Tagged: florida gators

March Madness! Brackets! Bets! Basketballs!

March Madness is officially, formally here, in the form of the 2011 NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Here’s the bracket. The No. 1 seeds are Ohio State, Kansas, Pitt and Duke.

The Florida Gators, champions of the SEC in the regular season and losers of the SEC tournament title game, nabbed a No. 2 seed in the Southeast bracket. This is good. They start out in Tampa, which is very good. Interestingly, should the Gators advance to the second round, they could play UCLA. The Gators beat the Bruins in 2006 and 2007 (in the championship game and the Final Four, respectively) en route to back-to-back titles, so I’d like to think (jinx?) that this is a fortuitous omen.

Madness! March! Et cetera. It’s nice that college basketball is back (by “back,” I obviously mean “people are paying attention to it again”), isn’t it?

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Florida hires Will Muschamp as head coach

Well, that was quick. The Florida Gators have hired Will Muschamp as their next head coach. He was most recently the defensive coordinator and coach-in-waiting at Texas; he joined Mack Brown’s staff for the 2008 season and was rewarded with a doubling of salary and the “next head coach” label before that season was done. Of course, Brown isn’t Jim Tressel, and doesn’t have a timetable for walking away. So Muschamp was either going to wait for an undetermined number of years at one of the blue chip programs in the sport, or take a job at another of the blue chip programs in the sport.

He’s a guy with SEC roots, having grown up in Gainesville, graduated from Georgia (where he played) and was defensive coordinator at Auburn and LSU (yes, he worked for Saban, that is what it is). He’s also 39 years old and has no head coaching experience, which in the annals of Gator hires makes this more a Ron Zook one than an Urban Meyer hire (that would have been Chris Petersen). The Steve Spurrier hire would have been Mullen or Strong, but that’s behind us now. We’ll have to see if Texas knew just what they were doing when they tried to lock him up two years ago.

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Urban Meyer resigns as Florida coach (again)

Urban Meyer has resigned as the head football coach at the University of Florida. It goes without saying that Meyer, a giant in his field and probably the best coach in the game (Saban is a better recruiter, Carroll was and will again be a better motivator, but Meyer is and was the whole package), will be missed as the head coach. His two national championships during six seasons with the Gators helped transform it into a top-five program, so there will be no shortage of big names lining up to replace him.

Wanting to spend time with his family is the stated reason. His health, such a big problem that he (briefly) resigned last year, has to be a big factor. He can’t be himself without going full throttle, and he can’t go full throttle without killing himself, so really, this is the decision he was building towards last year but couldn’t follow through. His reign at Florida hasn’t been without fault — the arrest record stands out, as does this season’s big decline without Tim Tebow in the backfield — but he is still going out on top, without years of decline, middling seasons, late December bowl games and the inevitable retirement and return with a lesser program to prove He’s Still Got It. He is going out having proven he’s the best and altering the pecking order in the sport, and there’s not much more a guy could do.

(It need not be said, but if online chatter that has him going to the Denver Broncos is true — and I doubt it, because he needs a lower-pressure job, not a higher-stress job, and also he was talking about this last weekend and Denver’s job only opened on Monday, and why would Denver take another chance on a highly-touted coach with no NFL head coaching experience? — that would be disheartening. I don’t believe it, so I write this under the belief that he is stepping down for health reasons.)

So who replaces him? Expect names like Jon Gruden and the like bandied about, but that won’t happen.Don’t expect a coordinator to get the bump to head coach here, because it didn’t work out so well last time (Zook). This is a prime job, much better than it was after Spurrier left in 2001. Meyer announcing this right now means Florida has first crack at the elite coaching prospects. The two names that are going to come up often are Dan Mullen and Charlie Strong, both former coordinators under Meyer who are now doing well with decent programs (Mississippi State and Louisville, respectively). They are the two best bets, since they know the program, know the region and can recruit. But Jeremy Foley could also head further out to seek out coaches like Chris Petersen or, ugh, Bobby Petrino. But this is not a gig people will use to get their name out (see: Gruden and Miami). This is one of the prime jobs in the field. Should be interesting.

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Florida taking on Penn State in the Outback Bowl

Hey, Let’s Pretend This Game Matters: The Florida Gators will be taking on the Penn State Early Bird Specials in the Outback Bowl. A New Year’s Day game! That would matter so much, if it were 20 years ago. The only way bowl games matter is from a financial point of view; for the team, does a win in a meaningless game matter more or less than any other win or loss in a game when the season was done? Sure, they can use it to sell prospective recruits, but guys aren’t signing up to come to Florida to play in the Outback Bowl; they’re signing up so they can play for titles, get on TV and try to get drafted.

Anyway, on paper it should be a great matchup. Perhaps the best coach in the nation, a young man who rapidly ascended the ranks, facing the cagey old vet; Big Ten power versus SEC speed; the spread versus the run. Except it’s not. These teams are both awful. Neither beat a top 20 team this season. This game will feature wobbly offense and pretty abysmal defense. Also, the last time Florida played a meaningless bowl game against a Big Ten team, they lost the Capital One Bowl to Michigan three seasons ago. (And for history’s sake: Penn State last won the Outback Bowl after the 2007 season, while Florida won it in Meyer’s first season five years ago.)

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More arrests in Gainesville when the Gators are playing

In completely unsurprising news, the number of alcohol-related arrests rises in a college football town on game day. But this study examined Gainesville, home of the Florida Gators, so let us quote!

According to a study in the Drug and Alcohol Dependence journal this year, there are about six times as many alcohol-related arrests in Gainesville on game days when Florida’s football team is at home as there are on Saturdays when there’s not a game.

I hope a future study examines the differential between successful game days (i.e. big wins) and dispiriting losses (i.e. last Saturday’s choke job against South Carolina).

[WSJ]

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The Florida Gators are okay with offensive impotency, thank you very much

If you are one of the people gleefully enjoying the University of Florida’s decline as a college football power, I’ve got good news! Urban Meyer has no plans to jettison offensive coordinator Steve Addazio, despite the man’s innovative “let’s throw three quarterbacks at the other team and maybe run it every other down” style of coaching.

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Did a cheating scandal chase Cam Newton away from Florida?

Oy. Following on the report suggesting Heisman frontrunner Cam Newton wanted cash to sign with a school, Fox Sports has this whopper of a report: Allegedly, Newton left Florida because he was getting in trouble for cheating. Serious trouble, the kind that gets you expelled.

Newton is an obvious target right now. He’s the prohibitive favorite for college football’s most storied trophy. He is leading the undefeated No. 2 team in the nation, with very little between them and the championship game. And he left Florida, a big name program, under shady circumstances (that haven’t actually been fully examined by the national press, even when attention has been turned to them).

Some people think this report, along with the cash-for-signing-letter allegation, are courtesy of one Urban Meyer. (The Big Lead is the most high-profile and vituperative of the critics saying this, based on nothing so much as Meyer’s interactions with the writer.) Meyer has denied any involvement. While Meyer is obviously a tactician who can be brutal with his methods (i.e. he’s a professional coach in a big-time sport), this doesn’t strike me as realistic. What, he’s so convinced the Gators are going to beat South Carolina and Florida State that he wants to shake up Auburn before the SEC title game? That’s kind of stupid. If Meyer or someone on his staff was involved, why not leak this stuff in the week or two leading up to the SEC game? Why not shake them up when they’re about to take that field? Why let the controversy emerge and slowly fade away by the time the Gators and Tigers ostensibly play? Dumb.

A more likely scenario: Cam Newton and the Tigers are the No. 2 team in the country, chugging along to the BCS title game and the Heisman trophy. Newton left Florida under weird circumstances. Now that he is the story in college ball, reporters are going to Gainesville, Auburn and Brenham to find out more about his past. It’s called reporting. Assuming that everything is the fault of Newton’s former coach is a hell of a leap.

That being said: Newton leaving Florida after 2008 because Tebow was returning for his senior season makes little sense. Leaving because John Brantley was in line to take over in 2010 makes a bit more sense (nobody thought Brantley would be the bust he’s been). But since he had off-the-field issues, we took the story at face value: he had some issues, he wasn’t going to play, so he bolted to ply his trade elsewhere. The academic infraction actually makes a little more sense, to be honest. But it doesn’t matter. It won’t keep Newton off the field now, it won’t stop him from getting drafted and it won’t impact his future earnings. It’s interesting, but that’s all there is to it.

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Cam Newton and second chances

With Auburn in the thick of the national title chase — and, in my eyes, the SEC’s best shot at sending a team to the title game for a fifth straight season — it is worth revisiting the story of Cam Newton, Auburn’s dual threat quarterback. Newton was originally a Florida Gator, backing up Tim Tebow in his 2007 Heisman-winning season, but he was sidelined in 2008 by an injury. He never returned to the team after running into trouble with a laptop that was reported stolen (and having a run-in with the law does not preclude someone for playing for the Gators, it should be noted).

With Tebow returning for the 2009 season and John Brantley in place to back him up, Newton transferred. He spent a year in junior college (due to that preposterous NCAA rule that makes transfers sit out a season of Division I play) and is now a Heisman contender with Auburn. I can’t help but notice that Florida’s offense is demonstrably weak this season, unable to find any rhythm, and Newton would have made for a much better transition from Tebow. Alas. [SI]

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Florida Gators drop out of Top 20

After the last-second loss to gutsy-and-lucky Les Miles and LSU, the Florida Gators fell in both polls to No. 22 (from No. 14). This is the first time the Gators have dropped out of the Top 20 during Urban Meyer’s six-season tenure, and their lowest ranking during his time in Gainesville. The previous lowest ranking for the Gators under Meyer was when they were No. 18 in November 2007 (that was Tebow’s Heisman year, when the Gators finished 9-4 between one-loss championship seasons). It’s the lowest ranking since the team was unranked in November 2004 against Florida State (Ron Zook’s final game as head coach).

Florida has also lost their last two games. The last time the Gators posted a two-game losing streak was two losses to Auburn and LSU in September-October 2007, the only such two game streak under Meyer (before that, the last time they dropped two in a row was the end of the 2003 season). And it’s the first home loss for the Gators since Ole Miss beat them by one in the Swamp on Sept. 27, 2008 (the game followed by Tebow’s famous speech).

For what it’s worth, the SEC has four teams in the top 10 (Auburn, Alabama, LSU and South Carolina are taking up slots seven through 10) and six teams in the top 25 (Arkansas and Florida are the two on the outside). Georgia, South Carolina and a resurgent Florida State still await the Gators.

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The Reverse Jinx Always Works, Right?

JINX JINX JINX: USA Today would like its readership of hotel guests to know they do not want Florida or Boise State making next year’s BCS title game. So they predicted that Florida and Boise State would face off in the BCS title game. THANKS GUYS, I’m sure Urban Meyer’s heart really appreciated this black magick you have wrought upon his house.

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