GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we start to preview the Florida Gators opening game against Ole Miss on Saturday in Oxford.
Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre are joined by Nick Suss of the Clarion-Ledger to get his thoughts on the game and how good Ole Miss should be this year under first-year head coach Lane Kiffin.
Andrew and Nick also breakdown the Gators depth chart that was released on Monday by head coach Dan Mullen.
TRANSCRIPT:
Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, game week is here, finally. We have it. We’ve talked about being optimistic until it happened, but feel pretty good. Let’s go. Got a roster. We got a depth chart. CJ Henderson no longer plays for the Gators.
Nick:                         That’s so sad. He is the Rookie of the Week this week, so playing well no matter where he’s playing, that’s for sure. Happy Game Week to all. I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be in Oxford, Mississippi in a couple days’ time.
Andrew:                 We’ll get to see a game, a real SEC game. That’s going to be satisfying to see. I say this, Nick, and I still say this is going to be a wild and crazy year, but finally a little bit of normalcy for the year. I’m happy for it. To see the depth chart and to see the excitement back out there again is exciting to see. Some interesting points on the depth chart, I would say, to some of us. Not so surprising. We’ll dive into that here in just a second.
Nick:                         We’ve got a depth chart, and we’ve got an actual roster. Not too many surprises, but there’s definitely a lot to talk about.
Andrew:                 Coaching promotion too.
Nick:                         Yeah. Pretty historic one. We’ll get into that. We’ve also got Nick Suss joining us. He’s an Ole Miss beat reporter. Listen, I don’t much about Ole Miss, and he certainly knows more than you and I do. We’ve got some questions. You’ve got Matt Corral or John Rhys Plumlee. Who’s playing quarterback for Ole Miss? How’s Lane Kiffin doing? Have you spotted Lane Kiffin around at the bars up there? I’ve got some questions for Nick.
Andrew:                 Has he been at the sorority house yet? You know that question is going to come up. Let’s just go ahead. We’ll talk to Nick, get his thoughts on this Ole Miss team, and then we’ll come back, and we’ll break down this depth chart and talk about what Nick had to say. We’ll wrap that up and get you ready. Guess what? On Friday it’s prediction time. Let’s go to Nick.
Nick:                         Happy to be joined by Nick Suss from the Clarion Ledger. Nick, it’s been a while. We met in Omaha for the Florida-LSU College World Series. We were there for a long time.
Nick Suss:             I think that was 13 days. I was staying in Iowa. I was staying over the border. 13 days in Iowa is not really something you sign up for when you start doing this job, but it was great. I love the College World Series. Favorite event in sports, really.
Nick:                         It was a great time. Certainly, that was great baseball. You can’t change my mind. I know everyone loved Oregon State that year, but you can’t change my mind that those were the two best teams in the country. We got to see them play like five times that year, six times that year if you include the disastrous SEC Tournament games.
Nick Suss:             That was a really fun season. You just can’t help but wonder, if LSU had that one more pitcher, if they didn’t have a UCL injury against Oregon State, how is that final three series different? I still think Florida was the better team, but that would have been fun.
Nick:                         Yeah. That’s a different lifetime, and now you’re covering the Fighting Lane Kiffins at Ole Miss. It’s a strange opponent for us here on this side, just trying to cover it,