By Franz Beard
A few thoughts to jump start your Thursday morning:
FLORIDA ATHLETIC DIRECTOR SCOTT STRICKLIN FROM DESTIN
Here are some excerpts from Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin’s press conference and an interview with Paul Finebaum from the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin.
A hint that the 3-6 scheduling model is inevitable
“I don’t know where we’re going to end up or what happens going forward, other than it does appear we’re going to have a lot more rotation and have the ability to see everybody in every stadium once in a four-year period.”
On why he favors the 3-6 scheduling model
“I think the SEC should lean into competing against one another as often as possible in all sports. Those are games fans want to go to and the ones they want to watch on TV. We should maximize that.”
On future scheduling, particularly after the SEC goes to a 9-conference game model
“We all need to be nimble. The fact that we schedule games a decade out now is kind of ludicrous in and of itself, but we’re in a model that forces us to do that. You’d love to see the model adapt over time and maybe we could make a little smarter decisions.”
On so much coaching turnover in the SEC (only four coaches at the same place since 2019)
“Good leaders are hard to find, and not just really good leaders, but ones who can be adaptable. If you don’t have the right one, you want to make a change and go see if you can find the right one. And, we’ve all seemingly taken our turn at trying to do that.”
On NIL and roster building
“With NIL, we essentially are outsourcing the opportunity to directly benefit student-athletes … The Supreme Court ruling really highlighted the fact that college athletics is a free market and this is a league that seems to understand free markets pretty well if you look at some of our coaching contracts.”
On Finebaum regarding the hiring of Billy Napier
“I spent three years on [the College Football Playoff] selection committee and Louisiana was a school that was ascendent under Billy so those of us on the committee were paying attention to what their success looked like. He was someone that all of us in college football were aware of. Obviously his past and where he had been at Clemson, Alabama and Arizona State, it’s a great story. How organized and disciplined, the humility and intelligence … there’s a lot of intriguing pieces to him so whenever we got in a position where we were gonna do a search he was really high on the list, to the point where it just seemed like it made a lot of sense and he would be a fit for what we need at the University of Florida. Billy was the only coach I actually spoke to.”
On what Napier has been able to do since arriving in Gainesville
“One of the impressive things he did in Lafayette was he basically built a Power Five football program in the Sun Belt Conference, by that I mean the infrastructure he was able to put in place with the available resources. He was incredibly resourceful with how he did that. Coming to Gainesville and being back in the SEC he was able to take the knowledge he had at the other places he worked and implement that. It is incredibly detailed as far as the people the wants within the program, the rules they’re gonna have, the attention to organizational structure, how it all flows and works together.”
GATORS AT THE WCWS: IT’S OREGON STATE TONIGHT
Okay, let’s face it. The Gators aren’t supposed to even be in Oklahoma City. They were seeded 14thnationally which meant a road trip to 3rd-seeded Virginia Tech for the super regional. That’s where they were supposed to crash and burn, yet here we are and Florida (48-17) opens up play tonight (7 p.m.) in the Women’s College World Series against unseeded Oregon State (39-20). As for Virginia Tech, the Hokies, like 2nd-seeded Florida State, 4th-seeded Arkansas, 6th-seeded Alabama and 8th-seeded Arizona State went down in flames so this WCWS final eight probably has more surprise entries than any year in recent memory.
The Gators find themselves in a rather good bracket. The opposite bracket features No. 1 seed Oklahoma, No. 5 UCLA, No. 9 Northwestern and an unseeded Texas team that is one of two teams that owns a win over Oklahoma. In the Florida bracket, Oklahoma State (no. 7) is the only top eight national seed. Also in the bracket is unseeded Arizona.
It’s double-elimination, so every team in the field is guaranteed two games. Should the Gators get past Oregon State tonight, they’ll face the winner of Oklahoma State-Arizona in a winner’s bracket game on Saturday (7 p.m.). Lose and they play the loser of Oklahoma State-Arizona Friday at 9:30.
Skylar Wallace selected NFCA second team All-America: Skylar Wallace, who spent the bulk of the 2022 season at shortstop although she did dabble a bit at second base and started the season at first base, was selected to the National Fastpitch Coaches Association second team All-America as the designated player/utility player (DP/UTL) Wednesday. Wallace leads the Gators in hitting (.406), runs scored (79), home runs (8), slugging percentage (.669), total bases and stolen bases (51 in 55 attempts). Her 51 stolen bases are a University of Florida school record. Additionally, Wallace drove in 53 runs, which ranks second only to Charla Echols.
Hannah Adams wins Rawlings Gold Glove Award: Slick fielding Florida second baseman Hannah Adams, who has played the entire season error-free for the second time in her career, was named a winner of the Rawlings Gold Glove Award for collegiate softball. If Adams can play error-free in Okie City, she will become only the first middle infielder in SEC history to post two perfect seasons with the glove.
UF TRACK AND FIELD: JASMINE MOORE, MIKE HOLLOWAY HONORED
Jasmine Moore, who has a chance to become only the first woman in NCAA history to win eight high jump and triple jump championships – four SEC indoor, four SEC outdoor/four NCAA indoor, four NCAA outdoor – in the same calendar year, was named Southeastern Conference Field Athlete of the Year Wednesday. UF coach Mike Holloway, who led the Gator women to the NCAA indoor national title and the SEC outdoor titles, was named SEC Women’s Coach of the Year.
So far this year, Moore is 6-for-6 on championships, having won the SEC indoor high jump and triple jump championships both indoors and outdoors and the NCAA indoors in both events. She will have a chance to make it 8-for-8 next week in Eugene, Oregon at the NCAA outdoor championships.
Holloway, who has won 10 NCAA championships coaching both men and women at the University of Florida, was named the Women’s Outdoor Coach of the Year for the third time in his career.
SEC FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL
Arkansas: Former Arkansas running back Trelon Smith, who had committed to TCU, has changed his mind. Now he’s off to UT-San Antonio. While at Arkansas, Smith gained 1,308 yards and scored five touchdowns.
Auburn: Allan Flanigan will withdraw from the NBA Draft and return to Auburn. Coming back from an Achilles injury in 2022, Flanigan averaged 6.3 points, 3.5 rebounds and 1.3 assists per game.
Missouri: When discussing what transfer QB Jack Abraham brings to his team, head coach Eli Drinkwitz said, “Our QB room has two younger guys in it and we’re looking for someone with some experience. In our first six games we have three on the road in really difficult environments … Manhattan, Kansas; Auburn, Alabama; and Gainesville, Florida. We wanted to have some experience in that room.” Abraham was a starting QB at Southern Miss before spending the last two seasons at Mississippi State.
South Carolina: Wide receiver Jalen Brooks, who has been away from the football program since October, is reportedly back in the good graces of HBC Shane Beamer. A two-time transfer (Tarleton State and Wingate), Brooks has played in 12 games for South Carolina with 25 catches for 281 yards and a touchdown.
Texas A&M: Asked if he would like the Longhorns to be one of the permanent opponents when the SEC ditches divisions and goes with a new scheduling format, Jimbo Fisher replied, “Yeah, I would love to play Texas.” It does make you wonder, however. The Aggies left the Big 12 for the SEC specifically to get out from under the shadow of Big Brother up in Austin.
JIMBO FISHER ON THE RELATIONSHIP WITH NICK SABAN
After telling the media that he’s “moving on” from a feud with Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher was pressed to further discuss the relationship with his former boss dating back to their days at LSU where Saban was the head coach and he [Jimbo] was the offensive coordinator.
“We were good. I was on offense, he was on defense,” Fisher said. “We had a lot of success, did well. There wasn’t many issues at all. Normal staff issues ... Nothing – we had a great relationship.
“Let me ask y’all: you ever argue with your brother? Do you love your brother? Did you support your brother? That’s the way coaches are. You can’t get to where you’re trying to go on a staff if you don’t have disagreement. If everybody’s yes people and everybody says the same thing, you don’t ever get nowhere. You can’t get better. That’s part of our nature and our competitive nature.”
NICK VS. JIMBO: FINEBAUM SPEAKS
At the SEC Spring Meetings, Paul Finebaum observed the tension between Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher and offered this: “He treated Jimbo Fisher yesterday like a fly on your potato salad at the Memorial Day company picnic. Like shoo! Get Away!”
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Brian Kelly may have botched his attempt at a Southern accent and some of those videos he’s done when he’s dancing are downright creepy, but give Kelly credit for one thing – he does have a sense of humor. In Destin, while addressing NIL and how college football seems to be moving toward players as employees with professional contracts, Kelly fired back with this:
“I don’t think they [players] want contracts. I don’t think they want to be traded. I’m sure they don’t want to be cut. I’m sure they’re not going to like getting a call at 3 p.m. in the afternoon saying, ‘Hey, I don’t know but we traded you today to St. Bonaventure. Oh, they don’t have a football team.’”
Kelly isn’t the only coach sounding the alarm about the future of college football. Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin pointed out that the combination of NIL and the transfer portal are a bad match that has the sport heading toward a disaster:
“So now you have and will have a lot more people going in the portal than now because of NIL because they’re gong go in to get better deals. I’ve said it before: you now have a system that does not exist in any professional sport I’ve ever heard of where at any point you can opt into free agency. At any point. You don’t have a four-year contract, you just ‘I’m gonna go into free agency, test the market. I can come back or I can go somewhere else.’ I think you’re gonna see a ton of kids in the portal because the ones that used to go in the portal, it’s because they weren’t happy how it was going. They weren’t playing enough. That was really what the portal initially [was]. Now you’re gonna have players playing great but want to go in and get better deals other places, so if you’re not playing enough you’re going in. If you’re playing great, unless you’re at one of those places that has those resources to pay you like that, you’re going in the portal. We just saw it with the Pitt receiver.”
A few thoughts to jump start your Thursday morning:
FLORIDA ATHLETIC DIRECTOR SCOTT STRICKLIN FROM DESTIN
Here are some excerpts from Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin’s press conference and an interview with Paul Finebaum from the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin.
A hint that the 3-6 scheduling model is inevitable
“I don’t know where we’re going to end up or what happens going forward, other than it does appear we’re going to have a lot more rotation and have the ability to see everybody in every stadium once in a four-year period.”
On why he favors the 3-6 scheduling model
“I think the SEC should lean into competing against one another as often as possible in all sports. Those are games fans want to go to and the ones they want to watch on TV. We should maximize that.”
On future scheduling, particularly after the SEC goes to a 9-conference game model
“We all need to be nimble. The fact that we schedule games a decade out now is kind of ludicrous in and of itself, but we’re in a model that forces us to do that. You’d love to see the model adapt over time and maybe we could make a little smarter decisions.”
On so much coaching turnover in the SEC (only four coaches at the same place since 2019)
“Good leaders are hard to find, and not just really good leaders, but ones who can be adaptable. If you don’t have the right one, you want to make a change and go see if you can find the right one. And, we’ve all seemingly taken our turn at trying to do that.”
On NIL and roster building
“With NIL, we essentially are outsourcing the opportunity to directly benefit student-athletes … The Supreme Court ruling really highlighted the fact that college athletics is a free market and this is a league that seems to understand free markets pretty well if you look at some of our coaching contracts.”
On Finebaum regarding the hiring of Billy Napier
“I spent three years on [the College Football Playoff] selection committee and Louisiana was a school that was ascendent under Billy so those of us on the committee were paying attention to what their success looked like. He was someone that all of us in college football were aware of. Obviously his past and where he had been at Clemson, Alabama and Arizona State, it’s a great story. How organized and disciplined, the humility and intelligence … there’s a lot of intriguing pieces to him so whenever we got in a position where we were gonna do a search he was really high on the list, to the point where it just seemed like it made a lot of sense and he would be a fit for what we need at the University of Florida. Billy was the only coach I actually spoke to.”
On what Napier has been able to do since arriving in Gainesville
“One of the impressive things he did in Lafayette was he basically built a Power Five football program in the Sun Belt Conference, by that I mean the infrastructure he was able to put in place with the available resources. He was incredibly resourceful with how he did that. Coming to Gainesville and being back in the SEC he was able to take the knowledge he had at the other places he worked and implement that. It is incredibly detailed as far as the people the wants within the program, the rules they’re gonna have, the attention to organizational structure, how it all flows and works together.”
GATORS AT THE WCWS: IT’S OREGON STATE TONIGHT
Okay, let’s face it. The Gators aren’t supposed to even be in Oklahoma City. They were seeded 14thnationally which meant a road trip to 3rd-seeded Virginia Tech for the super regional. That’s where they were supposed to crash and burn, yet here we are and Florida (48-17) opens up play tonight (7 p.m.) in the Women’s College World Series against unseeded Oregon State (39-20). As for Virginia Tech, the Hokies, like 2nd-seeded Florida State, 4th-seeded Arkansas, 6th-seeded Alabama and 8th-seeded Arizona State went down in flames so this WCWS final eight probably has more surprise entries than any year in recent memory.
The Gators find themselves in a rather good bracket. The opposite bracket features No. 1 seed Oklahoma, No. 5 UCLA, No. 9 Northwestern and an unseeded Texas team that is one of two teams that owns a win over Oklahoma. In the Florida bracket, Oklahoma State (no. 7) is the only top eight national seed. Also in the bracket is unseeded Arizona.
It’s double-elimination, so every team in the field is guaranteed two games. Should the Gators get past Oregon State tonight, they’ll face the winner of Oklahoma State-Arizona in a winner’s bracket game on Saturday (7 p.m.). Lose and they play the loser of Oklahoma State-Arizona Friday at 9:30.
Skylar Wallace selected NFCA second team All-America: Skylar Wallace, who spent the bulk of the 2022 season at shortstop although she did dabble a bit at second base and started the season at first base, was selected to the National Fastpitch Coaches Association second team All-America as the designated player/utility player (DP/UTL) Wednesday. Wallace leads the Gators in hitting (.406), runs scored (79), home runs (8), slugging percentage (.669), total bases and stolen bases (51 in 55 attempts). Her 51 stolen bases are a University of Florida school record. Additionally, Wallace drove in 53 runs, which ranks second only to Charla Echols.
Hannah Adams wins Rawlings Gold Glove Award: Slick fielding Florida second baseman Hannah Adams, who has played the entire season error-free for the second time in her career, was named a winner of the Rawlings Gold Glove Award for collegiate softball. If Adams can play error-free in Okie City, she will become only the first middle infielder in SEC history to post two perfect seasons with the glove.
UF TRACK AND FIELD: JASMINE MOORE, MIKE HOLLOWAY HONORED
Jasmine Moore, who has a chance to become only the first woman in NCAA history to win eight high jump and triple jump championships – four SEC indoor, four SEC outdoor/four NCAA indoor, four NCAA outdoor – in the same calendar year, was named Southeastern Conference Field Athlete of the Year Wednesday. UF coach Mike Holloway, who led the Gator women to the NCAA indoor national title and the SEC outdoor titles, was named SEC Women’s Coach of the Year.
So far this year, Moore is 6-for-6 on championships, having won the SEC indoor high jump and triple jump championships both indoors and outdoors and the NCAA indoors in both events. She will have a chance to make it 8-for-8 next week in Eugene, Oregon at the NCAA outdoor championships.
Holloway, who has won 10 NCAA championships coaching both men and women at the University of Florida, was named the Women’s Outdoor Coach of the Year for the third time in his career.
SEC FOOTBALL/BASKETBALL
Arkansas: Former Arkansas running back Trelon Smith, who had committed to TCU, has changed his mind. Now he’s off to UT-San Antonio. While at Arkansas, Smith gained 1,308 yards and scored five touchdowns.
Auburn: Allan Flanigan will withdraw from the NBA Draft and return to Auburn. Coming back from an Achilles injury in 2022, Flanigan averaged 6.3 points, 3.5 rebounds and 1.3 assists per game.
Missouri: When discussing what transfer QB Jack Abraham brings to his team, head coach Eli Drinkwitz said, “Our QB room has two younger guys in it and we’re looking for someone with some experience. In our first six games we have three on the road in really difficult environments … Manhattan, Kansas; Auburn, Alabama; and Gainesville, Florida. We wanted to have some experience in that room.” Abraham was a starting QB at Southern Miss before spending the last two seasons at Mississippi State.
South Carolina: Wide receiver Jalen Brooks, who has been away from the football program since October, is reportedly back in the good graces of HBC Shane Beamer. A two-time transfer (Tarleton State and Wingate), Brooks has played in 12 games for South Carolina with 25 catches for 281 yards and a touchdown.
Texas A&M: Asked if he would like the Longhorns to be one of the permanent opponents when the SEC ditches divisions and goes with a new scheduling format, Jimbo Fisher replied, “Yeah, I would love to play Texas.” It does make you wonder, however. The Aggies left the Big 12 for the SEC specifically to get out from under the shadow of Big Brother up in Austin.
JIMBO FISHER ON THE RELATIONSHIP WITH NICK SABAN
After telling the media that he’s “moving on” from a feud with Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher was pressed to further discuss the relationship with his former boss dating back to their days at LSU where Saban was the head coach and he [Jimbo] was the offensive coordinator.
“We were good. I was on offense, he was on defense,” Fisher said. “We had a lot of success, did well. There wasn’t many issues at all. Normal staff issues ... Nothing – we had a great relationship.
“Let me ask y’all: you ever argue with your brother? Do you love your brother? Did you support your brother? That’s the way coaches are. You can’t get to where you’re trying to go on a staff if you don’t have disagreement. If everybody’s yes people and everybody says the same thing, you don’t ever get nowhere. You can’t get better. That’s part of our nature and our competitive nature.”
NICK VS. JIMBO: FINEBAUM SPEAKS
At the SEC Spring Meetings, Paul Finebaum observed the tension between Nick Saban and Jimbo Fisher and offered this: “He treated Jimbo Fisher yesterday like a fly on your potato salad at the Memorial Day company picnic. Like shoo! Get Away!”
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: Brian Kelly may have botched his attempt at a Southern accent and some of those videos he’s done when he’s dancing are downright creepy, but give Kelly credit for one thing – he does have a sense of humor. In Destin, while addressing NIL and how college football seems to be moving toward players as employees with professional contracts, Kelly fired back with this:
“I don’t think they [players] want contracts. I don’t think they want to be traded. I’m sure they don’t want to be cut. I’m sure they’re not going to like getting a call at 3 p.m. in the afternoon saying, ‘Hey, I don’t know but we traded you today to St. Bonaventure. Oh, they don’t have a football team.’”
Kelly isn’t the only coach sounding the alarm about the future of college football. Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin pointed out that the combination of NIL and the transfer portal are a bad match that has the sport heading toward a disaster:
“So now you have and will have a lot more people going in the portal than now because of NIL because they’re gong go in to get better deals. I’ve said it before: you now have a system that does not exist in any professional sport I’ve ever heard of where at any point you can opt into free agency. At any point. You don’t have a four-year contract, you just ‘I’m gonna go into free agency, test the market. I can come back or I can go somewhere else.’ I think you’re gonna see a ton of kids in the portal because the ones that used to go in the portal, it’s because they weren’t happy how it was going. They weren’t playing enough. That was really what the portal initially [was]. Now you’re gonna have players playing great but want to go in and get better deals other places, so if you’re not playing enough you’re going in. If you’re playing great, unless you’re at one of those places that has those resources to pay you like that, you’re going in the portal. We just saw it with the Pitt receiver.”
