Pat Dooley’s Hive Five: Similar Expectations For Football As Basketball Season

Is everyone breathing normally again?

Have you dried out, whether it be your liver or favorite T-shirt?

That run that the Florida basketball team not only put lives on hold, it took at least a week to recover from the butterflies hatching in your stomachs and fingernails torn off by nervous teeth.

So, this is something I mentioned on The Tailgate and again on Another Dooley Noted Podcast and wanted to share it here.

The High Five brings you the five reasons your expectations for football are about like they were when basketball season started:

1. You’ve been through it before

You know how crazy it was from 2006-08 around here with Florida becoming Titletown. For years since then, Gator fans have craved that feeling again.

But so do the players. And I happen to believe that winning breeds winning.

2. OK, but seriously Pat …

The basketball team just won the natty. They were five of the most excruciating games you’d ever want to experience. What makes me think it can happen in football with the College Football Playoff.

I’m not saying it will. All I am saying is that you weren’t thinking any more about basketball winning a national title when the season began than you are football.

3. The cultures are very similar

Todd Golden came up with the NIL money to get Will Richard and Walter Clayton Jr. to come back, because he knew that they grasped the concept of playing for the front of the jersey instead of the back. He brought in Alijah Martin for the same reason.

The football team has locked up all of its scholarship players to NIL deals and Billy Napier knows he finally has the culture where he needs it.

4. You like the rosters

Again, when the basketball season started you thought this team had a chance to be pretty good, because of the depth Golden and his staff had built.

Ditto football. I like what I saw in the spring and this feels like a team that isn’t going to be afraid of anything.

5. Schedule, sh-medule

I think a lot of fans are worried about how tough this football schedule is. The basketball team would like you to hold its beer.

Basketball played a schedule that included the best conference in the history of the sport and an NCAA Tournament schedule that was tied for the most difficult if you add up the seed lines.

It’s the SEC. All schedules are difficult.

OK, so let me say this again – I’m not predicting another national title for football. I’m just saying that you won’t feel that much different in August than you did last October when basketball was getting started.

And magical things are caused by magical players. Maybe DJ Lagway is the next Walter Clayton Jr.

Anyway, you have several months to think about it.

WRUF.com sports columnist Pat Dooley can be heard on “The Tailgate” along with Jeff Cardozo from 4-6 p.m. Monday-Friday on 98.1-FM/AM-850 WRUF.