The PERFECT gift for Father’s Day!

Do you have no idea what to get your Dad? Did you forget Father’s Day is coming up this weekend? What do you get for someone who has everything?

The 2024 Read & Reaction Florida Gators Preview Magazine makes a perfect gift. Overflowing with statistical analysis, film breakdowns, roster evaluations and recruiting and transfer portal implications, this magazine gets you ready for the season in a way that no other publication or website can!

Order yours (or Dad’s) today!

Is Florida’s schedule really a disadvantage?

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Florida’s schedule in 2024 (and 2025) has received a lot of publicity for how difficult it is. PFF just recently ranked Florida’s schedule as the hardest in the country this season. And the Gators are ranked #20 in ESPN’s preseason FPI but play eight opponents who are in the FPI top-25 as well.

The expectation of most is that Florida will be better, but that the schedule will make it difficult for the Gators to truly break through. But I’m not sure that’s true given what is coming to college football in 2024.

I mean, Gators’ fans just observed the Florida baseball team play a brutal schedule and put up what would normally be a substandard 28-27 regular season. That team is now playing in the College World Series after going 6-1 in the regionals and super regional tournaments. It turns out that playing good teams sharpens your team in a way that playing also-rans does not.

Nowhere was this more evident than in two of the Gators largest rivals last season: Georgia and Florida State.

Georgia rolled through its regular season in 2023, going 12-0 prior to its SEC Championship showdown with Alabama. But if we look at the Bulldogs’ schedule, the best teams they faced in the first half of the season (according to FPI) were Kentucky (#33) and Auburn (#34). They then played Missouri, Ole Miss, and Tennessee (#14, 15 and 16) prior to Alabama (#6). I think it’s fair to wonder whether the loss to Alabama was a much better team that wasn’t prepared to truly fight.

Now look at Florida State. The Seminoles went 13-0 before getting mauled by those very Bulldogs. Granted, FSU had a bunch of players sitting out the bowl game – and QB Jordan Travis out injured – but after opening the year against LSU (#10), the best teams on the ‘Noles schedule were Louisville (#24) and Duke (#29). Perhaps might that schedule have something to do why FSU folded when Georgia hit them in the mouth? It certainly had a ton to do with why they were left out of the top-4 at the end of the season.

You can make an excuse for scheduling like those two teams based on the way college football was designed in the past. But my hope is that tough scheduling should be much more relevant in the new world of a 12 – and eventual 14 – team playoff. With an expanded tournament – especially one that will be dominated by Big Ten and SEC teams – there should be far more forgiveness for slip-ups along the way. That means a departure from the way college football has always worked (i.e. this team lost zero games and this other team lost one, so the team with zero losses gets to play for a championship) to a system based on schedule strength and FPI. We saw the start of this with FSU being passed over by one-loss Alabama, Texas and Washington last year.

And consider Texas A&M of 2023 as well. The Aggies finished the season ranked 17th in ESPN’s FPI, but with losses to Miami (#24), Alabama (#6), Tennessee (#14), Ole Miss (#15) and LSU (#10). It became clear to A&M’s administration that Jimbo Fisher wasn’t going to take the Aggies where they wanted to be because the Aggies were unable to beat upper eschelon teams in the SEC. That certainty based on a difficult schedule is why Mike Elko is now in College Station.

The same can be said of Florida. The last place you want to be is unsure about a change when you make it, or unsure of an extension when you give it out. In the case of Florida’s schedule, the backloading of it means the Gators can establish themselves in the minds of voters as having a shot at a championship without really playing anybody that tough but still find out a lot about their team.

It is true that Florida is playing eight opponents in the top-25 of the FPI. But Miami (#23), Texas A&M (#14) and Tennessee (#9) are the only teams in the top-25 that they play in their first seven games. Miami has serious concerns at QB (Is Cam Ward really better than Tyler Van Dyke?), Texas A&M has a new coach (Jimbo’s record isn’t great, but Mike Elko went 9-7 in the ACC in two seasons), and Tennessee has a new QB (Iamaleava’s completion percentage his senior year of high school was .598).

There is a world where Florida is hosting Kentucky in the Swamp with an opportunity to go to 7-0 with a bye week before the Cocktail Party. And were that to happen, now Florida’s schedule is a major advantage.

Go 4-1 or 3-2 and there’s zero way Florida gets left out of the playoff. I’d argue that even a 2-3 finish should get the Gators in. And that might be true even if Florida went into that stretch with a 6-1 record.

However, if Florida can’t beat the Miami’s, A&M’s and Tennessee’s of the world, then the backloading of the schedule will be the inevitable end to the Napier era as he is unlikely to survive a 3 or 4-win campaign. Even if that sort of result stinks for 2024, that sort of certainty is valuable to have.

In both ways, Florida’s schedule is actually an advantage. As you watch the College World Series, that should be confirmation that Florida will be better off because of being tested regardless of the result. I often say college football is about winning or hope. If the Gators struggle mightily, then a coaching transition will bring needed hope.

But if they can chain together some wins early, now we’re looking at a team with an inside track at the playoff.

Happy Father’s Day

This past week my son won his 12U baseball rec league championship. In the grand scheme of things, the trophy you see in the photo to the right will end up on a shelf and forgotten for years. And the likelihood of my son playing baseball professionally is pretty much zero. Some people might even say we’re wasting time participating in organized sports.

But what those people miss is the work that he’s put into getting better day after day. They miss the friendships that he’s made with his teammates, and how he’s learned to support people even when they make mistakes and face the music when he’s made his own mistakes.

And what they really miss is the amount of time that he and I have spent in the car together, in the cages together and on the fields together. Because beyond everything that sports provides – and there are many tangible things – the intangible things it brings are even more significant.

Those trophies are a symbol of the time we’ve spent together and the bonds we’ve formed over hours and hours. When my son comes home from college, he’s going to want to catch a Phillies game with me. When we have a disagreement and he doesn’t know what to say to me, he’ll be able to talk to me about sports.

There are a lot of reasons that we wrote our preseason magazine. Yes, it’s a profit center for this business. And yes, we enjoy writing about the team and understanding where it stands and where it needs to go.

But if any of you buy one for your dad or son because you don’t know what to say to him and use it to start a conversation, then that’s worth more to me than any money we might make from it.

Being a coach is tough. So is being a dad. Keeping kids’ attention from t-ball now up to 12U has been an exercise in patience and humility. But more than anything, it’s been an exercise in learning how to love with my time.

Because no matter how hard these days are and how much I’d rather turn over the responsibility of coaching to someone else, the reality is that I will look back at this as the most rewarding experience of my life because I get to share it with my son.

This Father’s Day, we’re playing in a tournament and I’ll get to coach him, cheer him on, and likely yell at him as he ignores my direction yet again. But then we get to share a car ride home and talk, maybe about nothing but maybe about something important. But I’m excited that sports gives us that opportunity to learn how to talk to each other.

And I can’t think of a better way to spend the day.

Happy Father’s Day!