won’t turn into a pumpkin and we’ll have the football equivalent of the Fighting Sister Jeans playing for all the directional schools whose entire athletic budgets are less than a media rights payout in the SEC.
College football needs two things desperately: (1) a divorce from Mark Emmert and his band of bureaucratic boobs and (2) the adrenaline rush we’ll get the first time a champion from the Fun Belt dares to knock off a team everybody has penciled in to the Final Four. For the good of college football and for the good of the viewing public, we need expansion. If we’re lucky, the conference commissioners who are standing in the way will wake up from their comas and do the right thing. We can hope, can’t we?
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