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DURING A TEAM meeting this summer, Florida center Kingsley Eguakun watched as a clip from last season’s opening game against Utah popped onto the screen. That game — beating the seventh-ranked Utes — had seemed to signal first-year Florida coach Billy Napier could get the program turned around in a hurry.

Florida finished 6-7 last season, though, and the clip showed one possible reason why. Eguakun, who didn’t want to out a player by name, said the screen showed a big play for Florida, after which a seemingly teamwide celebration broke out. Except, Eguakun said, “There was one player who didn’t celebrate.” He added ruefully, “He just walked away.”

“This is what selfishness looks like,” Eguakun recalled the presenter saying.

Eguakun agreed, and not just because of the loss to Kentucky the next week or the seven losses overall in 2022, including to perennial cellar-dweller Vanderbilt, which an opposing coach called “unforgivable.” Beating Utah — a solitary win — bred complacency, Eguakun said, and when things went sideways afterward, the team didn’t have the necessary leadership to hold the locker room together.

Buy-in was lacking, Eguakun explained, as if players weren’t sure whether they wanted to stick it out through the coaching change and then got stuck.

“If you’re one foot in, one foot out, that’s not going to work,” he said. “It kind of had a trickle-down effect on some of the younger guys.”

Team sources affirmed Kinglsey’s assessment of the Year 1 roster. Fights in practice, sources said, were commonplace, as well as players missing team meetings.

Cornerback Jason Marshall Jr. was frustrated because veterans were setting a bad example. Napier “changed the perspective” by focusing on discipline, Marshall said, noting that “a lot of players were still locked in on the past.”

Marshall and Eguakun said clearing out “selfish” former teammates had ushered in a “different energy, a different vibe.” Eguakun said, “The guys being bought in is the game-changer for this Florida Gators team.”

Eguakun made it clear that losing the way they did last year was no longer acceptable — watching teammates “carrying on” in the locker room while he was ready to “go drop a tear or two.”

“Changing this direction that we’ve been on might be No. 1 on my list because I want to win,” he said.

This season, the wins haven’t always been easy to come by, but the mood around the program has changed according to players and coaches. Instead of folding after a season-opening loss at Utah, they bounced back and beat rival and then-No. 11 Tennessee. After a loss to Kentucky (again) and a comeback win at South Carolina, the Gators sit at 5-2 — second in the SEC East.

If Napier’s process is really working we’ll soon find out. The most difficult stretch of the season approaches, starting Saturday with No. 1 Georgia. The Gators then close the season with No. 15 LSU, No. 16 Missouri and No. 4 Florida State.


THE PHYSICAL REMINDER of the pressure awaiting Napier at Florida was right there, walking toward the 25-yard line inside the University of Louisiana football stadium on Dec. 4, 2021.

Moments after beating Appalachian State to win the Sun Belt West Division — Napier’s last act as head coach before leaving for Gainesville — fans rushed the field. The vast majority were wearing the Cajuns’ red and black.

But a pair of fans, who drove nearly 7 hours from Panama City, wove their way through the crowd toward Napier, one wearing bright orange, the other wearing royal blue. Napier laughed when the man in orange lifted his short-sleeve shirt to reveal a gator tattoo on his shoulder. Napier obliged their request for a selfie and told the both of them, “I’ll see you soon.”

Napier tried his best to stay in the moment that night, letting the nostalgia wash over him. He recalled his introductory news conference and reporters telling him just how bad the Louisiana program was. And he said they weren’t wrong. They hadn’t had a winning record in three years.

But Napier meticulously rebuilt both the roster and team infrastructure, adding dozens of positions to create what was affectionately called, “Bama on a budget.” Together, they turned the program around in a hurry, leaving with a record of 40-12. Napier got one of the game balls as a going-away present, carrying it everywhere he went, eventually onto the departing plane. When he accidentally dropped the ball during a postgame news conference, he sent a staff member back to retrieve it. “I’m not letting this one go,” he said.

He didn’t know it at the time, but he would come to miss the program he’d shaped. The principles would be the same at Florida — structure, attention to detail, discipline, an eye toward efficiency — but the game had changed in the SEC since he left as an assistant at Alabama, making this rebuild much more difficult.

“The big takeaway for me was I leave a place [Louisiana] where I probably had as good of a relationship with my team — I would put it up against anywhere in the country, just the team dynamic,” he said. “And then you inherit a long list of challenges in an unprecedented time, relative to the portal and NIL. There’s no manual for that. I don’t care what you say.

“And I’m, to be very transparent, five years removed from the SEC and no experience with Power 5 recruiting in the early signing period era. That was a huge adjustment. Not that we can’t evaluate and we can’t recruit, just the fact that our established workflow and the way we operated at Louisiana did not apply in the SEC.”

Napier said they successfully adjusted. They signed a top-15 class, he added, “But it was a scramble.”

That first year required a dizzying amount of work, whether it was getting up to speed in recruiting, getting their arms around an NIL operation that wasn’t where it needed to be, navigating the transfer portal, building out a staff that was growing by a whopping 25% and, oh yeah, trying to learn the current roster and get them up to speed on an entirely new system. “Tampering,” Napier suggested, “magnifies that.”

Don’t just take his word for it. Tennessee coach Josh Heupel, who has no reason to support a rival coach, said first-year coaches are behind the eight ball in a way they’ve never been before.

“I don’t know if it’s ever been harder than it is now because of transfer portal,” he said. “You truly have to recruit everybody on your roster. Then you got to go out and recruit guys to come to your roster. … You’re literally dealing with everything that every coach is complaining about right now currently inside the landscape of college football, plus you have no relationships with the players on your roster.”

Just learning their names is a challenge. So if there was a disconnect between Napier and holdovers from the previous staff, maybe it was with good reason.

“We run a tight ship,” Napier said. “I’m a firm believer in structure and routine. We play complimentary football. We teach a set of values. And I think that that’s where it was different. All of a sudden, it’s like there’s consequence, there’s discipline, there’s accountability.”

Napier called last year’s squad “one of the more dysfunctional teams I’ve been a part of.”

But, he promised, “We got a plan for everything.”

Some players didn’t like the plan and left. Eguakun and Marshall said they’re better off for it. Opposing coaches in the SEC aren’t ready to judge Napier off one rocky season, but they did offer a glimmer of hope: “Some of their best players are young, and that’s a good thing.”

A whopping 24 freshmen are on Florida’s official depth chart, including both starting tight ends Hayden Hansen and Arlis Boardingham, starting defensive end Caleb Banks, starting safety Jordan Castell and standout starting receiver Eugene Wilson III. And that’s to say nothing of the additions Napier & Co. made via the transfer portal.

After locking up a top-15 recruiting class in December, they set about replacing quarterback Anthony Richardson. But instead of signing a high-profile transfer like Sam Hartman or Devin Leary, they wound up bringing in former Wisconsin signal-caller Graham Mertz, which went over about as well as the Tomahawk Chop inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at the time. Last spring, ESPN did not rank Mertz among its top 75 portal players.

Mertz has been effective, though, with 12 passing touchdowns and only two interceptions. His 76.2 completion percentage is tops in the SEC.

Less than 48 hours after Mertz led a fourth-quarter comeback at South Carolina, Napier told ESPN that it’s beginning to feel a lot more like his time at the University of Louisiana in terms of “just the overall culture in the building.” His first team there finished 7-7 before winning double-digit games and finishing atop its division in each of the next three years.


FORMER FLORIDA NATIONAL championship-winning coach Urban Meyer offered Napier advice upon taking the job that sticks with him today.

“It’s important for you to understand,” Napier recalled Meyer telling him, “you’re in a state with 22 million people and you have huge alumni, but you’re also in a state with two hated rivals. So if you fall and trip, not only do you know your small percentage of bandwagon fans get riled up, but you also have two fan bases from others that jump in on the action as well.”

“So,” Napier said, “that’s the reality.”

And it’s a reality Napier hasn’t shied away from when fans have voiced their frustration after losses to Utah and Kentucky this season. “Let’s call it like it is,” he said, “Sometimes you deserve to be criticized.”

He didn’t lash out when it was suggested he give up playcalling duties on offense to focus on the big picture. He said it was a “relevant question” and part of the evaluation, “But I feel confident in our process.”

Napier’s ability to take the proverbial bumps in the road in stride and stick with his plan is exactly why athletic director Scott Stricklin hired him in the first place, citing his unique temperament and approach.

“The idea of hiring Billy wasn’t to have a four- or five-year solution,” he said. “It was to have a 15-, 20-year solution.”

As Stricklin stood on the field in Columbia a few weeks ago, he remembered two years earlier when he was in the same spot and it became clear that the “internal foundational challenges” under previous coach Dan Mullen were “more significant than we probably realized.” (Mullen, now an analyst at ESPN, did not respond to requests seeking comment for this story.)

“And so to be back there and to have that kind of game that we had was rewarding to be on the other side where the foundational issues have in large part been corrected,” he said. “The culture, the relationships, the focus on the things that you can’t be great without have been addressed.”

Which is not to suggest that the team is anywhere near a finished product.

“But I think the things are in place for it to happen,” Stricklin said.

Florida is third in ESPN’s latest Class Rankings for 2024. On Sunday, Napier and his staff added four-star defensive end L.J. McCray to the growing list of commitments.

Put together a strong showing against Georgia on Saturday and it might induce even more recruits to jump on board.

Because for as up-and-down as Florida’s been, no one in college football doubts the strength of the brand or its ability to produce national championships.

“Florida’s a momentum job, if that makes sense,” Napier said. “I think if you get it built, it’ll be hard to slow down.”

He paused a beat for emphasis.

“If you got the discipline to create it the right way and something that’s sustainable and repeatable. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

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Buffs coach: Stars ‘should be going 1-2’ in draft

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Buffs coach: Stars 'should be going 1-2' in draft

BOULDER, Colo. — For the horde of NFL talent evaluators and some bleachers full of fans, Colorado coach Deion Sanders said Friday that they all got to see the top two players available in this year’s NFL draft.

Quarterback Shedeur Sanders and Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter were among the 16 Colorado players who took part in the school’s showcase event for scouts, coaches and personnel executives from every NFL team. And Deion Sanders said the two marquee players confirmed what he has known for a long time.

“It’s tremendous,” Sanders said. “… They should be going 1-2 [in the draft], that’s the way I feel about it. They are the two best players in this draft. … The surest bets in this draft are those two young men, and I didn’t stutter or stammer when I said that.”

Neither Shedeur Sanders nor Hunter took part in most of the position drills or physical testing, but Sanders had a throwing session for just under an hour and Hunter was one of the wide receivers who participated. Neither player worked out at the scouting combine earlier this year, so it was the first time Sanders had thrown in such a setting since the end of the season. He showed some full seven-step drops and play-action from the shotgun and under center.

“I think I did pretty good, to my expectations,” said Sanders, who set the career FBS accuracy mark in his two years at Colorado (71.8%) to go with his 4,134 passing yards and 37 touchdowns last season. “I know I did the best in college football right now, for sure.”

Asked after the throwing session whether he believed he was the best quarterback in the draft, Sanders said: “I feel like I’m the No. 1 quarterback, and that’s what I know. But at the end of the day, I’m not stuck on that because it’s about the situation, so whatever situation, whatever franchise believes in me, I’m excited to go. … I’m comfortable in any situation.”

Players Hunter, who did not speak to the media after the workout, and Sanders met with the Cleveland Browns contingent, including team co-owner Jimmy Haslam, on Thursday night in Boulder.

“They got me really full,” Sanders said. “I definitely needed to go to the sauna after that. … It was a good vibe.”

Said Deion Sanders said: “[I] spoke to the owner, truly delightful. He was engaging. … I think one of those guys is going to be there [at No. 2].”

Hunter, the No. 1 player on Mel Kiper Jr.’s Big Board, did not do any defensive drills Friday, but he ran a full assortment of routes.

Colorado safety Shilo Sanders, Shedeur’s brother, offered plenty of encouragement, shouting commentary and clapping after each throw, including “not a lot of quarterbacks can make that throw” after one deep completion.

The highly attended event — by NFL representatives as well as fans packing small bleachers — had a festive atmosphere. Deion Sanders named it the “We Ain’t Hard 2 Find Showcase,” complete with a large lighted “The Showcase” sign next to the drills.

Hunter, who has said he wants to play offense and defense in the NFL, won the Chuck Bednarik (top defensive player) and Fred Biletnikoff (top receiver) awards in addition to the Heisman. He said whether he will primarily be a wide receiver or a cornerback in the NFL depends “on the team that picks me.”

On Friday, Deion Sanders said “ain’t nobody like Travis.”

Hunter had 96 catches for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns as a receiver last season to go with 35 tackles, 11 pass breakups and 4 interceptions at cornerback. In the Buffaloes’ regular-season finale against Oklahoma State, he became the only FBS player in the past 25 years with three scrimmage touchdowns on offense and an interception in the same game, according to ESPN Research.

He played 1,380 total snaps in Colorado’s 12 regular-season games: 670 on offense, 686 on defense and 24 on special teams. He played 1,007 total snaps in 2023.

Shilo Sanders, who hoped to show teams more speed than expected, ran a 4.52 40-yard dash after he measured in at 5-foot-11⅞, 196 pounds. He did not participate in the jumps or bench press that opened the workout, citing a right shoulder injury.

With all NFL eyes on the Colorado campus to see Shedeur Sanders throw, one player who made the most of it was wide receiver Will Sheppard. Sheppard, who measured 6-2¼, 196 pounds, ran the 40 in 4.56 and 4.54 to go with a 40½-inch vertical jump and a 10-foot-11 broad jump.

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O’s Henderson off IL; will make ’25 debut vs. KC

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O's Henderson off IL; will make '25 debut vs. KC

Baltimore Orioles All-Star shortstop Gunnar Henderson was activated from the 10-day injured list and will make his season debut Friday night against the Kansas City Royals.

Henderson has been sidelined with a right intercostal strain and missed the first seven games of the big league campaign.

The 23-year-old Henderson will lead off and play shortstop against the host Royals.

Henderson was injured during a spring training game Feb. 27. He was fourth in American League MVP voting last season when he batted .281 and racked up career bests of 37 homers and 92 RBIs.

Henderson completed a five-game rehab stint at Triple-A Norfolk on Wednesday. He batted .263 (5-for-19) with two homers and four RBIs and played four games at shortstop and one as the designated hitter. He did commit three errors.

“I think everybody’s looking forward to having Gunnar back on the team,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said Thursday. “The rehab went really, really well. I talked to him a couple days ago, he feels great swinging the bat. The timing came, especially the last few days. He just had to get out there and get some reps defensively and get some games in, and it all went well.”

Baltimore optioned outfielder Dylan Carlson to Triple-A Norfolk to open up a roster spot. The 26-year-old was 0-for-4 with a run and RBI in two games this season.

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Life after OMG: Can 2025 Mets replicate their 2024 vibes?

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Life after OMG: Can 2025 Mets replicate their 2024 vibes?

When New York Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns attempted to assemble the best possible roster for the 2025 season this winter, the top priority was signing outfielder Juan Soto. Next was the need to replenish the starting rotation and bolster the bullpen. Then, days before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training, the lineup received one final significant reinforcement when first baseman Pete Alonso re-signed.

Acquiring a player with a singing career on the side didn’t make the cut.

“No, that is not on the list,” Stearns said with a smile.

Stearns’ decision not to re-sign Jose Iglesias, the infielder behind the mic for the viral 2024 Mets anthem “OMG,” was attributed to creating more roster flexibility. But it also hammered home a reality: The scrappy 2024 Mets, authors of a magical summer in Queens, are a thing of the past. The 2025 Mets, who will report to Citi Field for their home opener Friday, have much of the same core but also some prominent new faces — and the new, outsized expectations that come with falling two wins short of the World Series, then signing Soto to the richest contract in professional sports history.

But there’s a question surrounding this year’s team that you can’t put a price tag on: Can these Mets rekindle the magic — the vibes, the memes, the feel-good underdog story — that seemed to come out of nowhere to help carry them to Game 6 of the National League Championship Series last season?

“Last year the culture was created,” Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said. “It’s a matter of continuing it.”

For all the success Stearns has engineered — his small-market Milwaukee Brewers teams reached the postseason five times in eight seasons after he became the youngest general manager in history in 2015 — the 40-year-old Harvard grad, like the rest of his front office peers knows there’s no precise recipe for clubhouse chemistry. There is no culture projection system. No Vibes Above Replacement.

“Culture is very important,” Stearns said last weekend in the visiting dugout at Daikin Park before his club completed an opening-weekend series against the Houston Astros. “Culture is also very difficult to predict.”

Still, it seems the Mets’ 2024 season will be all but impossible to recreate.

There was Grimace, the purple McDonald’s blob who spontaneously became the franchise’s unofficial mascot after throwing out a first pitch in June. “OMG,” performed under Iglesias’ stage name, Candelita, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Latin Digital Songs chart, before a remix featuring Pitbull was released in October. Citi Field became a karaoke bar whenever Lindor stepped into the batter’s box with The Temptations’ “My Girl” as his walk-up song. Alonso unveiled a lucky pumpkin in October. They were gimmicks that might have felt forced if they hadn’t felt so right.

“I don’t know if what we did last year could be replicated because it was such a chaos-filled group,” Mets reliever Ryne Stanek said. “I don’t know if that’s replicable because there’s just too many things going on. I don’t know if that’s a sustainable model. But I think the expectation of winning is really important. I think establishing what we did last year and coming into this year where people are like, ‘Oh, no, that’s what we’re expecting to do,’ makes it different. It’s always a different vibe whenever you feel like you’re the hunter versus being the hunted.”

For the first two months last season, the Mets were terrible hunters. Lindor was relentlessly booed at Citi Field during another slow start. The bullpen got crushed. The losses piled up. The Mets began the season 0-5 and sunk to rock bottom on May 29 when reliever Jorge Lopez threw his glove into the stands during a 10-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers that dropped the team to 22-33.

That night, the Mets held a players-only meeting. From there, perhaps coincidentally, everything changed. The Mets won the next day, and 67 of their final 107 games.

This year, to avoid an early malaise and to better incorporate new faces like Soto and Opening Day starter Clay Holmes, players made it a point to hold meetings during spring training to lay a strong foundation.

“At the end of the day, we know who we are and that’s the beauty of our club,” Alonso said. “Not just who we are talent-wise, but who each individual is as a man and a personality. For us, our major, major strength is our collective identity as a unit.”

Organizationally, the Mets are attempting a dual-track makeover: Becoming perennial World Series contenders while not taking themselves too seriously.

The commemorative purple Grimace seat installed at Citi Field in September — Section 302, Row 6, Seat 12 in right field — remains there as part of a two-year contract. Last week, the franchise announced it will feature a New York-city themed “Five Borough” race at every home game — with a different mascot competing to represent each borough. For a third straight season, USA Today readers voted Citi Field — home of the rainbow cookie egg roll, among many other innovative treats — as having the best ballpark food in baseball.

In the clubhouse, their identity is evolving.

“I’m very much in the camp that you can’t force things,” Mets starter Sean Manaea said. “I mean, you can, but you don’t really end up with good results. And if you wait for things to happen organically, then sometimes it can take too long. So, there’s like a nudging of sorts. It’s like, ‘Let’s kind of come up with something, but not force it.’ So there’s a fine balance there and you just got to wait and see what happens.”

Stearns believes it starts with what the Mets can control: bringing positive energy every day and fostering a family atmosphere. It’s hard to quantify, but vibes undoubtedly helped fuel the Mets’ 2024 success. It’ll be a tough act to follow.

“It’s fluid,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “I like where guys are at as far as the team chemistry goes and things like that and the connections and the relationships. But it’ll continue to take some time. And winning helps, clearly.”

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