GatorCountry brings you a new podcast as we start to preview the Florida Gators vs. LSU game on Saturday at 4:00 in the Swamp.
Andrew Spivey and Nick de la Torre preview the game and we breakdown what changes we think the Gators could make on defense this week.
Andrew and Nick also talk about the offense this week against a below-average LSU defense.
TRANSCRIPT:
Andrew:                 What’s up, Gator Country? Your man, Andrew Spivey, here with Nicholas de la Torre. Nicholas, we’re here getting ready for LSU and Florida. If you didn’t catch the news, it moved back 30 minutes. No big deal. Still on ESPN.
Nick:                         Real quick programming note, because there’s a lot of confusion. CBS doesn’t have a double header this week, or this year. ESPN was always broadcasting Florida-LSU. The moving the kickoff back, some people were like, why isn’t it on CBS now? It was never on CBS. It’s just ESPN is probably giving it an extra 30 minute buffer, so that you don’t have the 12:00 kickoff running into Florida-LSU. If they need to kill time with a studio show for 20 minutes, they’d rather do that. I mean, how pissed off are you if Florida starts at 3:00, and the game doesn’t start on ESPN, because whatever game ESPN was showing at noon is in the 4th quarter, and you miss 10 minutes of Florida-LSU?
Andrew:                 Right.
Nick:                         ESPN is just moving it back, so you don’t have any crossover between the games.
Andrew:                 I was telling you off the air, we were talking about that. You’re just so accustomed to it, and I even told you before the schedule came out last week I even thought, that’s a CBS game, because I’m so accustomed to it being on CBS.
Nick:                         3:30, you immediately assume CBS.
Andrew:                 Yeah.
Nick:                         I get the confusion. That’s why I just wanted to get it out there real quick.
Andrew:                 Yeah. So, they moved it back. Again, no big deal. No problem or anything like that. Somebody asked is there an issue of why they have to move it back? No. It’s just TV. TV runs the game, as we always say. That’s that. We’re going to spend this podcast a little different, Nick. We’re going to go through. Dan Mullen said on Monday he wants to really go through and talk about and think about moving some guys around. If there’s guys that are in better position to play to make the team better, they want to play those guys on defense. He said he was in the defensive meeting room on Sunday. I know he said the buck does stop with him, and it does. I was very vocal about that on Sunday. Todd Grantham, you can say you want to fire Todd Grantham all you want to, but at the end of the day, if Dan Mullen doesn’t fix it, then it’s on Dan Mullen.
Nick:                         Yeah. Here’s what it is. Dan Mullen is not a defensive coach. That’s now how he cut his teeth. That’s not how he became successful. He’s an offensive coach. I think he’s a brilliant offensive mind. He’s not going to call the plays. He’s not going to call defensive plays. Sorry. But at the end of the day, I forget which president it was that had the little placard on his desk that said, the buck stops here.
Andrew:                 Yeah.
Nick:                         He’s the head football coach, so every little thing that happens on the football team ends up coming back to him. So, is he calling the defensive plays? No. Is he responsible for how bad the defense is playing? No and yes. No, he’s not, but at the end of the day, it comes back on him.
Andrew:                 Right.
Nick:                         So, is he going to fire Todd Grantham in the middle of the season? I would bet my house, my brand-new house, that he does not do it. That’s how confident I am that he’s not going to fire Todd Grantham in the middle of the season.