Tag: Palm Beach Post

Gator great Emmitt Smith talks about when he tried to become a Dolphin

Smith going to Miami would have changed the childhoods of a LOT of football fans.

One fun mental exercise that sports fans like to play is, “What if?” For example, “What if X athlete had played for Y team during their career?” is a common query when it comes to the best that each respective sport had to offer over the years.

Recently, Gator great and NFL Hall of Fame running back [autotag]Emmitt Smith[/autotag] made a guest appearance on “The Pivot” podcast with Ryan Clark, Fred Taylor and Channing Crowder, and told the gang about the time he almost became a member of the Miami Dolphins.

Coming off a campaign that saw him lead the league with 1,713 yards and 18 touchdowns on the ground in 1992 plus an NFL title — good enough for third in the Most Valuable Player vote — Smith had difficulties seeing eye-to-eye with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones on a new contract. Additionally, he had a month to pursue other offers but none materialized.

Then, one of the best to ever put on a helmet took matters into his own hands.

“I picked up the phone and called Don Shula myself and told him I wanted to come to Miami and play for Miami,” Smith said. “Because I knew Dan Marino didn’t have a running game.”

“I want to help you and help Dan get a championship,” Smith offered to Shula. “I said, ‘Bring me back to the state of Florida.’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t know if I could make that offer.’ He said, ‘If I do make this offer and you don’t come, all my other players will see what I put on the table for you and it’s going to mess up my chemistry.’ ”

Smith’s response was he wanted Shula to “just put something on the table” that would make Cowboys owner Jerry Jones say, “I cannot match it.”

Still, Smith said, Shula wouldn’t budge: “I can’t do that.”

Smith was incredulous.

“I said to myself, ‘Really?’ ”

The rest, as they say, is history. Dan Marino and the Dolphins never got their ring while Smith went on to earn both the regular-season and Super Bowl MVP awards the next season, adding two more Lombardi Trophies to the Cowboys’ cabinet during his tenure. Marino only had a single 1,000-yard running back behind him in all his years in Miami — Karim Abdul-Jabbar, who had 1,116 yards in 1996.

Over his 15-year NFL career, Smith amassed NFL records with 18,355 yards rushing along with 164 touchdowns (19 in the postseason). He was the AP Rookie of the Year in 1990 and finished third in the MVP vote twice in addition to his 1993 award.

Makes one wonder what would have happened if Shula had obliged.

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SEC, Gators pay price because they decided to actually play games, not manipulate schedule like ACC

Despite the coronavirus pandemic the SEC has been hell-bent on keeping its games going which in hindsight may not have been the best idea.

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Editor’s note: This article was originally published by the Palm Beach Post and has been republished in its entirety below.

The Florida Gators played a game Saturday. And although it did not turn out the way you might expect for a team favored by more than three touchdowns, Florida — and the SEC — decided it would play for the integrity of the sport, and not run from competition.

Unlike the ACC and commissioner John Swofford — whose decision to arbitrarily eliminate games for non-COVID reasons becomes even more pronounced and disgraceful in light of Florida’s upset loss. The ACC locked up its conference title game two weeks ago by telling Notre Dame and Clemson, “don’t worry, we got this. Both you can put up your feet on the final weekend of the regular season. We will clear the path for both of you, not just to get to Charlotte, but also the College Football Playoff, because, hey, in this year we can do anything we want at any time.”

Including duck competition.

So, what happened was that Notre Dame’s regular-season finale at Wake Forest was whacked and a game Clemson had postponed at FSU was not rescheduled … much to the delight of Dabo Swinney. And this is separate from games being canceled because of the coronavirus. When COVID strikes a program, nothing can be done. These games were canceled for no other reason than to benefit the teams and conference.

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Now the reasonable thinking is if Clemson wins the rematch Saturday in the ACC title game, both teams, with one loss, likely will grab playoff spots.

This decision eliminated Miami from contention. No matter what happened on the field Saturday, Miami earned the right to have hope, no matter how slim, of getting into the ACC championship game going into the North Carolina game. And Manny Diaz did a good job of holding back his true feelings when the ACC took that away when he said, “it’s a little strange just to kind of have games taken away.”

Certainly, the Miami team that melted down in a 62-26 loss to North Carolina has no business being in the ACC title game. But that’s not for the league to determine 10 days before that game is played. And for those who shouted it does not matter, Clemson would have rolled FSU if they played … maybe. But what happened at Florida Saturday is exactly why the ACC should not be predetermining who wins games.

Florida was a prohibitive favorite, at home, playing a wounded rival that with the win changed much of the narrative on its season.

Clemson would have been a prohibitive favorite, on the road, playing a wounded rival with a win that would have changed much of the narrative on its season.

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But of course, that would not have pleased Dabo. And it would not have been good for the ACC if Clemson were forced to reschedule the game … and lost. Or if Notre Dame had played Saturday at Wake Forest … and lost.

But because the SEC didn’t try to manipulate the schedule by giving itself a better chance of putting two teams into the playoff, it has to pay the price.

While this was not the Gators we’d seen most of the year (except perhaps defensively), they still had a chance to win until a shoe sailed through the thick fog late into the night at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. A clutch 57-yard field goal later and a 37-34 upset was born.

If the SEC followed the ACC blueprint and told Alabama and Florida to sit home Saturday, and the Gators upset the Tide this Saturday in Atlanta, the SEC would have been guaranteed two spots in the playoff.

Now, Florida has no shot.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey had every right to stick his nose in the ACC’s cowardly decision. Not only did it impact the ACC, but it impacted his conference. If Clemson actually had to, gasp, play a football game Saturday and was upset, the Tigers would have been eliminated from a possible playoff spot.

The team that would have benefited most: the team sitting at No. 5 in the CFP standings, Texas A&M of the SEC.

Sankey doubled down on his criticism of the ACC on Saturday and that hurt Dabo’s feelings.

This is 20/20 (in more ways than one) Dabo on Sunday:

“I would’ve loved to play this past weekend. I had no problem with that. I didn’t make the decision.”

This is Dabo the week after Florida State made the responsible decision to put its players’ health and safety ahead of a football game:

“If they want to play Clemson, in my opinion, they need to come to Clemson or they need to pay for all expenses. Other than that, there’s no reason for us to play them.”

Which is it: “loved to play” or “no reason to play?”

We all know Clemson’s and the ACC’s answer.

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Coaches and student-athletes from around Florida motivated to vote

Among those are college athletes who have decided their voices can be powerful and they no longer will “shut up and dribble.”

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Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the Palm Beach Post and has been republished in full below. 

More than 70 million Americans already have cast a ballot ahead of Tuesday’s election, many of those young people eligible to vote for the first time or who just could not be bothered to take time out of their social schedule to stand in line.

Among those are college athletes who have decided their voices can be powerful and they no longer will “shut up and dribble.”

“I feel like that it’s extremely important (to vote), especially now that we’re coming of age,” Florida Gators running back Malik Davis said. “Every vote makes a difference.”

These movements, whether in the form or protests or voter registration rallies, have been sparked by several factors, including a contentious presidential election between Republican Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, a summer filled with protests over social injustices and a global coronavirus pandemic that has become politicized.

The NCAA even took notice, making Election Day an athletic holiday by approving a measure that states Division I athletes will not be required to participate in “countable athletically related activities” on the first Tuesday after Nov. 1 every year, beginning in 2020.

The legislation was proposed by the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee to allow athletes to participate in civic engagement, including voting or community service.

“It gives our players who may not have a chance to vote – there’s no telling what the lines will be like on election day – it gives them an opportunity to get out there and to do it,” Miami Hurricanes coach Manny Diaz said. “This is a great chance to express one of the great things of what it means to be an American and have their voice heard, whatever side they are on, and be a part of the democratic process.”

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Diaz has the perspective of having been around politics his entire life with his father, Manny, the mayor of Miami from 2001-2009. Not so for Florida’s Dan Mullen, who is more focused on his job and winning football games.

Mullen is not happy the NCAA is forcing coaches to adjust their schedules. The Gators coach is under pressure after losing at Texas A&M three weeks ago and then saying he’d like the university to ignore its own guidelines for fighting the pandemic and allow 90,000 fans into Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. That was followed by the Gators being forced to postpone two games after an outbreak within the team and Mullen announcing two weeks ago he tested positive for COVID-19.

Mullen this week lamented having to go a day without practice to allow players who have been unable to vote to cast their ballot. He said early voting, which he took advantage of, allows the players enough of an opportunity without having to disrupt his schedule on election day.

“I wasn’t a big fan with the NCAA doing that,” Mullen said during the SEC teleconference. “It throws you completely off your game-week routine, which obviously to me is very dangerous.

“Normally we’re off on Sunday and that’s a day of rest and recovery after a game. We can’t do that now. We have got to go immediately into preparation for the next game. We have to make sure our guys are prepared and safe for the game. It’s really kind of thrown that off.”

That next game happens to be against Georgia, Florida’s biggest SEC rival.

The polarizing event sparking the nationwide movement came on Memorial Day when George Floyd, a Black man, died in Minneapolis while a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. That spurred a generation of young people to become more socially aware and realize one of the ways to make sure things change is to vote.

And with sports in a global timeout this summer because of the pandemic, athletes across the nation used that down time to register to vote. Team leaders arranged for their teammates to sign up as a group, which led to scenes like the one at Missouri, where more than 60 football players marched from campus to the Boone County Courthouse in Columbia to register.

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Or at Florida, where the Gators had a full-team voter registration drive. Or at Florida State where tight end Cam McDonald sat outside the locker room with a voter registration application and a guide to make sure teammates understood the process.

“It’s been something that has been constant throughout the semester, not just with our football team, with our athletic department,” Florida State coach Mike Norvell said. “We try to keep those reminders for them and just encourage them that this is an opportunity for you to have a voice and to be able to use that voice for a significant impact. It’s been nice seeing our guys really embrace that.”

Diaz said Miami’s social justice council, headed by running backs coach Eric Hickson, has succeeded in getting every football player registered to vote. And while the presidential election has energized the country, Diaz is making sure his players understand voting is much more than showing up at the polls every four years to elect the leader of our country.

“We’re trying to really explain to our players the ins and outs of local government,” he said. “I think everybody understands what it means to elect a president. I don’t know that our players have the understanding of who is in charge of what on the local ballot.

“A lot of what occurs in our community is dictated by the local governments, county and city. We don’t spend enough time on that. Who’s accountable if I don’t like something in my community? A lot of our guys don’t know.”

Florida linebacker James Houston said similar conversations are happening within the Gators team.

“We get in our little groups and talk politics,” Houston said.

The culmination of the movement and the registration initiatives comes Tuesday. But the push to vote started weeks ago. Coaches and players stressed voting early anticipating a chaotic election day.

And with Florida a tight battle ground state for such an important presidential election, young people more than any other time could make a difference.

“We’re really encouraging our guys to go early vote,” FAU coach Willie Taggart said. “I know Tuesday we won’t do anything football-wise to allow those guys to go out and vote. … but we’re really encouraging them to go early vote and, if they have time, to go do it now. We have an early voting station here on campus, so it would be great for our guys to go over and knock that out.

“I voted. Done deal.”

Curt Weiler (Tallahassee), Graham Hall (Gainesville) and Reese Furlow (Boca Raton) contributed to this report

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