On to the Goal

Florida’s already impressive 2010 recruiting class grew by another two names today, and both are wide receivers. Take that, Ben Volin.

First up is Mobile, Alabama product Solomon Patton, a waterbug listed (generously, I imagine) at 5′10″, 175. Patton is on the three/four-star border, #38 overall and a four-star per Rivals and #35 and a three-star according to Scout. And yes, he wants to play the “Position Formerly Occupied by Percy Harvin That Only Percy Can Play” or PFOBPHTOPCP for short.

Video evidence is thusfar scant, but this clip on ESPN.com (no embedding, natch) reveals, well, a 5′10″ waterbug who is a borderline four-star guy. He certainly demonstrated some impressive moves, but not quite in the all-world Harvin/Debose sense of the word. With offers from Alabama, LSU and Florida State, however, there’s no doubt that he’s talented. And with offers from Alabama, LSU and Florida State, it’s also safe to say that this battle might not be over just yet. So stay tuned.

The second announcement today came from Stephen Alli, a 6′5″, 208 receiver with a 36-inch vericle leap and a 4.4 fakefortytime. OK, I’m intrigued, go on…

A few other factoids about Mr. Alli, listed in bullet form for effect:

Stephen Alli, via Rivals

• He’s originally from Canada
• He attends Proctor Academy in Andover, New Hampshire
• His other offers are from Boston College, UConn and… Harvard

So in other words, he’s the type of player that previously existed only in EA’s NCAA Football franchises, where  black guys with five-star ratings would emerge from recruiting hotbeds like Barrow, Alaksa, Polson, Montana or Andonver, New Hampshire. Just like in real life! Proctor Academy may be an even more unlikely place for a bigtime football recruit. Annual tuition? $43,400 if you’re a boarding student. At least that drops to $26,200 if you live off campus… in Andover, New Hampshire… population: 2,190.

His location and complete lack of buzz from the recruiting services juxtaposed against the Florida offer makes him an epic “sleeper” on some kind of previously unheard-of level. But wait… Maybe Florida knows something everyone else doesn’t. Alli participated in a Rivals.com Five-Star Showdown in Stamford, Connecticut earlier this year and measured at a legit 6′5″ and was clocked with legit 40 times of 4.38 and 4.41.

He finished first in the broad jump with an amazing 10-foot-7 jump, six inches farther than the next closest prospect. And in the vertical leap, he took first place honors with a 36-inch leap.

Alli didn’t dominate the one-on-ones but he did show pretty good hands and an ability to adjust to the ball in the air, but clearly his upside is impressive. Alli claims early offers from UConn and Harvard so far.

With those measureables he could have cinder-blocks for hands and still get a few Division I offers, but Florida is his first big-time suitor (Tennessee appears to be the only other to even nibble a bit). Until more evidence bubbles to the surface, this one will remain a bit of a mystery. At least it’s a tantilizing OMGZ RANDY MOSS! mystery.

Slightly old news, but Jesse Scroggins, a highly touted quarterback in the 2010 recruiting class, told ESPN.com that he’s considering in Florida. The dropback passer said that is especially interested because Urban Meyer apparently told him that the Gators will change their offense once Tim Tebow leaves:

“I’m hyped on Florida for sure,” Scroggins said. “They win national championships there and coach Meyer does a great job with the quarterback position. They said they’re changing the offense after Tebow graduates to a more drop back style offense and they brought in Scott Loeffler to be the OC there and that’s the kind of offense he has always run so I know it will be a good fit for me.”

Scroggins, a noted Beaver enthusiast, is listed as as a four-star recruit on both Rivals and Scout, so I guess he would be nice to have in the fold, especially given what the Gators will lose to graduation following the 2009 season.

Linebacker Tim Tebow (15) makes a tackle in the BCS Title Game. (Photo via The Oklahoma Daily.)

Quarterback Jevan Snead will be a senior in 2009, and linebacker Tim Tebow, a three-time All-American with nearly 500 tackles and 32.5 sacks in his illustrious career, is almost out of eligibility as well. With such big holes to fill on both offense and defense, every little bit helps. So don’t be surprised if the Gators start taking a few more snaps under center with John Brantley before switching to a full-blown Power-I with Jesse Scroggins in 2012.

(By the way, if Scroggins thinks Loeffler is the OC, he either knows something we don’t or is way, way off-base. Guess which one I’m leaning towards…)

(And just for the record, Mike Bianchi, et al., the recruiting game is nothing but a sleazy sales pitch, with both sides manipulating and bending the truth. Urban Meyer is a part of this bizarre dance, and he is no worse a huckster than Miles or Saban or Carroll or Brown or Stoops. So, really, just stop. Also, two national titles. Scoreboard. Bitch.)

Yes, Urban Meyer is officially on Twitter. Cower in fear:

http://twitter.com/CoachUrbanMeyer

Something tells me that having to do this type of thing pisses Meyer off to no end, but he does it for the same reason everyone else (save for maybe Pete Carroll) is doing it: Recrootin’. Apparently everyone believes Twitter is an effective recruiting tool. (Judging by the background, so too is Obama.)

Frankly, I’m a little too far removed to know what high school kids think of the technology, but the consensus seems to be, “they like it.” So away we go…

War Damn NotaRecruitingViolation
Photo by Van E. Golden via ESPN.com

Let’s get one thing clear: When Urban Meyer makes a mistake, the responsibility clearly falls on one man and one man only… Pat Dooley.

Yes, it turns out an error by the Gainesville Sun columnist may have been the inspiration for Meyer’s slightly bizarre, curmudgeonly call for an NCAA investigation into Auburn’s use of stretch limos. Andrea Adelson of the Orlando Sentinel explains:

There was much debate yesterday about Auburn taking white stretch limos on recruiting trips, and Urban Meyer crying foul to Pat Dooley of The Gainesville Sun. Well, it turns out Dooley misread the story about Auburn and thought the school was taking recruits in the limos, hence Meyer’s reaction.

As Adelson said, Meyer’s comments actually make much more sense when viewed in that context. The difference between coaches riding in a limo and coaches riding in a limo with a recruit may sound insignificant but to the NCAA it is most certainly not. Back in a magical time called “everything before 2004,” recruits used to be flown around in private jets while dining on lobster tails. But then Willie Williams happened.

Williams’ recruiting was a highly publicized affair that was chronicled in his first-person diary for the Miami Herald that has unfortunately been lost to the sands of time (at least on the webs). In the wake of the lavish treatment he so famously received while visiting schools such as Florida, Florida State and Miami, the NCAA cracked down, essentially limiting recruiting transports to “school vehicles or standard-equipped vehicles.”

In fact, the NCAA goes even further when limiting transportation. Article 13.5.1, which you can conveniently find on page 109 of the NCAA’s absurd 439-page Division I Manual, states the following:

An institution may not provide transportation to a prospective student athlete other than on the official paid visit or, on an unofficial visit, to view a practice or competition site and other institutional facilities and to attend a home athletics contest at any local facility when accompanied by an institutional staff member (see Bylaw 13.02.5.1 and 13.7.3).

So basically, if Meyer thought that Auburn had recruits in the limo, completely outside of anything resembling a visit or game, then he was right to think that NCAA investigators ought to pay a visit to The Plains. Of course, we don’t know at this point what Meyer actually thought, but Dooley seemed to take the blame based on this quote in Adelson’s post:

“Ah, the World Wide Interweb (another movie reference). When you make a mistake, you’re going to hear it. Last week I had a Dooley Noted item about Auburn coaches parading recruits around in limos. I obviously misread the story because it was Auburn coaches in the limos going from school to school. War Eagle fans have corrected me with dozens of e-mails. My bad. Now calm down.”

Yes, Pat, the Interwebs will hunt your down with pitchforks and RSS readers. I’m probably unlike many Gator fans because I actually think Dooley does a pretty darn good job, for the most part. There has been much recent discussion in the blogosphere about the role of “traditional media” in covering college football, and I count myself among those who prefer more “journalists” covering teams. Occasionally, those in the profession make mistakes, just like everyone in every other profession. In this case, I think that actually ended up working in our favor because it gave us something to talk about in May.

Even with Dooley’s mea culpa, it’s hard to spin this away from being a rare PR misstep — albeit an infinitesimally small one — on the part of Meyer. If nothing, he appears to have made a public comment without full knowledge of the situation. In the scheme of things, no big deal.

This dustup will in all likelihood soon die down, and Auburn will walk away with its 2-0 record against Meyer. Florida will walk away with its two national championships. Like I said, there isn’t any one else I’d want at the controls of this ship.

So far, I’ve been silent with respect to Urban Meyer’s “you’re with us or you’re against us” tangent at the Central Florida Gator Club meeting two weekends ago. When the quotes first broke, I was initially tempted to write about them, but then thought better of pumping out an overwrought 800-word piece replete with phrases like “there are two sides to this coin.” It’s been 10 days or so, and the story is still percolating, at times humorously like this from Rocky Top Talk. I was joking when I talked about The Urban Meyer Ministry of Truth, but if he keeps up with the Saban-esque public statements, I might just have to address it.

OK, but this does not count

When faced with news of Auburn coaches cruising around in the Yellowhammer State in a white stretch limo (later upgraded to stretch Hummer limo), Urban Meyer gave a Saban-esque response:

“The Florida coaching staff will not be riding around in limos or ripping off our shirts.”

That’s an obvious shot across the respective bows of Auburn and Tennessee (UT WILD BOYZ!) and I absolutely love it. The response from Track ‘Em Tigers is, eh, shall we say misguided:

I talked to a recruit who attended the Florida-South Carolina game last year and he said he actually put his wallet in his front pocket because of the recruits who were there visiting. He said they were cast straight from the streets of Miami. The only thing Urban Meyer is trying to do is win football games. Don’t give us this crap about graduation rates and academics.

That statement is full of scalding-hot issues, but we’ll only touch this one: The Gators have just one recruit in the 2009 or 2010 class from Miami-Dade and have just one scholarship player, redshirt senior Dorian Munroe, from the 305 proper. So, uh, false.

Admittedly, the half-hearted call for the NCAA to look into the practice is a bit curmudgeonly, but when your public recruiting facade persona is as a no-nonsense father-figure type, it makes sense to chide such ostentatious displays. The man knows what he’s doing and, at this exact moment, I wouldn’t want any other living human being at the controls of Gator Nation.

So we’ve established that Gator receivers struggle in the NFL, and we already suspected that Florida’s foes could use that fact as a negative recruiting tool. But is Florida’s spread offense scaring away recruits who want to prepare for the NFL in a pro-style offense? Ben Volin of the Palm Beach Post floated that idea in his blog yesterday, and he presented a sprinkling of interesting anecdotal evidence to support his case.

By "pro-style" you mean this, right?
Photo taken by S Manly, via WikiCommons

Volin points out that, of Florida’s 12 commitments for 2010, none play at running back or receiver. But the most damming quote comes from De’Joshua Johnson, a wide receiver from Pahokee who is a receiver in the class of 2010 (Rivals loves him, Scout notsomuch, but seeing as he has an offer from, like, everyone, I’ll err on the side of him being pretty darn good). In an earlier interview with the Post, Johnson said:

“I dropped Florida and West Virginia because of the spread offense … I don’t want to play in the spread offense. I’ve seen how it affected receivers in the NFL draft. They have to teach them to play in a pro-style offense.”

Alright, then. That quote is obviously a bit presumptuous. But let’s cut him some slack because we’re dealing with a teenage male here, and extreme confidence is a fairly common shared trait amongst teenage males, to say nothing of teenage males who are elite football players. So no hard feelings toward Johnson, obviously, who has pared his list of prospective schools down to Florida State, Alabama and, uh, Oklahoma State? (Someone might want to point out to Johnson that Oklahoma State operates almost entirely from the shotgun, runs the ball nearly 65% of the time and has a quarterback who tallied 146 carries in 2008. You know, totally different from Florida.)

To some extent, Volin is right. Johnson obviously dropped Florida based on the spread, and it stands to reason that there must be other players out there who share that sentiment. But recruits weigh dozens of factors when deciding on a school — everything from relationships with coaches to the size of the weight room. They all get taken into account, and each kid may end up having a different opinion. In fact, there may well be a recruit out there who dropped Alabama because they run a pro offense (wasn’t quite sure how to Google that one).

For some perspective, take a look at why some prominent Gators decided on Florida:

Andre DeBose: Coaching staff and playing time, according to Gator Country:

“It was the coaches,” he said. “Them and the opportunity that school has. They have a lot of seniors leaving. That’s all I want is a chance to play early.”

Brandon Spikes: Success against FSU, according to Gator Country’s Franz Beard:

“That sealed it right there,” he said. “It was nothing like I’d ever been a part of … the crowd … the game … the atmosphere … and then Florida just dominated. That weekend, everything said Florida.”

Tim Tebow: Faith, again per Beard:

“I prayed the whole time about it and I just felt comfortable (with Florida) and hopefully that’s the place that God wants me,” Tim said. “I think it is and that’s why I chose it.”

Chris Rainey: White girls:

“Every time you see a fine girl (in Gainesville), you see another fine girl better than her. (Some people) like different color girls and stuff like that. I’m a white girl man.”

OK, so maybe that last one wasn’t exactly why Rainey chose the Gators, but I’m sure it helped. If anything, it serves as a reminder that recruiting decisions ultimately hinge on the impulses and whims of 17- and 18-year-old boys. We can try to make sense of it all, but the supposed “rational actors” making these decisions literally do not have fully formed brains.

Florida fans, especially, should avoid any hand-wringing over “losing” recruits to teams running pro-style schemes. The 2010 class is so far devoid of playmakers, but past years have been very good to Meyer & Co.

Since 2006 (Meyer’s first full recruiting effort), the Gators have signed 15 wide receivers or running backs with a ranking of four stars or higher from at least one of the two main recruiting services. Four have since transferred (attrition comes with the territory) but those who remain make up a fairly impressive list:

• RB Chris Rainey, 2007
• RB Jeff Demps, 2008
• RB Mike Gillislee, 2009
• RB/WR Percy Harvin, 2006
• WR Riley Cooper, 2006
• WR Justin Williams, 2006
• WR Deonte Thompson, 2007
• WR Omarius Hines, 2008
• WR T.J. Lawrence, 2008
• WR Frankie Hammond Jr., 2008
• WR Andre DeBose, 2009

Yeah, that’ll work. I suppose some amount of consternation is to be expected following a few high-profile defections from what ended up being a small 2009 class. But unless a more discernible pattern develops, there’s no reason to think that the Gators will be bereft of playmakers a few years down the road. The Gators have plenty of scholarships available for 2010, and with the logjams that have existed for the past few years at running back and receiver expected to clear up, Florida will almost certainly be an attractive destination for kids who run really fast while carrying a football.

Side note: The subtext of all this is really a more macro-level discussion on how the spread offense is changing recruiting on both sides of the ball. Rivals High took an interesting look at the topic, particularly about how the pervasiveness of four- and five-receiver sets is creating opportunities for smaller, faster linebackers and safeties. The article is undated, but we know it couldn’t have been written before 2006, the year Giff Smith became recruiting coordinator at Georgia Tech. In any event, it’s an interesting starting point, perhaps for a future post.

The award for “Most Bizarre Recruiting Story — 2009″ should not be thrown around lightly. Consider this was  a year in which:

• David Oku, the nation’s number one all-purpose back met a girl on a recruiting trip to Nebraska and subsequently moved to Lincoln to be close to her. Only, you know, he wasn’t really interested in playing for the Cornhuskers.
• Jamarkus McFarland, a top recruit at defensive tackle, was profiled in-depth in The New York Times and either totally did or totally didn’t write an English paper about Texas girls pulling their pants down at parties.
• Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin swiped a top-100 recruit away from our own Gators, bragged about it, erroneously accused Florida of cheating and was given the harshest rebuke I can ever recall a conference commissioner issuing to one of his own coaches.

No, 2009 was not  a year for any of your usual ticky-tack recruiting shennanigans. You had to bring it hard to top such high-quality ridiculousness, and no one brought more fire than Bryce Brown, the nation’s number-one running back recruit out of Wichita, KS.

Photo via InsidetheU.com

The speculation about where the talented runner would land finally ended today, when Brown signed with Tennessee. Brown initially “committed” to Miami but re-opened the bidding to everyone from Oregon to, uh, University of Phoenix? (Just for the record, Florida never really went after him.)

Even this far after signing day, none of that would be considered too unusual by contemporary. But those probably the most normal parts of this story.

Enter: Brian Butler, recruiting adviser.

The above link points to a fairly lengthy article by Pete Thamel and Thayer Evans (yes, him again) of The Times that is well worth reading if you haven’t already. If you’re in need of cliffnotes, the Good Doctor obliges, natch.

Overall, the Bryce Brown/Brian Butler saga is too much of a sprawling mess to get into here. I’m not getting paid by the word. Or at all. But here are some of the most absurd highlights:

• Butler, who essentially ran Brown’s recruiting, pleaded guilty in 1997 to a felony fraud charge
• He initially attempted to charge information seekers $9.99 a month for updates on Brown’s recruitment
• He suggested, in earnest, that Brown might skip college entirely to go to the CFL, “If they were talking about the right kind of money…” Nevermind that the CFL salary cap is $4.2 million per team and that running backs are of far less relative value in the pass-happy, 12-man-per-side league.
• He apparently fabricated offers out of thin air to drum up interest in other clients of his.
• He is already being investigated by the NCAA.

I’m serious when I say those are just highlights. There’s way more insane stuff that went on. But the end result is that Brown is a Vol. So what does that mean?

Most Tennessee fans, such as Clay Travis, who is anywhere from ecstatic to “three Heismans, God is a Vol, best running back in collegiate football history” (skip ahead to about the 5:50 mark). Of course, such bluster demands an immediate equal and opposite reaction from the Florida message boards, which all resonated with four consistent themes:

1. The Vols will still suck next year
2. Brown will arrive with baggage and leave with UT on probation
3. Kiffin is a dirty cheater and this proves it
4. GATORBAIT WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Points one and four are valid, at least for 2009. Unless Brown is literally the second-coming of Herschel Walker or is planning on playing quarterback, the Vols are still left to rely on Jonathan Crompton’s arm. And unless he makes some sort of unprecedented leap from a truly atrocious 2008, Tennessee is almost certainly doomed to another year of offensive mediocrity. And that could be putting it kindly. At least for the upcoming season, this doesn’t move the needle much in the SEC East.

But this signing has interesting implications over the long-term, and that’s where points two and three come in.

Brown certainly does arrive with baggage, particularly if Butler is planning lurking around Knoxville. It’s important to note, however, that most of the shenanigans related to Brown were occurring through a proxy — the kid himself so far hasn’t done anything too out of the ordinary. It’s never good to have the NCAA sniffing around before the letter of intent was even signed, but despite the unsavory overtones, we have no evidence that even suggests that Brown has done anything wrong. Ditto for Kiffin and the Tennessee staff. Not even remotely.

In fact, the only think that this tells us about Kiffykins is that he’s either extremely lucky or one hell of a recruiter. Based on his track record, I hate to say that I’m leaning toward the latter. Pete Carrol, the winningest active coach by percentage (.844 to Urban Meyer’s .814), did not make Kiffin his recruiting coordinator at USC for no reason. The addition of Brown makes Tennessee’s 2009 class a consensus top-10 haul, which is especially impressive considering a regime change took place in the middle of recruiting season.

Of course, none of this amounts to anything if Kiffin can’t coach, and rest assured the entire league will be gunning for him. Hard.

As for Brown, who knows. He could be great. He could end up being a total bust or, worse, a total bust who brings all sorts of NCAA heat down on Tennessee. Based on the absurd expectations that have already been placed on him, he’ll almost certainly be labeled as “disappointing” somewhere along the line.

Naturally, I’ll be rooting for a disaster of epic proportions, short of anything that lands anyone destitute or dead. But even if Brown never plays a down for the Vols, it appears that there may be more to Kiffin, et al. than mere bluster. If anything, their recruiting success just serves as another reminder that in the SEC, you can never afford to rest on your laurels.

With the conference basketball tournaments in full swing and the NCAA’s just days away, football news has been scant of late, particularly for teams (like Florida) who have yet to begin spring practice. Thus, this edition of “Links” just barely warrants the plural form of the word. Here are the Morning Links. All two of them.

Jonathan Phillips gets his Buster Bluth on

The return of Phillips is by now old news, but Ben Volin provides a few more details about Phillips’ return to the Gators. The most interesting point, however, is that Phillips has already received his master’s degree in real estate. So what will he be doing in the classroom in the upcoming year? (Emphasis mine):

“Being granted an extra year and being able to play this year is just crazy,” Phillips said by e-mail. “I didn’t even expect to be playing last season and was planning on going to law school. Football at Florida for me after arriving on campus started off bleak, but has turned into a dream come true.”

“Plus, my mom is really happy I am going to get three degrees from UF.”

That’s right. Three degrees. Count ‘em. Jonathan Phillips: the Buster Bluth of UF.

Rivals 100 is out, Gators doing well so far

Ah, and you thought it was over for awhile didn’t you? Nonsense. Recruiting — and the inordinate amount of media attention devoted to it — never ends.

Face it: As a devoted college football fan, you are the virtual equivalent of the 30-something guy with a mustache and leather jacket who sits by himself at high school football games even though he doesn’t have a son and/or relative on the team. It’s OK,. Just accept it and move on.

Anyway, Rivals has released the first iteration of its Rivals100 list, and Gator recruits are well accounted for so far, with three players on the board having verbally committed to Florida:

• #5, athlete Matt Elam (West Palm Beach, FL — Dwyer)
• #47, defensive back Jonathan Dowling (Bradenton, FL — Southeast)
• #58, defensive back Victor Hampton (Charlotte, NC — Independence)

Elam, the top committed prospect so far, may project as a safety, so if by some miracle all three stay committed to the Gators until February of next year, that’s one hell of a defensive backfield shaping up. Just 21 players in the top 100 have given a verbal commitment to this point, and only Texas (six) has more commits than Florida, though none on the Longhorns’ board are rated higher than #48.

All of these “commitments” are subject to change (yes, even that of the steadfast Elam), but a good start is certainly preferable to a bad one.

Doing morning links every day sounds like a great concept until you arrive at work to a heaping stack of work on your desk. (Or whatever our digital-world equivalent is to that tired old cliche.) Then, just to make things especially fun, the Carl Johnson thing broke loose. I covered that in my previous post, so here is today’s legal-free batch of links.

Phillips granted sixth year of eligibility, will return in 2009

This story is almost 24 hours old, but it’s a pretty big one: Jonathan Phillips will be back with the Gators in 2009 following an SEC decision granting him a sixth year of eligibility. Phillips missed most of the 2007 season due to a medical hardship.

This is fantastic news for Florida. Phillips hit 12 of 13 field goals and 78 of 79 PATs this past season and gained experience kicking under pressure, including hitting a 27-yarder to put the Gators ahead for good in the fourth quarter of the BCS Title game.

Prior to the waiver, Caleb Sturgis was likely to start at placekicker. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, given the sophomore once inspired Urban Meyer to liken the sounds of his kicks to a bomb going off, but Sturgis did kick eight kickoffs out of bounds last season and has yet to attempt a field goal as a collegian. With Phillips back, the Gators return both starting specialists, junior punter Chas Henry being the other. Now if the Gators could just find a way to bring back James Smith and Butch Rowley…

Gators land a tight end commit! No, not that one…

He’s not Orson Charles, but the Gators picked up a 2010 commitment from Tampa Blake tight end Michael McFarland. As always, seeing as this is an unofficial, non-binding decision from a 17-year-old, I couldn’t be more excited about his certain Gator stardom. There’s not much yet about McFarland that isn’t behind a paywall, but a quick scan of his offers per Rivals reveals at least some upper-tier interest from the likes of Auburn and Carolinas North and South.

OK, now on to THAT tight end…

Remember all that praised heaped on Orson Charles for being a standup guy throughout his recruiting process (including some from this guy?) Well, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate that, if only a bit. From Ben Volin:

Charles said that Hevesy, who left his job as tight ends coach in January to join Dan Mullen’s staff at Mississippi State, was one of the biggest reasons Charles isn’t a Gator.

“John Hevesy, when he came, that was just horrible. That turned things around,” Charles said Sunday evening in a phone interview. “He just wasn’t a good recruiter. He wasn’t really recruiting me, just calling me once a month.”

If that’s the douchiest thing Charles said during recruiting, that unfortunately makes him a pretty good guy by today’s standards. You know, besides the whole signing with Georgia thing.

Doc Saturday questions the veracity of your fake 40 time

I’ll admit, when I saw this picture, my FAKE!-sense was tingling, too:

OMGZ FAKE!

In a way, Doc Saturday just said what all of us were thinking. That is if you think the 40 is a highly dubious measure of football speed and that the purported times of 16-year-olds listed on recruiting Web sites are even more suspect. In other words, if you’re an honest, realistic person.

When I launched this blog on Tuesday, I remarked that late February was a terrible time to start a college football blog. True. You know when else is a bad time to start a college football blog? Four days before you’re scheduled to go on a week-long vacation. At least I’m going to Florida. Anyway, I might have regular Internet access, I probably won’t. So in the unlikely event that someone I don’t know personally is reading this site, I promise I haven’t quit. Anyway, some quick-hitting links and then we out.

Could Charlie Strong’s shot at head coaching come at… Florida?!?

I didn’t post this yesterday because I was thinking of making an extended piece out of it, but life got in the way. Interesting item, however, from Andrea Adelson of the Orlando Sentinel: Should UF follow the hottest trend in coaching and make Charlie Strong its coach-in-waiting? Remember, this is merely speculative offseason fodder, but I would come down emphatically in the “no” camp, at least for now. If you look at the other schools who have gone the coach-in-waiting route, all of the incumbent head men are getting up there in age or tenure or both:

• Florida State: Bobby Bowden, age 79, entering 34th season at FSU
• Kentucky: Rich Brooks, age 67, entering 7th season (coached from 1977-94 at Oregon)
• Maryland: Ralph Friedgen, age 61, entering 9th season
• Oregon: Mike Belotti, age 58, entering 16th season
• Texas: Mack Brown, age 57, entering 12th season

Florida, with 44-year-old Urban Meyer entering just his 5th season, doesn’t seem to belong on that list. At least not right now.

UPDATE: A friend of mine just pointed out that, at 48, Strong is older than the head coach he’d be slated to replace. That’s not the case at any of the other aforementioned schools. So there’s that, too.

Just when you were tired of talking about high school kids

The Gators pick up a commitment for the 2010 recruiting class in Charlotte, N.C. Independence cornerback Victor Hampton. It’s still a bit early for star rankings and recruiting buzz not locked behind a paywall, but a quick scan of Hampton’s other offers on Rivals seems to bode well. Because, you know, the last time the Gators got an early commit from a highly touted corner prospect, it worked out great.

Nu’Keese Richardson is probably not Reggie Bush

Don’t try to tell that to the Tennessee coaching staff, though.

Tebow is already chiseled granite anyway

Michael J. Mooney of the Broward-Palm Beach News Times thinks Florida’s Mount Rushmore of Sports (ESPN’s latest absurd marketing promotion for SportsCenter) is shaky and the reason is Tim Tebow. Doesn’t he know that Tebow is 250 pounds of concrete cyanide, man? You need that kind of ballast in your mountain, brah.

Ahmad Black keeps the hits on coming

Joseph Goodman of the Miami Herald catches up with Ahmad Black the Gators’ returning starter at strong safety. Black is having a pretty typical offseason, with activities such as weightlifting, visiting his former high school and crashing his car into teammate Dustin Doe’s ride.

One more time? Sure, why not: