Playin’ “Nice” With Florida

1. So...um...any tips for dealing with a surprise 4-8 season?

It’s a lot easier when you know the head coach will get fired after it, until he doesn’t of course. But then at least you get to replace the coordinator who calls for multiple shifts before every. single. freaking. offensive. play. before the running back gets hit for a 2-yard loss on 3rd-and-short because no one bothered to block the strong side linebacker. Right?

The good news is that it won’t tank the following year’s class… probably. It’s the class two years after that when you find your team only signing four blue chip players total (one of whom doesn’t qualify, of course) that the trouble comes.

It’s hard to look like a top SEC team when you’re more than half composed of gritty 3-stars trying to look like blue chippers. The key is to make sure you beat the conference’s underclass by small margins so the head coach can run up an impressive record in one-score games. No one will ever bother to look up what those games were, so then the head coach gets to claim some kind of end-game magic that will never apply when you’re losing to Alabama by 30.

2. If both LSU and Florida lined up all their attrition teams of suspended and/or transferred players, who do you think would win THAT game?

I don’t know LSU’s attrition state exactly, so it’s hard for be to say. However, Florida has a nice start by losing its best safety in the preseason, its best quarterback because the right tackle couldn’t hold a block, and both its best running back and receiver because of credit card fraud. It twists the knife to have the second-best receiver get a high ankle sprain, making sure that whenever he plays again this year he’ll never be his full self. If LSU has a shot, it's because after those five the rest of the Florida players who are missing are backups and true freshmen.

However since we’re including transfers, Will Grier throwing for 343 yards a game with a 13-3 TD-INT ratio probably puts UF over the top. He’s going to be the third quarterback Will Muschamp signed at Florida to be drafted from another team. Think about that: Muschamp signed THREE future NFL draft picks at quarterback, and the Gator offense over his tenure was uniformly bad often with poor play from the QB spot specifically. That wins out over Brandon Harris sitting behind a guy named “Chazz” at North Carolina.

3. So when does Huntley Johnson get his own statue next to Spurrier, Wuerffel and Tebow?

Considering that Johnson was so unhappy with how Florida handled Antonio Callaway’s Title IX case that he filed records requests that revealed some otherwise unknown dirt on the school, his memorial in statuary is looking about as likely as Orgeron winning SEC Coach of the Year for 2017.

4. Is it true that Antonio Callaway's defense for his actions this summer was that he just thought the famous "two bits" chant was literal?

No, but Jordan Scarlett did tell his girlfriend that the money he got from his instance credit card fraud came from an agent in New York. His cover story for doing something illegal was, given Florida’s laws about sports agents and amateur athletes, something that probably qualifies as illegal activity of a different kind.

5. I have a young cousin that will be starting college next year, and would like to major in ichthyology — would Coach Mac be able to recommend a good program?

Given that McElwain once said his offense is easy enough that his dog could successfully play quarterback in it, I don’t know that you want to be taking his advice in the realm of learning things.