By Franz Beard
A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:
PYBURN WILL BE A GATOR, BUT WHO ELSE?
The Gators got good news Tuesday when 4-star defensive lineman Jack Pyburn (6-4, 265, Jacksonville, FL Bolles) announced he will sign with Florida today. Pyburn decided he’s got a better future at UF than at Auburn or Miami, but can Billy Napier have the same kind of success today that he had back in December when he shocked the college football world by bringing in Kamari Wilson, Chris McClellan, Shemar James and Devin Moore?
The recruiting “experts” seem to think all of Napier’s top targets are going to sign somewhere other than Florida. Some of their predictions are linebacker Harold Perkins going with Texas A&M or LSU, safety Jacoby Matthews going with either LSU or Texas A&M, defensive tackle Caden Story going to Clemson and running back TreVonte Citizen going with LSU.
Conventional wisdom probably says the “experts” know what they’re talking about, but these same experts didn’t give the Gators any chance to land Wilson, James or Young back in December.
Faxes start rolling in at 7 a.m. Perhaps I’m just too much the optimist, but I don’t think Gator Nation is going to be disappointed when the final results are in.
GATORS GAME WITH MIZZOU RESCHEDULED FOR 3 P.M.
Due to anticipated weather issues, Florida’s Wednesday game at Missouri (8-12, 2-has been rescheduled for 3 p.m. to give the Gators (13-8, 3-5 SEC) a chance to play then get out of Columbia ahead of the storm.
The Gators will once again be playing without Colin Castleton, who Mike White says is making progress but isn’t ready to play again.
“[He’s] doing some non-contact stuff,” White said of his leading scorer and rebounder. “Shooting a little bit. Doing some skill-level stuff, but nothing competitive. Outlook hasn’t changed.”
With Castleton out and backup Jason Jitoboh done for the year after undergoing eye surgery, White will once again be forced to go unconventional in his approach to beat a Missouri team that is very physical and plays well at home. The unconventional approach worked well last Saturday when the Gators came from 16 points down to beat Oklahoma State 81-72.
“We'll go to Colombia, see what works, what doesn't work, we’ll try to make some adjustments on the fly, of course,” White said. “What we try to execute, how we play offensively may look different in a couple of weeks.”
The Gators are expected to go with their vertically challenged lineup of 6-7 Anthony Duruji, 6-6 Kowacie Reeves, 6-5 Phlandrous Fleming Jr., 6-3 Brandon McKissic and 6-1 Tyree Appleby against the Tigers. Against Oklahoma State, the Gators got help off the bench from 6-9, 172-pound freshman Tuongthach Gatkek and 6-6 Niels Lane. Gatkek scored a career high eight points to go with three rebounds and three blocked shots. Lane didn’t score but he was a vital component in Florida’s press plus he blocked two shots and came up with a critical steal, all in the game’s final eight minutes.
SEC BASKETBALL
Tuesday’s scores: Mississippi State (14-7, 5-3 SEC) 78, South Carolina (13-8, 4-5 SEC) 64; No. 22 Tennessee (15-6, 6-3 SEC) 90, Texas A&M (15-7, 4-5 SEC) 80; Ole Miss (12-10, 3-6 SEC) 76, No. 25 LSU (16-6, 4-5 SEC) 72; No. 1 Auburn (21-1, 9-0 SEC) 100, Alabama (14-8, 4-5 SEC) 81
Wednesday’s games: FLORIDA (13-8, 3-5 SEC) at Missouri (8-12, 2-5 SEC); Vanderbilt (11-9, 3-5 SEC) at No. 5 Kentucky (17-4, 6-2 SEC); Arkansas (16-5, 5-3 SEC) at Georgia (6-15, 1-7 SEC)
NICK SABAN ON DRAWING A LINE IN THE DIRT WHEN IT COMES TO NIL
Here are some comments about NIL and recruiting made by Alabama coach Nick Saban when he was at the Senior Bowl Tuesday:
On not using NIL to lure a recruit to Alabama: “When we start using name, image and likeness for a kid to come to our school, that’s where I draw the line because that’s not why we did this.”
On the question of NIL making cheating legal: “I hear these crazy people on TV who say now you’re doing it above board. We never did it. We never did it. We never cheated to get a player. We never paid players to come to our school and now that’s actually happening. People are making deals with high school players to go to their school.”
On what kids are looking for now that there is NIL: “It’s not about coaching and developing as much as it is, what kind of money can you make?”
LANE KIFFIN ON HOW NIL IS CREATING A CASTE SYSTEM IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL
“We don’t have the same funding and resources as some of these schools do to do these NIL deals. It’s basically like dealing with salary caps. We now have a sport that has completely different salary caps. Some of these schools [have] five, 10 times more than everybody else [with] what they can pay the players. I know no one uses these phrases, but that is what it is. I joked the other day I didn’t know if Texas A&M was going to incur a luxury tax in how much they paid for their signing class.”
Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said that Tuesday afternoon, less than 24 hours before the faxes start rolling in on National Signing Day. Kiffin has brought in 10 potential starters through the transfer portal, which is what he has to use to compete. He doesn’t have access to NIL resources of a school like Texas A&M, which was rumored to have spent millions to land its No. 1 ranked recruiting class. Alabama Heisman Trophy QB Bryce Young made an estimated $2 million on NIL, more than half before he ever started a game. JT Daniels watched on the sidelines as Stetson Bennett IV led Georgia to the national championship. Daniels made well in excess of six figures on NIL. Kiffin’s concerns about NIL aren’t lost on the majority of college football coaches, but he’s rare in that he is willing to voice his concerns.
Here are a few rather profound statements from his Tuesday press conference:
On what the changes in the transfer rules have created: “You basically have year-round free agency in football, which is obviously a major issue. It’s why they don’t do it in the NFL.”
On what’s ahead with the transfer portal following spring practice: “Like everything, this transfer thing is not over. Until they figure out how to do this thing better, you’re going to see a whole ‘nother group after spring ball that leaves places so this is an ongoing thing … you’re going to see things adjust and rosters adjust all the way up until training camp.”
On the wild, wild west of college football with NIL and free agency due to the transfer rules: “The NFL knows what they’re doing. It’s not open free agency all year-round for a reason and you’ve got long term contracts for reasons. Kids can’t leave at any point of any year all the time.”
On the need to get NIL under control somehow: “Somehow they’re going to, I bet, try to control NIL because now you’ve got these salary caps at places giving players millions of dollars to play before they ever even play and other places not being able to do that. What would the NFL look like if there were a couple of teams in the NFL where their salary cap was 10 times more than everybody else’s salary cap? So, that’s where you’re headed. They’re going to have to do something.”
On whether college football need a commissioner or czar to get NIL under control: “I don’t have that answer. That’s way above me. I just think they have an issue. It’s why a long time ago they made signing classes 25 and everybody’s on the same page with that. So, at some point you’re going to have to do something because, again, there are certain schools that have no shot certain high school players because they’re going to get paid … If a class has an average – the freshman class has an average of $25 million per class, that’s an average of a million dollars per person for the course of their time there … These kids are 17-18 years old. They’re going to go where they’re paid the most … Whenever these things are created a lot of times there are problems people didn’t think about. You’ve just legalized paying players where used to be people would cheat.”
WE HARDLY KNEW YE, KEVIN!
In the last 14 months, Kevin Steele has served as the interim head football coach at Auburn (0-1 record, lost the Citrus Bowl to Northwestern), interim head coach at Tennessee (0-0 record) for which he was paid an $860,000 buyout for 51 days on the job, defensive coordinator at Maryland for four days, and now he’s Mario Cristobal’s defensive coordinator at Miami. That might be a record for most titles over a 14-month period in the history of the NCAA.
I only have one question. Why?
I’ll use the stint from 2016-20 as Gus Malzahn’s defensive coordinator to make my case. During those five years running Auburn’s defense, the Tigers never finished better than fifth in the SEC in total defense. Auburn lost at least four games every season.
If that’s not enough, in 2015, in his one season as the defensive coordinator for Les Miles at LSU, he took a defense that returned just about everyone from a unit that was No. 9 nationally the previous season and turned them into the No. 25 defense in the country. Previously, Dabo fired him as the defensive coordinator after the Tigers got smoked for 70 points by West Virginia in the Orange Bowl and he was 9-36 as Baylor’s head coach.
Do the folks at The Ewe really think they’ve got themselves a stud defensive coordinator?
MORE COLLEGE FOOTBALL STUFF
Not that we should be surprised, but quarterback Caleb Williams will be joining Lincoln Riley at Southern Cal.
James Madison will be leaving D1AA in football to join the Sun Belt Conference in all sports starting in the fall of 2022.
Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports says there are more than 1,400 players currently in the NCAA transfer portal and approximately 250 scholarships available. Obviously, a whole lot of kids are going to discover that maybe, just maybe, they should have stuck it out where they were rather than going into the portal. The grass, as the portal proves, isn’t always greener somewhere else.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Something called the Journal of Marketing in Higher Education has come out with a study that concludes that facilities don’t matter much when it comes to recruiting for football. I have no need to go into detail to refute this study of football by academics, not when I can offer this analogy.
Depending on which study you read, either Stanford or Harvard has the best medical school in the country. Tuition is in the $66,000 a year range for both schools, which traditionally churn out some of the best doctors in the world. You can pay somewhere around $15,000 a year in tuition to go to something called the All Saints University School of Medicine in Chicago. Now, which of these schools do you think has top notch facilities designed to lure the best students?
Of course, facilities matter. Do you think a student who wants to major in nuclear engineering will go South Texas College in McAllen or to the University of Florida which has a functioning reactor on campus? For the same reason, schools with better football facilities attract better players. Which school in the SEC consistently has the worst recruiting classes? It’s the same school with the worst facilities, Vanderbilt. They hide behind their academics and use that as a crutch when, in reality, they aren’t willing to invest in their football program to bring their facilities up to at least a Mountain West Conference level.
