GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we breakdown the 2020 football schedule for the Florida Gators that was released on Monday night.
Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre give you their thoughts on the games and look at some key moments in the schedule for the Gators.
Andrew and Nick also discuss the start of fall practice that started on Monday and what Dan Mullen had to say during his press conference.
TRANSCRIPT:
Andrew:                What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, we have the football schedule. We have football practice. Only thing now we need is a football game, and we’ll be good and 2020 will be somewhat normal again.
Nick:                         Yeah. I’m sitting here, and there’s some people like, what about the College Football Playoff, what about bowl games? How do you do all this stuff? I’m like, listen, just get me to September 26th. I don’t care about any of that stuff. We will talk about it later. Let’s just get to some football games. You got guys on the field. As we tape this Tuesday, it’ll be the last day in just helmets. On Wednesday they’ll be in shells. So, helmets and shoulder pads, Wednesday, Thursday. Then they get a day off, or a couple days off, before going into full pads. Soon. Full pads and real football soon.
Andrew:                 Like you said, that’s the biggest key is getting to September 26th. We’ll see what happens. I think the Big 10 right now is having some questions that’s going to have to be answered as well, because some players are wanting to play. We’ll see where that goes. I don’t know that I’m fully ruling out the Big 10 not playing football this year.
Nick:                         Certainly. I haven’t checked today, but last I saw yesterday Justin Fields’ petition had a quarter million people that had signed it already. You’ve got the Penn State Athletic Director coming out and saying he doesn’t even know if the chancellors and presidents even voted. How does an Athletic Director for one of the schools not know? To me, it seems like there might be, depending on the ground swell and if this stuff keeps going on, at the very least I could see lawsuits being filed and this going to court.
Andrew:                 That’s what I was going to say. Then if they do play, what is the situation of playing? They’ve pretty much shut down practice. I mean, they have shut down practice, so there is nothing going on right now. What’s the revamp period for those guys, that kind of stuff? The saying that Greg Sankey had a while ago, and that is there’s still a ton of unanswered questions. That’s still accurate today.
Nick:                         There’s going to be questions. There will be questions if we get past September 26, and we get to October 10, Week 3. There’ll probably still be questions Week 3. Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, there’ll be questions. I think what the SEC did, what the Big 10 and the PAC-12 didn’t do, is I think the SEC’s model early on to push everything back and just allow them more time to collect data and to kind of figure things out. I think what you’re seeing is now the SEC, the ACC, and the Big 12, with their models, are pushing forward. We’ll see what happens when students come back to campus and stuff like that. UNC had a difficult first week, so we’ll see. We’ll see what happens when the students come back to campus. You’re putting a lot of trust in the football players to make smart decisions. Don’t go out to Midtown.
Andrew:                 Right.
Nick:                         Know who you’re hanging out with and what they’re doing as well.
Andrew:                 It’s kind of like they’re saying in the MLB right now, and that is for three months or whatever it is you have to kind of be locked up. You kind of have to be in your own little prison cell kind of thing. It’s got to be go to class, go home,