By Franz Beard
A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:
NO FIRST TEAM GATORS ON ATHLON PRESEASON ALL-SEC
Athlon, whose preseason magazine is scheduled to hit newsstands this week, has released its preseason top 25 and All-SEC teams. That the Gators aren’t in the top 25 should surprise no one since they’re coming off a losing season that resulted in a coaching change, but not a single Gator made first team All-SEC. In fact, only six Gators made Athlon’s FOUR preseason All-SEC teams and only two of them – O’Cyrus Torrence and Brenton Cox Jr. – even made second team. Perhaps Billy Napier should try doing Rodney Dangerfield impersonations – “I don’t get no respect” – at his next Gator Club speech. Only Vanderbilt, which is to be expected, had fewer preseason All-SEC selections than the Gators.
Second team: OL O’Cyrus Torrence; LB Brenton Cox Jr.
Third team: DL Gervon Dexter; LB Ventrell Miller; CB Jason Marshall
Fourth team: S Rashad Torrence
That 12 of the 14 SEC schools had at least one first team selection – Florida and Vanderbilt the two notable absences – is truly an indictment of Florida’s recruiting the previous four seasons. That the two highest regarded Gators (Torrence and Cox) began their collegiate careers elsewhere only further emphasizes just how poorly Dan Mullen and his staff recruited. There is talent on the UF roster that Napier inherited and has enhanced with freshmen and a handful of transfers, but obviously none of the people at Athlon think a whole lot of what’s left behind. When only Vanderbilt has less representation on a preseason All-SEC team, you know that recruiting has fallen way behind the rest of the league.
Although Billy Napier will never say it out loud where it can be quoted in some publication or broadcast on the airwaves, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the University of Florida to ever be in this kind of talent deficit.
The rest of the SEC on the preseason Athlon teams: Alabama (18 including 7 first team); Georgia (13 including 5 first team); Texas A&M (12 including 4 first team); Tennessee (10 including 2 first team); Auburn (9 including 2 first team); Kentucky (9 including 1 first team); LSU (9 including 1 first team); South Carolina (9 including 1 first team); Mississippi State (8 including 1 first team); Arkansas (7 including 2 first team); Ole Miss (7 including 1 first team); Missouri (7 including 1 first team); and Vanderbilt (2)
Athlon preseason top 25: 1. Alabama; 2. Ohio State; 3. Georgia; 4. Clemson; 5. Texas A&M; 6. Michigan; 7. Notre Dame; 8. Utah; 9. Southern California; 10. Oregon; 11. Baylor; 12. North Carolina State; 13. Oklahoma; 14. Michigan State; 15. Cincinnati; 16. Wake Forest; 17. Oklahoma State; 18. Tennessee; 19. Wisconsin; 20. Miami; 21. Kentucky; 22. Arkansas; 23. Pittsburgh; 24. Houston; 25. Penn State
Overrated
5. Texas A&M: A year from now No. 5 might be a good place to start, but not this year. The Aggies lost too much talent and now they have to play Miami, Arkansas, (at) Alabama, (at) South Carolina, Florida, (at) Auburn and LSU.
7. Notre Dame: The Irish are breaking in a new QB, there isn’t a lot of speed at WR and the schedule includes (at) Ohio State; BYU (in Las Vegas); Clemson and (at) Southern Cal.
10. Oregon: There are 14 returning starters. That’s the good news. The bad news is the QB will be Bo Nix.
15. Cincinnati: Eight players were drafted, one of whom was Desmond Ridder. The Bearcats open up at Arkansas. They also play at SMU and at UCF.
18. Tennessee: The Vols gave up 33.6 points per game and 200.8 yards per game on the ground. They will have to win shootouts. The schedule includes (at) Pitt, Florida, (at) LSU, Alabama, Kentucky, (at) Georgia and (at) South Carolina.
19. Wisconsin: Why the love for a team that went 9-4 last year and returns only eight starters one of which is Graham Mertz, who completes a lot of passes to the other team in big games?
Underrated
11. Baylor: Dave Aranda has it going. As long as he’s at Baylor, you can pencil the Bears in for at least 10 wins a season.
12. North Carolina State: Dave Doeren has 17 starters back and the only tough game on the schedule is at Clemson on October 1.
13. Oklahoma: This may sound blasphemous, but the offense might be better now that Lincoln Riley is gone with Jeff Lebby calling the plays and former UCF QB Dillon Gabriel. With HBC Brent Venables taking over the defense, there will be serious improvement.
22. Houston: Clayton Tune might be the best QB you’ve never heard of and Doug Belk is still the DC. The Cougars will be hard pressed not to go 12-0.
SPORTING NEWS RANKS BILLY NAPIER NO. 32 DIVISION I HBC
Sporting News, which released its top 25 Division I head coach list on Monday, released its rankings for the rest of Division I on Tuesday. Florida coach Billy Napier whose four-year stint as Louisiana’s head ball coach produced a 40-12 record, is ranked No. 32. That makes Napier the 10th ranked coach in the SEC.
Sporting news coaches 26-50: 26. Dave Doeren, North Carolina State; 27. Josh Heupel, Tennessee; 28. Pat Fitzgerald, Northwestern; 29. Kilani Sitake, BYU; 30. Mike Leach, Mississippi State; 31. David Shaw, Stanford; 32. BILLY NAPIER, FLORIDA; 33. Shane Beamer, South Carolina; 34. Herm Edwards, Arizona State; 35. Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame; 36. Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri; 37. Chris Klieman, Kansas State; 38. Chip Kelly, UCLA; 39. Bryan Harsin, Auburn; 40. Jeff Brohm, Purdue; 41. Steve Sarkisian, Texas; 42. Sonny Dykes, TCU; 43. Scott Satterfield, Louisville; 44. Jeff Hafley, Boston College; 45. Gus Malzahn, UCF; 46. Tom Allen, Indiana; 47. Neal Brown, West Virginia; 48. Dan Lanning, Oregon; 49. Brent Venables, Oklahoma; 50. Hugh Freeze, Liberty
Other notables: 52. Jamey Chadwell, Coastal Carolina; 53. Jonathan Traylor, Texas-San Antonio; 56. Mike Locksley, Maryland; 57. Scott Frost, Nebraska; 58. Mike Norvell, Florida State; 64. Bill Clark, UAB; 65. Jeff Monken, Army; 66. Dana Holgorsen, Houston; 72. Geoff Collins, Georgia Tech; 75. Dino Babers, Syracuse; 76. Clark Lea, Vanderbilt; 81. Jeff Tedford, Fresno State; 82. Clay Helton, Georgia Southern; 83. Tyson Helton, Western Kentucky; 90. Jim McElwain, Central Michigan; 107. Willie Taggard, Florida Atlantic; 115. Terry Bowden, Louisiana-Monroe; 118. Butch Jones, Arkansas State; 125. Jeff Scott, South Florida
BASEBALL STAFF SHAKEUP?
Nothing official has come from the Florida SID but Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball reports that longtime Kevin O’Sullivan assistant Craig Bell is leaving the program. Bell was one of the original assistants (Brad Wetzel was the other one), who came to Florida when O’Sullivan was hired by Jeremy Foley back in 2008. Wetzel was fired after the 2019 season and speculation from various close followers of the UF program that the parting of the ways with Bell has been in the works for the past few weeks.
Bell worked with Florida’s outfielders, served as the hitting coach and was the third base coach. The outfielders played very well and the Gators hit a lot of home runs (121), but the Gators were inconsistent with runners in scoring position, particularly in the recently concluded SEC and Gainesville regional tournaments.
So, who will be Bell’s replacement? One name that is already being heard from Gator fans is former UF All-American and 8-year Major League Baseball veteran Brad Wilkerson, the former National League Rookie of the Year (2001) who spent the past two seasons as an assistant coach on Chris Hayes’ staff at Jacksonville University. At UF, Wilkerson was the first player in collegiate history to hit 20 home runs, steal 20 bases and win 10 games pitching in the same season. In three years playing for the Gators, Wilkerson hit .381 with 55 homers and 214 RBI to go with a 26-11 record on the mound. Wilkerson is a member of the National College Baseball Hall of Fame. Prior to JU, Wilkerson was the baseball coach at The King’s Academy in West Palm Beach.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: In an interview with Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports, Lincoln Riley got a bit defensive when talking about why he did his best Bobby Bowden impersonation in describing why he left Oklahoma, which is about to join the Southeastern Conference, for Southern Cal and the Pac-12. Bowden, if you are old enough to remember, openly admitted that the reason Florida State chose the Atlantic Coast Conference over the SEC back in 1991 was because it was a whole lot easier to win a national championship with an ACC schedule than playing in the SEC.
Oklahoma, which has won seven national championships, all of them since 1950, has plenty of football tradition but it’s about to join a league that has won 12 national championships since 2006. Southern Cal not only hasn’t won a national title during that span, but the Pac-12 has only had a team make it to the national championship game twice (ohfer 2) and has only gotten teams in the College Football Playoff twice (Oregon 2014; Washington 2016). To its credit, Oklahoma made it to the playoff four times.
“I heard the whole SEC narrative,” Riley told Dodd. “To me, the SEC has nothing to do with it. It’s all about the program you’re at and the position you think you can get to.”
Translation: It’s a whole lot easier to breeze through a Pac-12 schedule than it is to play in an SEC that is going to go division-less with a 9-game schedule that will ensure playing every team in the league home and home at least once every four years.
Bobby Bowden didn’t like the prospect of having to play Alabama, LSU, Auburn AND Florida every year so he chose the ACC where he could play Wake Forest Gump and Dook. He won two national championships and got to the championship game of the BCS three other times and didn’t finish outside the top four in the final AP poll after FSU joined the ACC. That wouldn’t have happened in the SEC.
At Southern Cal, Riley is counting on zillions of dollars just collecting dust in Beverly Hills bank accounts owned by alums buying transfers and enticing locals to stay in LA to play college football. It’s a rather nice sales pitch if you think about it, but even with the rapidly changing landscape that the transfer portal combined with NIL money has made over, the majority of the nation’s good high school kids and transfers are going to still choose to play in an SEC that will get infinitely tougher once Oklahoma and Texas join. For one thing, probably 90 percent of all the kids who sign scholarships with schools from one of the power conferences believe they’ll one day make it to the NFL. In the most recent NFL Draft, the SEC had 65 players taken in the most recent NFL Draft while the Pac-12 had 25. A year earlier, the SEC also had 65 players selected and the Pac-12 had 28.
Most every expert expects Lincoln Riley to seriously elevate the talent level at Southern Cal, but there is that teensy little matter of the rest of the league. Beyond Southern Cal and UCLA, there just isn’t much curb appeal to the Pac-12 which is why it is struggling to land a decent television contract when the current one with Fox and ESPN runs out. The networks aren’t exactly beating a path to Pac-12 commish George Kliavkoff’s door to line up future matchups between Oregon State and Washington State. The SEC, meanwhile, will be distributing more than $80 million per school once Oklahoma and Texas leave the Big 12 and the best games in the country every single week will be on ABC and the ESPN family of networks.
So back to the original question: Why did Lincoln Riley leave Oklahoma for Southern Cal? Two reasons: (1) USC is stupid enough to give him a 10-year deal worth $11 million a year and (2) the biggest reason of all – Riley can win more games in the Pac-12 than he ever could in the SEC.
A few thoughts to jump start your Wednesday morning:
NO FIRST TEAM GATORS ON ATHLON PRESEASON ALL-SEC
Athlon, whose preseason magazine is scheduled to hit newsstands this week, has released its preseason top 25 and All-SEC teams. That the Gators aren’t in the top 25 should surprise no one since they’re coming off a losing season that resulted in a coaching change, but not a single Gator made first team All-SEC. In fact, only six Gators made Athlon’s FOUR preseason All-SEC teams and only two of them – O’Cyrus Torrence and Brenton Cox Jr. – even made second team. Perhaps Billy Napier should try doing Rodney Dangerfield impersonations – “I don’t get no respect” – at his next Gator Club speech. Only Vanderbilt, which is to be expected, had fewer preseason All-SEC selections than the Gators.
Second team: OL O’Cyrus Torrence; LB Brenton Cox Jr.
Third team: DL Gervon Dexter; LB Ventrell Miller; CB Jason Marshall
Fourth team: S Rashad Torrence
That 12 of the 14 SEC schools had at least one first team selection – Florida and Vanderbilt the two notable absences – is truly an indictment of Florida’s recruiting the previous four seasons. That the two highest regarded Gators (Torrence and Cox) began their collegiate careers elsewhere only further emphasizes just how poorly Dan Mullen and his staff recruited. There is talent on the UF roster that Napier inherited and has enhanced with freshmen and a handful of transfers, but obviously none of the people at Athlon think a whole lot of what’s left behind. When only Vanderbilt has less representation on a preseason All-SEC team, you know that recruiting has fallen way behind the rest of the league.
Although Billy Napier will never say it out loud where it can be quoted in some publication or broadcast on the airwaves, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for the University of Florida to ever be in this kind of talent deficit.
The rest of the SEC on the preseason Athlon teams: Alabama (18 including 7 first team); Georgia (13 including 5 first team); Texas A&M (12 including 4 first team); Tennessee (10 including 2 first team); Auburn (9 including 2 first team); Kentucky (9 including 1 first team); LSU (9 including 1 first team); South Carolina (9 including 1 first team); Mississippi State (8 including 1 first team); Arkansas (7 including 2 first team); Ole Miss (7 including 1 first team); Missouri (7 including 1 first team); and Vanderbilt (2)
Athlon preseason top 25: 1. Alabama; 2. Ohio State; 3. Georgia; 4. Clemson; 5. Texas A&M; 6. Michigan; 7. Notre Dame; 8. Utah; 9. Southern California; 10. Oregon; 11. Baylor; 12. North Carolina State; 13. Oklahoma; 14. Michigan State; 15. Cincinnati; 16. Wake Forest; 17. Oklahoma State; 18. Tennessee; 19. Wisconsin; 20. Miami; 21. Kentucky; 22. Arkansas; 23. Pittsburgh; 24. Houston; 25. Penn State
Overrated
5. Texas A&M: A year from now No. 5 might be a good place to start, but not this year. The Aggies lost too much talent and now they have to play Miami, Arkansas, (at) Alabama, (at) South Carolina, Florida, (at) Auburn and LSU.
7. Notre Dame: The Irish are breaking in a new QB, there isn’t a lot of speed at WR and the schedule includes (at) Ohio State; BYU (in Las Vegas); Clemson and (at) Southern Cal.
10. Oregon: There are 14 returning starters. That’s the good news. The bad news is the QB will be Bo Nix.
15. Cincinnati: Eight players were drafted, one of whom was Desmond Ridder. The Bearcats open up at Arkansas. They also play at SMU and at UCF.
18. Tennessee: The Vols gave up 33.6 points per game and 200.8 yards per game on the ground. They will have to win shootouts. The schedule includes (at) Pitt, Florida, (at) LSU, Alabama, Kentucky, (at) Georgia and (at) South Carolina.
19. Wisconsin: Why the love for a team that went 9-4 last year and returns only eight starters one of which is Graham Mertz, who completes a lot of passes to the other team in big games?
Underrated
11. Baylor: Dave Aranda has it going. As long as he’s at Baylor, you can pencil the Bears in for at least 10 wins a season.
12. North Carolina State: Dave Doeren has 17 starters back and the only tough game on the schedule is at Clemson on October 1.
13. Oklahoma: This may sound blasphemous, but the offense might be better now that Lincoln Riley is gone with Jeff Lebby calling the plays and former UCF QB Dillon Gabriel. With HBC Brent Venables taking over the defense, there will be serious improvement.
22. Houston: Clayton Tune might be the best QB you’ve never heard of and Doug Belk is still the DC. The Cougars will be hard pressed not to go 12-0.
SPORTING NEWS RANKS BILLY NAPIER NO. 32 DIVISION I HBC
Sporting News, which released its top 25 Division I head coach list on Monday, released its rankings for the rest of Division I on Tuesday. Florida coach Billy Napier whose four-year stint as Louisiana’s head ball coach produced a 40-12 record, is ranked No. 32. That makes Napier the 10th ranked coach in the SEC.
Sporting news coaches 26-50: 26. Dave Doeren, North Carolina State; 27. Josh Heupel, Tennessee; 28. Pat Fitzgerald, Northwestern; 29. Kilani Sitake, BYU; 30. Mike Leach, Mississippi State; 31. David Shaw, Stanford; 32. BILLY NAPIER, FLORIDA; 33. Shane Beamer, South Carolina; 34. Herm Edwards, Arizona State; 35. Marcus Freeman, Notre Dame; 36. Eli Drinkwitz, Missouri; 37. Chris Klieman, Kansas State; 38. Chip Kelly, UCLA; 39. Bryan Harsin, Auburn; 40. Jeff Brohm, Purdue; 41. Steve Sarkisian, Texas; 42. Sonny Dykes, TCU; 43. Scott Satterfield, Louisville; 44. Jeff Hafley, Boston College; 45. Gus Malzahn, UCF; 46. Tom Allen, Indiana; 47. Neal Brown, West Virginia; 48. Dan Lanning, Oregon; 49. Brent Venables, Oklahoma; 50. Hugh Freeze, Liberty
Other notables: 52. Jamey Chadwell, Coastal Carolina; 53. Jonathan Traylor, Texas-San Antonio; 56. Mike Locksley, Maryland; 57. Scott Frost, Nebraska; 58. Mike Norvell, Florida State; 64. Bill Clark, UAB; 65. Jeff Monken, Army; 66. Dana Holgorsen, Houston; 72. Geoff Collins, Georgia Tech; 75. Dino Babers, Syracuse; 76. Clark Lea, Vanderbilt; 81. Jeff Tedford, Fresno State; 82. Clay Helton, Georgia Southern; 83. Tyson Helton, Western Kentucky; 90. Jim McElwain, Central Michigan; 107. Willie Taggard, Florida Atlantic; 115. Terry Bowden, Louisiana-Monroe; 118. Butch Jones, Arkansas State; 125. Jeff Scott, South Florida
BASEBALL STAFF SHAKEUP?
Nothing official has come from the Florida SID but Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball reports that longtime Kevin O’Sullivan assistant Craig Bell is leaving the program. Bell was one of the original assistants (Brad Wetzel was the other one), who came to Florida when O’Sullivan was hired by Jeremy Foley back in 2008. Wetzel was fired after the 2019 season and speculation from various close followers of the UF program that the parting of the ways with Bell has been in the works for the past few weeks.
Bell worked with Florida’s outfielders, served as the hitting coach and was the third base coach. The outfielders played very well and the Gators hit a lot of home runs (121), but the Gators were inconsistent with runners in scoring position, particularly in the recently concluded SEC and Gainesville regional tournaments.
So, who will be Bell’s replacement? One name that is already being heard from Gator fans is former UF All-American and 8-year Major League Baseball veteran Brad Wilkerson, the former National League Rookie of the Year (2001) who spent the past two seasons as an assistant coach on Chris Hayes’ staff at Jacksonville University. At UF, Wilkerson was the first player in collegiate history to hit 20 home runs, steal 20 bases and win 10 games pitching in the same season. In three years playing for the Gators, Wilkerson hit .381 with 55 homers and 214 RBI to go with a 26-11 record on the mound. Wilkerson is a member of the National College Baseball Hall of Fame. Prior to JU, Wilkerson was the baseball coach at The King’s Academy in West Palm Beach.
ONE FINAL PITHY THOUGHT: In an interview with Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports, Lincoln Riley got a bit defensive when talking about why he did his best Bobby Bowden impersonation in describing why he left Oklahoma, which is about to join the Southeastern Conference, for Southern Cal and the Pac-12. Bowden, if you are old enough to remember, openly admitted that the reason Florida State chose the Atlantic Coast Conference over the SEC back in 1991 was because it was a whole lot easier to win a national championship with an ACC schedule than playing in the SEC.
Oklahoma, which has won seven national championships, all of them since 1950, has plenty of football tradition but it’s about to join a league that has won 12 national championships since 2006. Southern Cal not only hasn’t won a national title during that span, but the Pac-12 has only had a team make it to the national championship game twice (ohfer 2) and has only gotten teams in the College Football Playoff twice (Oregon 2014; Washington 2016). To its credit, Oklahoma made it to the playoff four times.
“I heard the whole SEC narrative,” Riley told Dodd. “To me, the SEC has nothing to do with it. It’s all about the program you’re at and the position you think you can get to.”
Translation: It’s a whole lot easier to breeze through a Pac-12 schedule than it is to play in an SEC that is going to go division-less with a 9-game schedule that will ensure playing every team in the league home and home at least once every four years.
Bobby Bowden didn’t like the prospect of having to play Alabama, LSU, Auburn AND Florida every year so he chose the ACC where he could play Wake Forest Gump and Dook. He won two national championships and got to the championship game of the BCS three other times and didn’t finish outside the top four in the final AP poll after FSU joined the ACC. That wouldn’t have happened in the SEC.
At Southern Cal, Riley is counting on zillions of dollars just collecting dust in Beverly Hills bank accounts owned by alums buying transfers and enticing locals to stay in LA to play college football. It’s a rather nice sales pitch if you think about it, but even with the rapidly changing landscape that the transfer portal combined with NIL money has made over, the majority of the nation’s good high school kids and transfers are going to still choose to play in an SEC that will get infinitely tougher once Oklahoma and Texas join. For one thing, probably 90 percent of all the kids who sign scholarships with schools from one of the power conferences believe they’ll one day make it to the NFL. In the most recent NFL Draft, the SEC had 65 players taken in the most recent NFL Draft while the Pac-12 had 25. A year earlier, the SEC also had 65 players selected and the Pac-12 had 28.
Most every expert expects Lincoln Riley to seriously elevate the talent level at Southern Cal, but there is that teensy little matter of the rest of the league. Beyond Southern Cal and UCLA, there just isn’t much curb appeal to the Pac-12 which is why it is struggling to land a decent television contract when the current one with Fox and ESPN runs out. The networks aren’t exactly beating a path to Pac-12 commish George Kliavkoff’s door to line up future matchups between Oregon State and Washington State. The SEC, meanwhile, will be distributing more than $80 million per school once Oklahoma and Texas leave the Big 12 and the best games in the country every single week will be on ABC and the ESPN family of networks.
So back to the original question: Why did Lincoln Riley leave Oklahoma for Southern Cal? Two reasons: (1) USC is stupid enough to give him a 10-year deal worth $11 million a year and (2) the biggest reason of all – Riley can win more games in the Pac-12 than he ever could in the SEC.
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