First College Football Playoff Rankings: Who’s in, who’s out
USA TODAY Sports’ Dan Wolken breaks down the College Football Playoff committee’s first rankings of the season.
Let me take you to the bizarre intersection of blind hope and empirical evidence, where failure is rewarded with patience and perseverance in the face of overwhelming reality.
The Florida Gators officially doubled down on hope early Thursday morning. And if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times.
Hope is not a plan.
But here we are, staring down Florida’s fourth straight losing season for the first time since World War II Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin announced controversial coach Billy Napier stays.
Now, next year, onward.
“I am confident that Billy will meet the challenges and opportunities ahead,” said Stricklin. “As college athletics evolve, (Florida) is committed to embracing innovation and strategy.”
Because nothing screams innovation and strategy like Billy Napier.
Before we get into the how and why of this strange decision, let me take you back three weeks to the Tennessee game. The Gators, desperate for a signature win under Napier, set up for a field goal in the final seconds of the first half in Knoxville.
Trey Smack hit the kick from 42 yards, but Florida was penalized for a substitution violation with too many players on the field. The points were taken off the board and Florida ultimately lost in overtime – a game it should have won in regulation with those three critical points.
This was less than two weeks after Napier — three years into his tenure at Florida — began using the special teams mat that almost every program uses. It is a sideline mat with 11 dots, numbered 1-11 to ensure there is no confusion in the heat of the moment.
Innovation and strategy, baby.
WEEKEND FORECAST: SEC clashes lead to the Week 11 picks for each Top 25 matchup
BELTS FIXED: The bumpy road to the College Football Playoff begins with the Week 11 games
In the walkthrough on Friday before the Tennessee game, there were (in theory) 11 players on the special teams mat. In preseason warm-ups, 11.
While there absolutely had to be eleven players during the match, there were twelve players on the field.
That’s not just a mistake, that’s a mistake that has changed the rules of the game in the most competitive conference in college football, where one play can be the difference between winning and losing.
Early in last week’s rivalry game with Georgia, before the loss of freshman quarterback DJ Lagway to a hamstring injury, and before a gutsy Gators team almost pulled off an upset, I stared at the Florida sideline and was struck by the sight.
There were almost as many blue polo shirts and black khaki pants on the sidelines as there were players in uniform. Three seasons of paralysis by over-analysis, of asking (and getting) 40-plus staff members to cover every possible contingency, and Florida still can’t get the right number of players on the field.
Three seasons of confusing and unthinkable blunders and poor match-day decisions with no solid answers. How many times does Florida have to see special teams mistakes cost games before enough is enough?
Wasn’t last year’s absurd moment when we tried to overrun the field goal team while the offense was trying to hit the ball to set up a game-winning field goal against Arkansas a red flag? Was quarterback Graham Mertz yelling, “What are we doing?” not enough during the Keystone Kops moment?
The Gators lost that game as well, as the blunder cost five yards, lengthening the kick and affecting the angle of the missed kick.
“This is a results company,” Napier says again and again.
And maybe we’re looking at this thing the wrong way. Maybe Florida, with all the potential upside to win big, is just an average program.
The results were very similar to what Napier delivered for most of the program’s history. He is 1-10 in rivalry games (Georgia, Florida State, Tennessee) and 2-13 against ranked teams.
In the century-plus years of football in Florida, there have been two legitimate successes – and both were due to the Gators hiring rare, unique coaches.
Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer were sharks. Elite motivators, and went much further schematically than the rest of the game.
The best high school players wanted to spend three or four years in Gainesville, wanted to use arrogance and attitude to win big. The national and SEC titles, the elite players and the exciting Saturdays in the swamp are all Spurrier and Meyer’s.
The rest of Florida football averages 6.8 wins per season, excluding a unique season from player Spurrier when he won the Heisman Trophy in 1966.
So maybe the empirical evidence isn’t the mounting losses and historically bad streak of losing seasons. Maybe it’s just a typical average program, hoping that a potentially rare freshman talent at quarterback will save the day.
Perhaps the hope is that Stricklin, giving Napier a vote of confidence, will magically improve the recruiting, which currently sits at No. 51 per 247Sports composite.
Perhaps the hope is that transfer portal players will want to play with Lagway, and that will be more of the appeal to Gainesville than the coach who can’t seem to get out of the way.
Hope, y’all, is not a plan.
Hiring a shark as a coach is the only one plan.