Five For Friday: Florida Flashbacks for Billy Napier; NFL Oversaturation
The NFL continues to encroach on college football with a Friday night game, while Tulane has an opportunity to begin its path to something not accomplished there in nine decades.
Greetings from Chicago! The Press Break takes to the Windy City for a weekend that kicks off on the gridiron and ends on the baseball diamond.
I’ll have plenty more on this trip in the coming days, including a feature story from the Friday night Duke-Northwestern game that I’ll link as soon as it runs. Keep an eye out for that.
In the meantime, please enjoy these five thoughts on and storylines to watch in the upcoming weekend of college football.
NFL Creep Extends to Friday
It’s Friday morning, and surely everyone is still buzzing from the unreal ending on the gridiron last night. I’m of course referring to Michigan Tech’s 52-50 win over South Dakota Mines.
This Thursday marked Week 1 of the NCAA Div. II season — kicking off a week later than Div. I as a result of D-I’s extra week due to the calendar. Like Div. I, D-II opens its season with a full slate of Thursday games. This year, that meant kicking off opposite opening night of the NFL season.
A full complement of college football coinciding with Kansas City-Baltimore stood out to me, given that D-I completely punted on playing games on NFL-opening Thursday within the last decade.
What started as the NFL kicking off its season with a special Thursday showcase evolved into the pros holding games every Thursday. Despite the often sub-par quality of Thursday Night Football — how could it not be with teams routinely playing on just three days rest? — it didn’t take long for the NFL to largely commandeer that night of the week.
Yes, there are still Thursday night college football games. But in the 2000s and early 2010s, the best games of the week were quite often on Thursdays, whereas today this night feels like an afterthought.
Let’s remember a few of the great Thursday night college games of yesteryear:
Rutgers’ upset win over Louisville in 2006
Cam Newton leading Auburn to the first of many nailbiters in Auburn’s 2010 championship campaign
The time a streaker dressed as a referee ran onto the field and a brawl ensued being Arizona and UCLA
OK, so that last one wasn’t a great game, but it did offer some weird fun you’d nevr get from Thursday Night NFL.
Thursdays have mostly been turned over to the pros, however, with the college game shifting focus to Fridays at the behest of TV networks. Meanwhile, NFL opening weekend this year includes a first-ever Friday night game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers.
It’s a one-time deal; but then, so was the NFL kicking off on Thursdays. Then it became a late-season addition. Then the league took the night over.
A Tar Heel State Showdown
Both 2023 Fiesta Bowl participant Liberty and an NC State program that’s been knocking on the door of ACC title contention the last few years kicked off 2024 with realistic College Football Playoff aspirations. Each faced stiff Week 1 challenges from FCS opponents.
Their competition from Week 1 clashes in Week 2, as Campbell visits Western Carolina.
Going into the season, this wasn’t the in-state matchup on the calendar for a Western Carolina team I like to make the FCS Playoffs and perhaps win the Southern Conference championship. The Catamounts visit Elon in Week 3 in a meeting of two squads I expect to see in the postseason.
But Campbell may find itself in the playoff conversation for the first time in program history if the Camels can carry their Week 1 showing at Liberty into the rest of the campaign. A program that only began offering scholarships about a decade ago, Campbell attracted some surprisingly impressive recruiting classes to Buies Creek in recent years under longtime NFL veteran Mike Minter.
Minter stepped down following the 2023 season, but successor Braxton Harris and his staff had the Camels playing the best ball I’ve ever seen from them last week. Dual-threat quarterback Chad Mascoe could be a gem.
Western Carolina, meanwhile, led the FCS in yards per game a season ago and had no trouble moving the ball against a quality NC State defense. The Catamounts own two-way quarterback, Cole Gonzales, is a name to know in the Walter Payton Award race.
Florida Flashbacks
Though he wasn’t fired until the following week, it’s fair to suggest that Dan Mullen’s fate as Florida Gators head coach was sealed in a November 2021 matchup with Samford.
Employing their own version of the basketball Bulldogs’ potent offensive brand of “Bucky Ball,” Samford scored at will throughout the first half. Florida pulled away for a 70-52 win, but the damage was done.
Samford returns to The Swamp and it’s noteworthy how similar the circumstances are to 2021. Florida again has an embattled head coach facing what feels like imminent termination, with those wielding influence behind the scenes in Gainesville just waiting on the right timing.
The sharks have been swimming around Billy Napier since before his second season began. One perspective says that’s deserved — and to be sure, Florida has been largely unimpressive and at times, downright bad in Napier’s tenure. The Gators’ Week 1 blowout loss to Miami falls in the latter category.
Anthony Richardson’s transition to the NFL, and Florida’s inability to parlay the quarterback’s talent into anything more than a 6-7 mark that peaked with a Week 1 win over Utah in 2022, doesn’t help Napier’s case, either.
But at a certain point, Florida brass needs some introspection. The problem now is Billy Napier, but the problem less than three years when the Gators last hosted Samford, it was Dan Mullen. Before Dan Mullen, the problem was Jim McElwain. And before Jim McElwain, the problem was Will Mu…OK, bad example. But you get the point.
College football is more than a decade removed from Florida being a national power. It’s been long enough that we’re now in the Nostalgia Phase, manifested in that terrible1 Netflix documentary released last summer.
Florida finds itself in a place not unlike where Miami found itself, coincidentally, starting a decade ago. Hurricanes fans and detached college football fans alike wistfully recalled Miami’s past dominance through nostalgic media like the Billy Corben-directed It’s All About The U, while the program was cycling through regimes in search of past glory.
The jury is very much still out on if Mario Cristobal is That Guy, but his return to Miami has engendered far more optimisim than Florida’s experienced in a long while since Urban Meyer’s abrupt exit 14 years ago.
As for the Gators’ matchup with Samford, I’m confident they’ll win, and win handily: Samford is coming off a Week 1 loss to West Georgia, a program in its first year of D-I play. The Bulldogs will likely finish near the basement of the SoCon. But with Texas A&M next on Florida’s docket, Samford may not need to hang 52 points for a repeat outcome of 2021 and a Gators coach’s dismissal one week later.
Spotlight on Jon Sumrall and Tulane
Aside from a top-10 showdown between Texas and Michigan, Tulane hosting Kansas State is the Week 2 matchup in the FBS I find the most compelling. Not only is it the deferred Sugar Bowl matchup college football fans deserved in 1998, but it’s a prime opportunity for first-year Tulane head coach Jon Sumrall to plant a flag.
Sumrall was hired to replace Willie Fritz, a well-established program-builder now at Houston. Fritz elevated the long-struggling Green Wave from the basement of the American Athletic Conference to the Group of Five’s New Year’s Six spot, culminating in a Sugar Bowl masterclass vs. USC.
Tulane’s a program with peaks every few generations, including the aforementioned 1998 season and the breakout 2022 campaign. Sustained success? Not as much.
You have to go back to Bernie Bierman’s tenure for the last time Tulane put together three consecutive outstanding seasons, a run that culminated in the Green Wave playing in the 1932 Rose Bowl Game. Now that is a game worthy of a deep dive — consider this a teaser for a future entry on The Press Break.
Anyway, Fritz left Tulane after seasons of 12 and 11 wins. Sumrall takes over looking to guide the Green Wave to its best stretch in more than 90 years, himself having had a couple of outstanding campaigns at Troy in 2022 and 2023.
The Trojans matched Tulane with 23 combined wins the previous two years, and won a pair of Sun Belt championships at a time when the conference had never been better. Sumrall’s Green Wave roster is rife with playmakers, including defensive back Rayshawn Pleasant, who ran back a pick-six 100 yards in Week 1.
Freshman quarterback Darian Mensah comes from the unlikely spot of San Luis Obispo, a picturesque town on California’s Central Coast known more for its farmer’s market than its football. Nevertheless, Mensah looks the part of big-time college quarterback and he has a prime opportunity to show it against a K-State team with College Football Playoff potential.
Ashton Jeanty’s Big Break
One of the two2 best individual performances from Week 1 belonged to Boise State running back Asthon Jeanty. His 267-yard, six-touchdown performance against Georgia Southern came on just 20 carries, an absurd output that commands attention.
Now, Week 2 feels much, much too early to bring up the Heisman Trophy. In Jeanty’s case, however, it has to be. There hasn’t been a finalist for the award representing a non-power conference since Northern Illinois’ Jordan Lynch in 2013.
I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the drought coincides with the start of the College Football Playoff. The Playoff, ostensibly presented as a shattering of football’s glass ceiling, actually made the sport’s caste system worse in a variety of ways — not the least of which was reflected in the Heisman.
Playoff expansion to 12 teams, including opening the door for a Group of Five automatic qualifier, should expand the focus that has largely been on playoff-bound teams and players. Boise State is a leading contender for the G5 bid, and Jeanty is the Broncos’ driving engine.
Boise State visiting Oregon this week thus becomes arguably the biggest non-conference game for the program since its 2011 season opener at3 Georgia. For Jeanty individually, facing a <stifles vomit> Big Ten team lauded as a national championship contender in the preseason, he may not have a more prominent stage to state his Heisman case all season.
Jeanty’s opportunity is one that Heism finalist snub Rashaad Penny lacked in 2017, and that injury denied Marshall Faulk back in 1992 when he missed San Diego State’s scheduled matchup with Miami.
There’s an excellent documentary to be made of the late 2000s Gators, and the University of Florida in this era in general. The infamous “Don’t Tase Me Bro” episode went down at UF then…
Instagram-famous hobgoblin Dan Bilzerian was a UF student at the time; Joakim Noah’s huge personality headlined a back-to-back national championship-winning basketball teams; and the title-winning football program had a seedy underbelly. Swamp Kings hardly touches on this element of the program, functioning more as Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow propaganda.
The other was Arizona wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan with his 304 yards receiving vs. New Mexico.
While technically a neutral site game, it was played in Atlanta.