All it takes is one idiot to ruin a party.  As the SEC’s newest members prepare for their first-ever conference games, both are having to deal with trash talk emanating from inside their own camps.

As you know by now, Missouri defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson has been gagged by Gary Pinkel after his suggestion that Georgia’s style of football is Big Ten-esque and behind the times.  UGA travels to Mizzou on Saturday.

Well, Richardson’s comment was nothing compared to a billboard put up in Gainesville by — all assume — someone associated with Texas A&M.  The billboard states:

“HOWDY GAINESVILLE:

You’ve been annexed by Aggie Nation

The Best Academics & Cleanest Program in the SEC.  WHOOP!

Real Football.  Real Tradition.”

If an Aggie-backer actually paid for that billboard, he’s done his favorite team no favors.  Why kick a sleeping Gator just days before Saturday’s A&M/Florida clash at Kyle Field?  (Aggie officials say they had nothing to do with the billboard and it does not feature any official A&M logos.)

Now, is it possible that someone with UF ties posted this to get his own squad fired up, a la Robin Williams’ actions in the little seen, but good flick “Best of Times?”  Maybe.  But one wouldn’t think a UF-backer would go anywhere near the “Best Academics & Cleanest Program” lines even if he was attempting to rile up his favorite team.

Apparently they just don’t teach Southern manners in the Show-Me and Lone Star states.  Also, MU and A&M folks should know that you don’t earn respect from SEC fans by talking or posting billboards.  You gain respect by winning games.

As someone who was hoping both the league’s newcomers would win their opening league games so we could end the “disrespect” nonsense right out of the gate, I’m now hoping both Mizzou and A&M — two schools I’ve repeatedly said will make fine additions to the league — get their fannies kicked.

Why the need for trash talk with people you’ve never played?  So childish.  So stupid.

Once helmets collide on Saturday, ugly comments and billboards won’t mean a thing.  But for now, if you want to be welcomed into the league — and the SEC has been very welcoming to both A&M and Mizzou so far — everyone associated with those schools should be trying to make friends, not enemies.  Hell, it was Florida president Bernie Machen who spearheaded the SEC’s discussions with A&M prez R. Bowen Loftin in the first place.  And his thanks is a mocking billboard in his own town?

Sorry, call me a fuddy-duddy, but I’m no fan of trash talk.  So I’ve gone from M-I-Z and Gig ‘Em to Hunker Down and Go Gators because of all this nonsense.  As someone with no fan ties to a league school, I usually just pull for the best storyline.  And those storylines have been changed by one player running his mouth and some nitwit posting a billboard.

If I’m invited to a party, I say “thanks for having me.”  I don’t mark my territory by micturating on the host’s carpet like one of Jackie Treehorn’s dimwitted thugs in “The Big Lebowski.”

Missouri DT Sheldon Richardson says Georgia plays “old man football”
Richardson adds: “If we execute, nobody in this league can touch us.”
Missouri opens SEC play with Georgia on Saturday
Texas A&M opens SEC play with Florida on Saturday
A&M coach Kevin Sumlin thinks UF held back in 27-14 win over Bowling Green
S. Carolina QB Connor Shaw is having “trouble lifting his right arm”
Shaw’s bruised shoulder might keep him from playing against E. Carolina on Saturday
Tennessee coaches waiting for word on LB Herman Lathers’ injured shoulder
Louisville whips Kentucky 32-14 on Sunday
Get all your SEC news from MrSEC.com and twitter.com/mrsec

In the grand scheme of things — with a Hurricane slowly griding its way across Louisiana — the postponement of Texas A&M’s Thursday night opener with Louisiana Tech in Shreveport is small potatoes.  Very small.  Like, Tator Tots or something.

But this is an SEC site and while we wish everyone in the Gulf safety, we do need to discuss the ramifications of delaying A&M’s game with LaTech until October 13th.

As Josh Ward posted yesterday afternoon, the move means that the Aggies’ new season opener will come at home on September 8th against Florida.  Welcome to the SEC, redshirt freshman quarterback Johnny Manziel.

The Aggies will have no dress rehearsal before facing what’s expected to be one of the SEC’s better defenses (and we all know that’s saying something).

But there’s a downside for Florida, too.  Yes, you can bet UF’s coaches have looked at tape of A&M’s spring game, but they will now have no actual game footage of Kevin Sumlin’s offensive and defensive plans and schemes in real gameday action.

So while the Aggies will be dropped into the deep end of the pool, the Gators will be flying blind.  (I’m seeing how many cliches I can use in one post.)

Louisiana Tech officials — acting in concert with city leaders in Shreveport — obviously put safety first in deciding to postpone the game.  Good for them.  We’re all for it.

But it’ll still make things a bit tougher on both Texas A&M’s and Florida’s football teams when they meet at Kyle Field in early September.

(As for the Aggies, they’ll also lose their open date on October 13th and will be forced to play 12 consecutive weeks without a break.  That won’t be easy when eight of those 12 games are against SEC foes… including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and LSU.)

Oh, sure, sure.  You just look for entertainment purposes.  NCAA football betting isn’t something you actually engage in.

Unless, of course, you’re in Las Vegas.

Or your bookie Vito calls.

Regardless of whether you bet on games or not, there’s nothing like a good Vegas line to give teams some extra motivation heading into a ballgame.  How many coaches over the years have uttered the words “Nobody is giving you a chance to win” to their teams?  Thousands?  Hundreds of thousands?

Well, below are the latest lines for Week One SEC action.  Feel free to be outraged because your favorite team isn’t favored… or isn’t favored by enough.  Enjoy.

Notes:

* The LVH is The Las Vegas Hotel, formerly The Las Vegas Hilton.

* Texas A&M/Louisiana Tech, Tennessee/NC State, Auburn/Clemson and Alabama/Michigan are all neutral site games.

* Jacksonville State at Arkansas, Central Arkansas at Ole Miss, Jackson State at Mississippi State and Southeastern Louisiana at Missouri aren’t listed because those games involve FCS-level schools.

Yesterday we used the case of Jeff Driskel’s sore/broken/bruised/destroyed/nicked shoulder to remind everyone — fans and media alike — that the current means of new dissemination has gone full-on wonky.  Turns out, all those reports that leaned toward a serious injury for the Florida quarterback were way off-base.  At least according to Florida officials.  And Driskel’s mom.  All of which just goes to prove that the ready-fire-aim, Twitterification of news is a bad, bad thing.

Ditto coaches’ ridiculous attempts to cut off any information they can from the media and, by default, their own teams’ fans.

In Driskel’s case, Twitter exploded yesterday with news of an injury to his non-throwing shoulder.  Reports varied from a small injury to a broken scapula.  Here’s a sampling:

The Palm Beach Post quoted a release from UF stating that “Jeff Driskel was a practice today and will be taking reps at practice on Wednesday.”  No biggie.

The Gainesville Sun reported: “Although a source close to the Florida football program told The Sun that quarterback Jeff Driskel has sustained a ‘significant’ shoulder injury, UF released a statement Tuesday afternoon saying Driskel will practice with the team Wednesday.”  The paper’s source claimed Driskel injured his shoulder Sunday, did not realize it until Monday, and the “unspecified injury” was discovered after that.

The Orlando Sentinel wrote that Driskel “was injured during practice Sunday, but he is expected to return to workouts this week.”

InsideTheGators.com — the Rivals site covering Florida — reported behind a paywall that the injury was “minor” and that Driskel “seems fine,” according to a source.

Meanwhile, USA Today went straight to the horse’s (mother’s) mouth.  According to Mary Driskel, her son “told her he injured his left, non-throwing shoulder in drills on Sunday and woke up sore on Monday.  She said Driskel did not practice Monday or Tuesday.  He is expected to return on Wednesday.”

All that after the rampant speculation on Twitter had hyped the boo-boo into a major injury.

There are three reasons stories like this get blown out of proportion:

1.  Paranoid coaches close off as much info as possible… and fans actually applaud them for it.  Most NFL teams don’t close practice.  Pete Carroll didn’t close practice at Southern Cal.  Writers are simply expected to keep certain things quiet and when they don’t, they get booted.  But the media is allowed to see who’s at practice and how healthy those persons happen to be.  That hasn’t hurt NFL squads and it sure didn’t hurt Carroll at USC.  Coaches who don’t like stories like Driskel’s being blown out or proportion have themselves to blame.

2.  Fans — the same ones who cheer their coaches for fighting off the big, bad media — will scour the earth for every nugget, tidbit, or rumor that they can find regarding their favorite teams.  Credibility doesn’t matter nearly as much as speed.  “Gimme, gimme, gimme… but don’t give it to the media,” seems to be the mantra.  Better to get bad info fast from a messageboard or Twitter than get good info a hair slower from trained professionals.

3.  Media members know the score on all that.  Twenty years ago, the goal was to research a piece and get more details than the other guys in town.  Now, if you want credit, you tweet what you know when you know it.  Whether you actually know it or not.  That’s a bad system and a recipe for trouble and even good journalists fall victim to it.  Gotta get eyeballs.

We’re all to blame, people.  You, me and that coach who’s shutting his doors to journalists and the fans to whom they report.

It’s a ridiculous situation.  And it’s only going to get worse and worse.

Three players committed to Vanderbilt’s 2013 class during the weekend.

The first, cornerback Tre’ Bell from Jersey City, N.J., switched his commitment from Florida.

“Yes, I decommitted and committed to Vandy,” Bell confirmed to GatorNation via text message.

Or did Florida make the decommitment? From the Gainesville Sun:

“A source close to the situation told The Sun that UF’s coaches wanted to see Bell in action this summer so they could critique his play, something several of Florida’s commits were required to do. But Bell never attended any of Florida’s camps in June and didn’t work out when he came down for Friday Night Lights on July 27. The source said Bell refused to participate because his coach, Rich Hansen, advised him against it.”

That led to the Gators deciding to part ways, according to the Sun.

Bell was joined on Vanderbilt’s commitment list this weekend by linebacker Oren Burks from Lorton, Va., and defensive end Mike Tyler from Brecksville, Ohio.

Tyler found the right combination of academics and athletics at Vanderbilt.

“I love that I didn’t have to compromise and choose great football over academics or great academics over football,” Tyler told VandySports.com. “At Vandy I can have it all. Add amazing coaches and great players and it was a no-brainer.”

Vanderbilt has 19 commitments for the class of 2013.

Football fans used to seeing a the big block-letter F at the 50-yard line of Florida Field had better brace for change.  That big F will become two smaller Fs at each 25-yard line.  And replacing the big F at midfield will be Florida’s familiar Gator head logo (pictured at left).

“Our goal was to place our primary mark at midfield,” said a UF spokesperson.  “That’s the most prominent location on the field and we felt that’s where the Gator head needed to be.  It’s a hugely recognized symbol in college athletics.”

The Gator logo will be 60 feet wide and 40 feet tall.

The smaller Fs at each 25-yard line will no longer be in the block style linked to above, but in the now familiar italicized font UF uses elsewhere on campus.  It’s all about selling one brand and not mixing messages — or fonts and logos.

Four-star defensive tackle signee Dante Phillips won’t be suiting up or Will Muschamp’s defense this fall.  In fact, he won’t be on the Florida campus as a student, either.  According to his stepfather, Damon Wilson, Phillips has been denied admission into the school:

“We were kind of blindsided.  He did everything he needed to do to be cleared by the (NCAA) clearing house, but now he’s been told he doesn’t have a scholarship to Florida.  He’s been cleared by the NCAA.  He’s academically eligible.  But the admissions office says he can’t enroll at Florida.  If he can’t get in there, we have to look at other places.  He’s got some offers out there.  He’s totally qualified (academically)…

Something like this should never happen.”

Wilson told The Gainesville Sun the family is appealing the decision, but he doesn’t expect a reversal on the ruling.

Phillips was ranked by Rivals.com as the #9 defensive tackle prospect in the nation on signing day.  Fellow top D-line signees Jonathan Bullard and Dante Fowler have yet to enroll as well, but it’s expected — as least for now — that they will be cleared by the NCAA and by the school.

That doesn’t help Phillips, however.  And it won’t help Will Muschamp on the recruiting trail, either.

The University of Florida admissions office — or someone in the athletic department — should have gotten a look at Phillips’ transcripts long before signing day and found that there were potential potholes.  The fact that a player was recruited by UF, signed by UF, but then denied entry to UF will be used against the Gators’ coach on the recruiting trail.  Of that you can be sure.

“They might tell you that you can get in, but did you hear what they did to Dante Phillips?”

One can only imagine Muschamp’s private response when given the news that he’d wasted a scholarship — and a helluva lot of time — on a player cleared by the NCAA but not cleared by his own university.

As for Phillips, if he and his family were truly as “blindsided” as Wilson says, then someone in Gainesville owes the young man an apology.

File this one under: What’s he supposed to say?

At a Gator booster club gathering last night, Florida football coach Will Muschamp took up for the man who preceded him in Gainesville.  When a UF fan asked him about The Sporting News’ recent hit job on Urban Meyer — a Matt Hayes-penned piece claiming the coach lost control of the program, allowed drug use to take place, and played favorites when it came to discipline – the current Gator coach said of the former Gator coach:


“I think Urban Meyer did a great job at the University of Florida.  He won two conference championships.  He won two national championships.  And I don’t know how you can do that without discipline.  That’s my opinion.  I wasn’t here at that time, but I know that I am very proud to be part of a program that he was a part of, and he did a great job at Florida.”


Muschamp has said the right things about Meyer before.  Last year at SEC Media Days he said that Meyer had been “first class” and that he’d listened to his predecessor’s advice “more than anyone else.”

The closest he’s come to really saying anything that could even be slightly construed as negative toward Meyer’s regime was last October when he said UF lacked the players to install a power running game.

Facts, however, are facts.  Muschamp can talk all he likes about UF having discipline under Meyer, but when he booted star corner Janoris Jenkins after two quick pot arrests last spring, the player said he’d still be on the team if his old coach were still around.

So if Meyer had discipline, it’s safe to say — based on Jenkins’ comments — that Muschamp is trying to instill even more into the Florida program.

And while discipline issues can indeed destroy a team that needs a mix of chemistry and talent to win, an uber-talented team can win with thugs, miscreants and rule-breakers on the roster.  See: Miami Hurricanes, 1980-90s.  Many wins and titles.  Many arrests and embarrassments.

Florida had a once-in-a-generation talent in Tim Tebow surrounded by a fleet of 4- and 5-star prospects for four of Meyer’s six years in Gainesville.  But the success he had on the field with that player and that roster don’t prove by any stretch that the coach actually maintained discipline off the football field.

Matt Hayes of The Sporting News is taking former Florida coach Urban Meyer to task today for creating a culture at UF that “gutted what was four years earlier the most powerful program in college football.”

The lengthy piece claims that Meyer’s lassez faire attitude led to the players taking “complete control of the team,” according to one former, anonymous Gator.  The three-month investigation revealed — in Hayes’ words — “just how damaged the infrastructure really was and how much repair work second-year coach Will Muschamp has had to undertake in replacing Meyer.”

Among the juiciest tidbits:

* Meyer — now at Ohio State — allegedly told a recruit’s family this winter that he would not let his son go to Florida due to character issues in the school’s locker room.  Meyer denies the charge and it does seem like an odd recruiting ploy… seeing as how Meyer was the one who recruited most of the UF team.

* Meyer’s resignation was tied to the roster that he’d built.  “Left in the wake of Meyer’s resignation were problems that can destroy a coaching career: drug use among players, a philosophy of preferential treatment for certain players, a sense of entitlement among all players and roster management by scholarship manipulation.”

* Former Florida safety Bryan Thomas told The Sporting News that “The program was out of control.”

* Ex-Gator Percy Harvin was supposedly given preferential treatment on a repeated basis.  When he failed a drug test, the coach told the press he was injured.  When he allegedly physically attacked then-receivers coach Billy Gonzales, he wasn’t disciplined.

* New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick — who became friends with Meyer and drafted Brandon Spikes and Aaron Hernandez from UF — reportedly knew so much about the team’s drug use that he warned the current Florida team this offseason to put the marijuana down and “don’t be like” those previous Gator players.

It goes on from there.  Thomas — it should be pointed out — was told by Meyer to “move on” because knee injuries began to hinder his career in 2009.  So one of Hayes’ sources clearly has a bone to pick with his ex-coach.

However, many of the things Hayes writes of today have been hinted at, suggested, and rumored to be true for a long while.  If you’ve followed Florida’s football program closely over the years, there’s nothing above that should stand out as an “oh, my goodness” shocker.

Taken as a whole, The Sporting News report tells us three things:

1.  Ohio State probably made a bigger gamble with Meyer than most Buckeye fans realize.  We said that at the time of his hiring, too.

2.  Muschamp did not inherit a stable situation at Florida.  Some talent?  No doubt.  But some diva attitudes and outlaw personalities to go with it.

3.  Meyer’s greatest successes at Florida should be traced back to Tim Tebow, not Meyer.

As we’ve written before, Tebow proved in Denver this past season just what kind of impact he can have on a locker room and the confidence within it.  We believe he deserves credit for UF’s national titles under Meyer, not the coach.  For even with the coach playing favorites, the players smoking pot, and character issues all around, Florida still managed to go 39-7 (27-5 in the SEC) with Tebow on the roster, on the practice field and in the locker room.

Without Tebow’s presence on the team, Meyer went just 17-8 overall and just 9-7 in the league.  Coincidence?  We at MrSEC do not think so.

Reading Hayes’ piece and seeing the work Tebow did in getting a 1-4 Denver squad into the NFL’s final round of eight last season, it’s even more clear that the real leadership in Gainesville from 2006 to 2009 came from Tebow, not from his head coach.