I spent three days on the July recruiting circuit last week, during which time I got a chance to watch about 90 percent of the nation's best high-school players in action. Two of those days were spent at Nike's King City Classic in Cleveland, and on the third day I attended the Reebok All-American Camp in Philadelphia. Based on what I saw, here is how I would sum up what the vast majority of college coaches will be looking for as the summer evaluation period continues over the next three weeks:
I had a feeling no matter what I wrote about the NCAA's penalty against Alabama for Textbookgate, a ton of mail would follow. Crimson Tide fans didn't disappoint. As we try to slog through the longest months of the year for college football fans, let's tackle their concerns, your reactions to my suggestions for conference realignment and the lengthy rap sheet of Urban Meyer's Florida Gators.
Predicting the "surprise" teams heading into a season has become almost as common as guessing the national champion.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- In the early morning of Feb. 11, tired and heartbroken, Nick Calathes laced up his sneakers as his teammates trudged back to their dorms. A few hours earlier, Calathes had stood at the free throw line at Kentucky's Rupp Arena. The Florida point guard had been fouled shooting a buzzer-defying three-pointer, and he needed to make all three free throws to force overtime. He had missed the first. And the second. He missed the third on purpose with the hope that the ball would spring off the rim and into the hands of a waiting Gator, but by then it was too late.
A relatively serene National Signing Day gave way to a wild Thursday that featured a first-year coach (Tennessee's Lane Kiffin) calling the coach who's won two of the last three national championships (Florida's Urban Meyer) a cheater for breaking a rule that, it turns out, isn't even a rule. That story -- and my response to it on SI.com -- drew plenty of mail. I received plenty of e-mail from folks who obviously see the world through orange-and-white or orange-and-blue colored glasses, but others of you had some interesting theories as to why Kiffin would attack Meyer. Today, I'll examine one of those theories, and I'll answer some of your other post-Signing Day questions.
Devon Kennard gets one question (So, where are you going to college?) as frequently as he does the other (How's the knee?). On Tuesday morning, the star defensive end from Desert Vista High in Phoenix answered one of those questions definitively.
One day in late December, dry-erase boards stood staggered a few yards apart on the track surrounding the field at the University of North Florida. A Nebraska assistant coach was posted in front of each board, and around each coach huddled a clutch of Jacksonville-area high school coaches. The Cornhuskers had come to the Sunshine State to face Clemson in the Gator Bowl, but first-year coach Bo Pelini and his staff figured that while they were there, they should lay the foundation for a recruiting pipeline into the state that, from 2004-08, produced more BCS-conference football players (981) than any other.
Florida quarterback Tim Tebow began to walk off the stage to close the Gators' national title celebration Sunday. Then the junior stopped.
With less than four minutes to play in Thursday night's BCS title game, Florida wide receiver David Nelson heard one of his coaches calling for the "Mustang" package. "I got this knot in my stomach," he told me after the game. "There's only one play we run out of Mustang."
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. -- Megan Mullen will deliver her first biological child three weeks after national signing day -- this is how coaches' wives keep track of time -- but Thursday, her eyes went glassy at the thought of leaving behind her 6-foot-3, 240-pound adopted son. "He's greater than anybody thinks he is," Mullen said.
I spent three days on the July recruiting circuit last week, during which time I got a chance to watch about 90 percent of the nation's best high-school players in action. Two of those days were spent at Nike's King City Classic in Cleveland, and on the third day I attended the Reebok All-American Camp in Philadelphia. Based on what I saw, here is how I would sum up what the vast majority of college coaches will be looking for as the summer evaluation period continues over the next three weeks:
I had a feeling no matter what I wrote about the NCAA's penalty against Alabama for Textbookgate, a ton of mail would follow. Crimson Tide fans didn't disappoint. As we try to slog through the longest months of the year for college football fans, let's tackle their concerns, your reactions to my suggestions for conference realignment and the lengthy rap sheet of Urban Meyer's Florida Gators.
Predicting the "surprise" teams heading into a season has become almost as common as guessing the national champion.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- In the early morning of Feb. 11, tired and heartbroken, Nick Calathes laced up his sneakers as his teammates trudged back to their dorms. A few hours earlier, Calathes had stood at the free throw line at Kentucky's Rupp Arena. The Florida point guard had been fouled shooting a buzzer-defying three-pointer, and he needed to make all three free throws to force overtime. He had missed the first. And the second. He missed the third on purpose with the hope that the ball would spring off the rim and into the hands of a waiting Gator, but by then it was too late.
A relatively serene National Signing Day gave way to a wild Thursday that featured a first-year coach (Tennessee's Lane Kiffin) calling the coach who's won two of the last three national championships (Florida's Urban Meyer) a cheater for breaking a rule that, it turns out, isn't even a rule. That story -- and my response to it on SI.com -- drew plenty of mail. I received plenty of e-mail from folks who obviously see the world through orange-and-white or orange-and-blue colored glasses, but others of you had some interesting theories as to why Kiffin would attack Meyer. Today, I'll examine one of those theories, and I'll answer some of your other post-Signing Day questions.
Devon Kennard gets one question (So, where are you going to college?) as frequently as he does the other (How's the knee?). On Tuesday morning, the star defensive end from Desert Vista High in Phoenix answered one of those questions definitively.
One day in late December, dry-erase boards stood staggered a few yards apart on the track surrounding the field at the University of North Florida. A Nebraska assistant coach was posted in front of each board, and around each coach huddled a clutch of Jacksonville-area high school coaches. The Cornhuskers had come to the Sunshine State to face Clemson in the Gator Bowl, but first-year coach Bo Pelini and his staff figured that while they were there, they should lay the foundation for a recruiting pipeline into the state that, from 2004-08, produced more BCS-conference football players (981) than any other.
Florida quarterback Tim Tebow began to walk off the stage to close the Gators' national title celebration Sunday. Then the junior stopped.
With less than four minutes to play in Thursday night's BCS title game, Florida wide receiver David Nelson heard one of his coaches calling for the "Mustang" package. "I got this knot in my stomach," he told me after the game. "There's only one play we run out of Mustang."
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. -- Megan Mullen will deliver her first biological child three weeks after national signing day -- this is how coaches' wives keep track of time -- but Thursday, her eyes went glassy at the thought of leaving behind her 6-foot-3, 240-pound adopted son. "He's greater than anybody thinks he is," Mullen said.
Urban Meyer is heading south on I-95 in the teeth of rush hour. But there is no slowing the Gators coach, who is riding shotgun in an unmarked police car. Behind him are the team buses, around them is a 20-motorcycle police escort. Officers range ahead, sweeping motorists from the left lane, temporarily closing on-ramps. At this moment it is, indeed, great to be a Florida Gator.
Click here for five reasons why Oklahoma will win.
FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- For three-plus seasons, Florida coach Urban Meyer and offensive coordinator Dan Mullen attempted to run their preferred spread-option offense while lacking one of the most critical ingredients: A tailback.
Tajh Boyd didn't know much about spread offenses when he began practicing last week for Saturday's U.S. Army All-American Bowl. He didn't know the terminology. He didn't know the basic plays. Saturday, playing against the nation's best, the Hampton, Va., native piloted the spread as if he'd run it his entire life.
Here's how SI.com's playoff worked: We took the six BCS-conference champions and the six highest remaining teams from the final BCS rankings. Then we seeded all 12 teams solely according to their final BCS ranking. The top four teams (Oklahoma, Florida, Texas and Alabama) received a first-round bye. Voting took place over the last two weeks.
In 2002, I interviewed for a job covering high school sports in The Tampa Tribune's farthest flung bureau. The gig paid $35,000 a year.
Here's how SI.com's playoff works: We took the six BCS-conference champions and the six highest remaining teams from the final BCS rankings. Then we seeded all 12 teams solely according to their final BCS ranking. The top four teams (Oklahoma, Florida, Texas and Alabama) received a first-round bye. For the purpose of this simulation, we are going to assume that all "banged up" players (Percy Harvin, etc.) will take part in the action. We will be crowning a champion next week. The finals start Wednesday, so you've got two days to vote and make sure your voice is heard.
Here's how SI.com's playoff works: We took the six BCS-conference champions and the six highest remaining teams from the final BCS rankings. Then we seeded all 12 teams solely according to their final BCS ranking. The top four teams (Oklahoma, Florida, Texas and Alabama) received a first-round bye. For the purpose of this simulation, we are going to assume that all "banged up" players (Percy Harvin, etc.) will take part in the action. We will be crowning a champion next week. Voting ends Tuesday, so start voting and let your voice be heard.
There's no disputing the fact that many of the once-sacred traditions of bowl games have irreparably changed over the past decade. In this, my sixth-annual ranking of all 34 bowl games (there were 28 when I started it, including the Silicon Valley Classic), I think you will find that the date a game is played no longer bears any correlation to the quality of its matchup.
He'd spent the better part of four hours taking licks from the No. 1 team in the country, ultimately engineering two fourth-quarter touchdown drives and hoisting the SEC Championship trophy, but Tim Tebow's day was far from finished Saturday.
Florida safety Ahmad Black texted linebacker Brandon Spikes on the bus en route to the Georgia Dome for Saturday's SEC championship. You are the leader, and I'm following you.
The common perception is that the Big 12 has stolen the SEC's spotlight as the premier conference this season, what with its bevy of top-10 showdowns and collection of Heisman candidate quarterbacks. But it's the SEC that has the two top teams facing off in Atlanta for a spot in the national title game. This may be the Big 12's season, but all eyes will be on the Georgia Dome Saturday afternoon, when new school and old school clash for the SEC title.
Florida's equipment staff gave Tim Tebow the option to change out of his pink jersey during Saturday's halftime. The jersey -- turned Sex in the City fabulous by a mélange of torrential rain and Florida State end zone paint -- stayed on Tebow's shoulder pads.
"That wasn't right. It was a bad deal. And it will forever be in the mind of Urban Meyer and in the mind of our football team. ... So we'll handle it. And it's going to be a big deal." -- Florida coach Urban Meyer in his biography, Urban's Way
Everyone zipped their lips. But why?
I'm afraid I must begin this week's column with a bit of a soapbox rant.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- When you strip away the hype, the touchdowns, the cheers and the tears, sometimes a game -- or a season -- can boil down to one play. Eleven guys on one side need to move a leather ball 9 feet. Eleven guys on the other side must ensure that leather ball moves 8 feet, 11 inches or less.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- As Tim Tebow tried to strangle the podium he stood behind, he fought back tears. The last question had been asked and answered. The Florida quarterback didn't need to publicly flay himself further for all the failures in a 31-30 loss to 22-point underdog Ole Miss on Sept. 27. Tebow didn't need to say more. But he did.
Last week, the eyes of the college football world focused on USC and Ohio State. This week, the SEC takes center stage.
Contrary to what you might have heard, Ohio State has not gone ahead and forfeited Saturday's game at USC. In spite of their recent drop in the AP poll, in spite of an ever-swelling Vegas spread (11 points as of this writing) and in spite of an ESPN survey that indicated 75 percent of you think they might as well not bother, the Buckeyes are still planning to board their flight to Los Angeles.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Before we examine why Florida's 26-3 win against Miami on Saturday should give the Gators pause and the Hurricanes hope, we must make two assumptions.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- When No. 5 Florida hosts Miami on Saturday night, several dozen athletic young men will sit in the bleachers behind the south end zone as guests of the Florida football program. They all want to examine the Gators, but more than a few will pay close attention to the team on the visitors' sideline.
Breaking down Saturday's nonconference clash in Gainesville.
At his conference's preseason media event last month, SEC commissioner Mike Slive stood before a room full of reporters and rattled off his league's impressive list of recent accomplishments -- three BCS championships in six years, an NCAA-record seven bowl wins in 2007 and the first 1-2 finish in the polls by a single conference (No. 1 LSU, No. 2 Georgia) since 1971.
The days of redshirting the bulk of a recruiting class and waiting for star prospects to take root and blossom have long since passed. Most programs must count on at least a few freshmen to contribute immediately. Even the top teams in SI's preseason rankings aren't immune. With the exception of No. 3 USC, four of SI's top five teams will enter the season needing freshmen to do more than lift weights and chow down at the dining hall. Here's a look at the freshmen who will be counted on to help early, in the top five and beyond.
Urban Meyer used the phrase to sell his vision. Florida's players, Meyer said while speaking to the Gators Club in 2005 and 2006, would be "the top one percent of one percent," meaning they would be intelligent, athletically gifted young men with excellent character. When Meyer spoke the words, the old Gators cheered. The phrase even headlined page 1 of the 2006 Florida media guide.
He's captured two SEC championships, holds the fourth-highest winning percentage (.789) of any coach in the country and is coming off a season in which his team finished No. 2 in the polls.
HOOVER, Ala. -- Florida grad Michelle King and her two small children staked out their spot at the foot of the Wynfrey Hotel's escalators around 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the first day of the SEC's annual preseason media circus. Emma King, whose seventh birthday is Friday, held up an orange-and-blue lettered poster board that read: "All I Want 4 My Birthday Is to Meet Tim Tebow."
TAMPA, Fla. -- Jim Leavitt looked at me like I'd just asked him to help me move.
NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. -- A frustrated Austin Rivers flipped off the TV the night of June 12. It was bad enough that a bout with bronchitis kept the son of Celtics coach Doc Rivers from flying to see Game 4 of the NBA Finals in person. Now the younger Rivers had to watch the Celtics flounder to a 24-point deficit.
A year ago this time, no one would have predicted a Thanksgiving weekend game between Missouri and Kansas would wind up one of the most highly viewed of the season. Or that USC's game against Stanford would carry greater implications than its subsequent trip to Cal.
You know that college football season must be getting closer -- or at least closer than it was in, say, March -- when the first wave of preview magazines start hitting the newsstands. I've seen two, Athlon and Phil Steele, and both have the same team at No. 1.
If you're a savvy, rising star in your workplace, you're always looking to climb the corporate ladder. That often involves flirting with another company and fielding a better offer for a higher position. If your current company wants to keep you, it will have to give you a fat raise.
NEW YORK -- As the game grew older Tuesday night, the age difference between UMass and Florida grew more evident.
Emmanuel Moody and Urban Meyer might be the first to dispute the so-called Sports Illustrated cover jinx.
SI.com's Andy Staples will weigh in on the latest Signing Day news throughout the day. To provide your own commentary on the day's events, click here.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Chandler Parsons walked off the O'Connell Center court Sunday smiling wide. The Florida freshman forward and his teammates had just thrashed then-No. 13 Vanderbilt 86-64, a victory which featured a 23-0 Gators run and assists on 26 of 29 field goals.
South Garland (Texas) High's Joseph Ibiloye tried to explain why he always seems to know where the ball will go. "Sometimes, you've got to think what you'd do if you were on offense," the Oklahoma-bound free safety said. "I look at field position. I look at the clock."
Tim Tebow has counted to infinity -- twice.
Sports Illustrated will announce its choice for Sportsman of the Year on Dec. 3. Here's one of the nominations for that honor by an SI writer. For more essays, click here.
Things are heating up at the Swamp. That's what they call their stadium down here in Gainesville, Fla. And the University of Florida Gators football team - defending national champs - hasn't lost a game on its home turf in more than two years.
The rebranding took place before our very eyes. Going into his team's gutsy 28-24 comeback victory over a talented, desperate Florida squad last Saturday night, LSU coach Les Miles was seen, truth be told, as a highly paid caretaker. He was better than competent -- witness the 5-0 start in 2007; examine his identical 11-2 records in '05 and '06. But Miles was also fortunate, as South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier recently reminded the world, to have had so much talent bequeathed to him by his predecessor, Nick Saban.
Focused. Embarrassed. Hungry. Angry. What else will the Florida Gators be when they venture into Death Valley this Saturday night?
All across the country this week, it seems people are still trying to come to terms with what exactly happened in college football last weekend.
Get ready everyone -- the Gators are coming.
NEW YORK -- Last Sunday evening, with his official visit to Gainesville coming to an end, Will Hill III, the do-everything senior from St. Peter's Prep (Jersey City, N.J.) stopped in to Florida coach Urban Meyer's office to share a few words before dinner. After a few minutes, Hill's parents engaged in a sidebar conversation with Florida assistant coaches Steve Addazio and Chuck Heater, leaving their son to speak with the championship coach, one-on-one.
St. Peter's Prep (Jersey City) all-around star Will Hill took his official visit to Gainesville, Fla., last Saturday and watched from the stands as the Gators thrashed Tennessee 59-20.
Before Florida could commence embarrassing Tennessee in football last Saturday, there was some basketball business to conduct: the distribution of a second set of national title rings. The Gator hoopsters, or at least all of them save for Lee Humphrey, who's plying his trade in Greece, stood before a sellout crowd at The Swamp and had their names called out over the PA system.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- When Florida's players made their procession toward Ben Hill Griffin Stadium two hours before game-time Saturday -- as part a suit-and-tie affair they call the "Gator Walk" -- the biggest attraction was saved for last. The crowd had seen coach Urban Meyer, star wideout Percy Harvin, and feared defensive end Derrick Harvey, and it cheered them appreciatively, but wasn't whipped into a frenzy until the end: That was where Tim Tebow was, flanked by a TV camera and trailed by a large herd of police.
You've heard the cliché before, and it's one that's fairly hard to argue: "Football," says every coach or player who's ever donned a headset or uniform, "is a team game."
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- After signing a few autographs for a throng of some 250 fans who braved the smoldering heat that registered 110 on the heat index, Tim Tebow did a couple brief interviews, before being directed to a golf cart so security could whisk him to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for team meetings.
Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc., from Bowls, Polls, and Tattered Souls: Tackling the Chaos and Controversy That Reign over College Football, by Stewart Mandel. Copyright © 2007 by Stewart Mandel.
The USC Trojans were seated on the turf in orderly rows, stretching their hamstrings. It was the first official practice of the new season, but Ken Norton was talking the same old smack. "I guar-an- tee ," Norton, the lantern-jawed linebackers coach was shouting, "the running backs will not get a yard today. Not ... get ... a ... yard !" While it had the desired effect, generating a storm of woofing between offense and defense, Norton's declaration didn't hold up for long.
We asked one starter from each of the 119 Division I-A teams the following questions about college football and the upcoming season. Here's how they responded:
Following a stroke of genius on the part of football coach Urban Meyer, things are ready to heat up on the recruiting front for Florida.
Every year the Southeastern Conference boasts that it's the strongest league in college football, and a look at the schedules explains why. Just try to set up a soft schedule. With so many good teams in the SEC, it just cannot be done.
At a press conference to announce Billy Donovan's hiring by the Orlando Magic last Friday morning, nearly 6,500 words were spoken by Donovan and general manager Otis Smith as they sat side-by-side on stools at the center of the team's practice court. Buried in the final 300 words of the 45-minute ordeal was Smith's smiling statement -- in response to what Donovan's first act as coach would be -- that "we gave him the weekend off."
For the sake of Florida's basketball recruits, it's a good thing weekend cell phone minutes are free.
The two coaches were on the Georgia Dome floor on the night of April 2, occupying vastly different roles as the confetti was settling on Florida's second straight national championship. Billy Donovan was a central figure in the celebration, given that he had just joined John Wooden and Mike Krzyzewski as the only men to win back-to-back titles in the past 35 years of college basketball. Anthony Grant, meanwhile, was on the periphery, taking in the scene with a proud-yet-detached look on his face.
You love the Mailbag. You really love it.
Larry Coker inherited a tremendous group of players at Miami when he took over for Butch Davis in 2001.
Year Five of the Mailbag is officially under way. Please take your seats.
As it turns out, the most talented team in college football last season may not have been national champion Florida. Or regular-season No. 1 Ohio State. Or perennially dominant USC.
Preaching the gospel of coach Billy Donovan, Florida signee Chandler Parsons was quoting Billy D chapter and verse on Thursday as he put into context what he has already done for the greater good of the Gators.
Before we get started, a huge congratulations to my Florida Gators for winning their second straight NCAA men's basketball title. Luckily for me, the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour's clay-court season kicked off this week down the road from my alma mater in Amelia Island, Fla.
Hugh Hefner was recently a guest of Lakers owner Jerry Buss in his spacious suite at the Staples Center. Hef didn't arrive alone. Twenty Playmates sauntered into the box along with the Playboy owner, who has long been friends with the Lakers' playboy owner. In case you're interested, the whole scene was filmed for The Girls Next Door reality show.
Take a good, hard look, America. In an era of me-first gunners, one-year supernovas (see you in the NBA, Kevin Durant) and attention spans the length of a YouTube clip, it may be a long, long time before we see another college basketball team like these Florida Gators. Just listen to forward Corey Brewer, a.k.a. the Drunken Dribbler (for his swerving forays to the hoop), who was as sober as a reverend (for a little while, at least) after his Gators claimed their second straight national title on Monday at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. "I feel like we're one of the best college basketball teams to ever play the game," Brewer said after Florida's 84-75 victory over Ohio State. "You can argue about it, but I'd put us up against anybody."
The NCAA tournament may have been a showcase for the Florida Gators to win their second consecutive championship, but it also provided the final national stage for collegians to impress their potential future employer, the NBA. Given that everyone this side of Mars agrees that Ohio State's Greg Oden and Texas' Kevin Durant will be the top two draft picks should they choose to leave college after one year, SI.com spoke to an NBA scout to ascertain who else helped improve their draft stock -- and who didn't -- throughout the 2006-07 college season.
ATLANTA -- It was a surreal but ultimately fitting image. Having whooped it up together on the court, completed the requisite trophy presentation and taken their turns cutting down the net, the Florida Gators reassembled on the stage -- a place they've become all too familiar with -- one last time and turned their heads to the Georgia Dome video board.
The University of Mississippi didn't lose a thing in the fall of 1962. Oh, the history books might say something different, telling as they do of a black man named James Meredith and the failed, violent efforts to keep him from enrolling at the school, and the beginning of the end of segregation in the depths of the South. But posterity also records that after the gun smoke and tear gas had blown from the campus, the Ole Miss football team went 10-0, even as it shared its practice field with the federal troops bivouacked there. It was no small balm to white Mississippians, who watched what they called "our way of life" come forcefully to a close. In his autobiography the coach of that undefeated team, John Vaught, described the effect in a chapter titled "Football Saves a School."
Click here for five reasons Ohio State will win
Click here for five reasons Florida will win
ATLANTA -- Five things we learned today at the Final Four (while whiffing in our comical attempt at a "shug" with Kevin Durant):
UCLA guard Arron Afflalo can close his eyes and conjure every detail, a vision from a childhood spent launching imaginary three-pointers in his family's Compton, Calif., living room: Monday night, final seconds, down two, 50,000 fans watching in the seats and millions more on TV. In his mind's eye he curls off a screen, catches a pass on the wing, jab-steps to freeze his defender and unspools a rainbow three pregnant with possibility. Splash. "Man, that would be so sweet," Afflalo says, opening his eyes and smiling at the thought of UCLA's 12th national title. "But I wouldn't be surprised. I'd expect it to go in. You have to think that way if you're going to make a shot like that."
When the final buzzer sounded on Florida's Elite Eight victory over Oregon on Sunday, a group of arena employees immediately leapt to work erecting a temporary stage on the court for the Gators' trophy presentation. The guy who appeared to be doing most of the work was wearing an Ohio State "Block O" baseball cap.
Let's say you're filling out your entry in the all-important office Masters pool, and like the NCAA hoops pool, you know you've got to stray from the typical No. 1 seeds if you hope to make a splash.
Joakim Noah sat in front of his locker Friday night, sweaty, smiling and still breathing a little heavy. One reporter after another wanted to know the specifics of Florida's latest NCAA tourney scare in which the defending champs found themselves tied with pesky underdog Butler with less than three minutes to go, but Noah was feeling a tad more philosophical.
Tubby Smith left the University of Kentucky basketball coaching job the same way he came in -- with class and dignity, on his own terms. He knew the time had come. He knew it was in the best interests of both himself and the program. He had lost the confidence and goodwill of fans and donors, but he wasn't going to compromise his principles just to keep the job. So he took, of all things, the Minnesota job recently vacated by Don Monson.
It's a question raised every year around this time, usually via an e-mail from my Dad or a friend: Could the best team in college basketball team beat the worst team in the NBA?
It probably won't mean much to Purdue at this moment, and it won't lessen the sting of being knocked out of the NCAA tournament by defending national champion Florida, but the Gators players and coach were full of compliments for the Boilermakers on Sunday.
As Bubba Watson walked off the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook Golf Resort on Saturday, pleased with himself after getting up and down for par on 18, he turned to his playing partner and quipped: "I can't believe that. Bogey-free, and I got waxed."
To hear Florida forward Joakim Noah tell the story, the notion of a repeat came up only once -- in Minneapolis, one of the Twin Cities, whose very nickname implies replication. Maybe there was a hint of the Duke mystique lingering like carbon 14 in the Metrodome, the same building where, in 1992, Christian Laettner's Blue Devils became the only team since '73 to win back-to-back NCAA men's basketball titles. But as Gators coach Billy Donovan led his star sophomores to the press conference after clinching a berth in last year's Final Four, he turned giddy at the possibilities: "We're going to win it this year, and then we're going to win it again next year, and you guys will be remembered as one of the best teams to ever play the game."
NBA commissioner David Stern has said several times that he wants to avoid the perception that college basketball is just a glorified farm system for the his league. But by establishing an age limit that requires kids to attend at least one year of college, that's exactly what NCAA hoops has become. And instead of talking about an Ohio State dynasty or the advent of the Pac-10, people are arguing about Oden versus Durant.
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Is Florida just teasing us, or need we actually be concerned about the state of the defending national champions?
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