The Weekend Review: Where everyone knows you're still counting the days until football.

Gators ping Texas: Florida's baseball team began its second consecutive College World Series on a high note, rallying to beat Texas, 8-4, in a game that began with a 3-0 Texas lead. Hudson Randall earned his 11th win of the season after allowing just one earned run in 6.2 innings, and Bryson Smith failed to make an out, going 2-for-2 with two runs, two RBI, and two walks. Florida next plays SEC East rival Vanderbilt tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern on ESPN2 and ESPN3.com. The SEC East is 3-0 in Omaha so far.

Young named finalist for USA U19 team: Florida's Patric Young was named a finalist for USA Basketball's under-19 team that will compete at the upcoming FIBA World Championships in Latvia. Florida guard Scottie Wilbekin was not named a finalist after being invited to the U19 camp; fellow Florida guard Bradley Beal declined an invitation to the camp earlier this month. Young could team with fellow Sunshine State product Khyle Marshall of Butler inside for Team USA.

Florida releases 2011 athletic budget: The University of Florida's athletic department released its budget for the 2011-12 school year, and it included a 2.2 percent increase to $99 million.

Questions, suggestions, salutations? Hit the comments.

Your Monday morning recap of the weekend in Florida Gators news. 300 words or less, perfect for browsing before heading to the water cooler. Or Twitter.

Florida baseball will head back to Omaha: The Florida baseball team earned a return trip to the College World Series in Omaha by defeating Mississippi State in NCAA Super Regional play over the weekend. Florida needed all three games to put down the feisty Bulldogs, and needed a towering Preston Tucker homer to rally back in Sunday's dramatic Game Three. The Gators move on to the College World Series for the seventh time in program history, and will be making back-to-back CWS appearances for the first time. Florida will meet Texas when College World Series play opens later this week; you can find College World Series ticket information at Gatorzone. We'll have previews of all of the CWS teams as the week progresses.

Fleetest Gators falter: The Florida men's track team had a chance to follow up its indoor national championship with a triumph at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, but faltered on Saturday, coming in third to Texas A&M and Florida State. A DNF in the 4 x 100 meter relay kneecapped the Gators early, and Florida's attempt to claim a national championship in the 4 x 400 meter relay at day's end fell short with a sixth-place finish.

Corey Brewer, NBA champion: The Dallas Mavericks' Game 6 win over the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals means Florida swingman Corey Brewer is now an NCAA and NBA champion. Feel free to congratulate him on Twitter.

Chomping At Bits may have been an overcommitment. Yes, there is a softball post coming.

Young, Wilbekin get USA Basketball invites: Florida basketball's Patric Young and Scottie Wilbekin, both rising sophomores, have been invited to USA Basketball's U19 team's camp, but it's a third Gator that won't be going who is the real news peg here. Incoming freshman Bradley Beal, who lead the USA Basketball U17 team to a gold medal in the 2010 FIBA World Championships, declined an invitation to the camp and what would likely have been a guaranteed spot on the team. Not to worry: A Florida spokesperson says Beal's withdrawal isn't injury-related, and Beal says he's missing the camp to get acclimated in Gainesville. (I would assume, then, that Beal is taking Summer B classes.)

More on betting on Gators arrests: Yeah, lamentably, there are apparently odds available on Florida arrests in 2011. (Presumably, this is just for football.) But BetUS, the oddsmaker offering the proposition, has previously taken bets on whether the world would end on June 6, 2006 and whether global warming will swamp islands. So. Yeah. Publicity stunts are fun!

As always: Talk about any and all of this and/or anything else you have to say in the comments. Need more Alligator Army in your life? Find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Chomping At Bits really did that daily thing well for those two days there, huh?

Tebow takes on Jon Stewart: Last night, Tim Tebow, everyone's favorite concussion ignorance enthusiast, dropped by The Daily Show to talk about himself, football, and his autobiography, Through My Eyes. And, surprise, he was amusing and witty and all that good stuff.

Choice quotes, as I transcribed on Twitter late Thursday night:

Tebow on writing his autobiography: "I thought 23 was a good age and good opportunity for me."

Stewart, kidding after Tebow mentions supporting an orphanage in the Phillippines: "Wow. You seem like a real a--hole." Tebow, joking: "I mean, but that's how I try to come across, you know. Most of it's fake, to be honest with you."

Stewart: "When you are a missionary's kid, can you get out of it?" Tebow: "After, like, when FSU would beat Florida, which hasn't happened in a while until this last year, I would beg my parents, 'Please do not make me go to church, I do not want to face all the FSU fans,' and sometimes they would let me out of it.." 

Tebow: "Something fair would be if athletes could get a little more to go to dinner and afford a scooter to drive around campus."

I promise that when better video exists, I'll throw it up.

Tear down these divisions: The SEC's basketball coaches, including Billy Donovan, voted for the elimination of divisions at the SEC meetings in Destin this week. Today, the conference's athletic directors will vote to ratify that change, which seems likely to be approved. We'll have more in the coming days about what this might mean for the Gators.

As always: Talk about any and all of this and/or anything else you have to say in the comments. Need more Alligator Army in your life? Find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Chomping At Bits likes to move it move it, and is coming to you live from the Tropical Smoothie Cafe on 34th in Gainesville. (It had a coupon.)

Muschamp at SEC meetings: Florida football coach Will Muschamp is just one of many people paid a lot of money to coach athletes at the SEC meetings this week. He talked to reporters about oversigning — Florida won't do it, Muschamp said — his offensive philosophy for the Gators, his place on the Nick Saban coaching tree, and much more.

Donovan floats RPI-based seeding: Florida men's basketball coach is in Destin for those same SEC meetings, and his media interactions were far more revelatory than Muschamp's. Donovan told reporters he would like to see the SEC Tournament seeded by RPI, and referred to an 18-game SEC league schedule, prompting wonders about whether that was all but a done deal. The latter is sort of a creeping inevitability, but the former's really interesting: if the SEC were to reward teams for RPI, that would favor both the much deeper East and the teams in it (Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee, Vanderbilt) that schedule aggressively.

Continue reading this post »

Chomping At Bits is back to stay. It is coming to you at 9:30 a.m. Eastern or earlier most days, unless the publishing system has a hiccup. Set phasers to love me.

The "Ohio State + Urban Meyer" rundown: Ready for all the rumors to just keep coming forever and ever? I sure am! (Ugh.)

ESPN's Bruce Feldman writes ($) that Meyer would be a "grand slam hire" for Ohio State in the wake of Jim Tressel's resignation:

In the book Meyer wrote in 2008, he said that Notre Dame, Ohio State and Michigan were the only coaching jobs that his wife had no power to veto. "If those ever call, then your majority now goes to a 49 percent veto," he recalled telling his wife in a conversation they had over a decade ago. Since then Meyer has won two national titles and energized three programs: Bowling Green, Utah and Florida.

If you've read Urban's Way (I haven't), enlighten me in the comments?

Longtime Florida scribe Franz Beard, now of 24/7 Sports, writes a far less succinct and less valuable take on Meyer and Ohio State, but ultimately concludes that Meyer to Ohio State is something like an old Bear Bryant situation:

When explaining to reporters and Texas A&M boosters why he was leaving after four years in which he had built the Aggie football program into one of the best in the nation, Bryant replied, "Mama’s calling."

Continue reading this post »

Chomping At Bits meant to leave home around 1 p.m. yesterday. It got into Gainesville at about 7:40. The drive is about three hours long. You do the math.

Blakely's transfer plans: The Alligator's Bryan Holt, still the only media member to get Mike Blakely to comment on his transfer plans, has Blakely citing the pro-style offense as his reason for transferring.

"I just didn’t like the pro-style offense once I saw what it was all about," Blakely said.

The former Manatee High standout said he is used to being "the back" on the field, and said he feels he can start immediately somewhere else instead of waiting in line at Florida.

I suspect some of us may quibble with not knowing what the pro-style system and Florida's depth chart may look like, but, hey, "These are 18-year-old kids" is a catch-all for a reason. And as for where Blakely's going, it seems like a junior college, then somewhere else in the SEC.

"[UF] told me I can’t transfer anywhere in the SEC, so I’m leaning toward going [to junior college] and then coming back to the SEC," Blakely said.

Meet Norm Roberts, Matt McCall: Scott Carter of GatorZone is profiling Florida basketball's new lieutenants this week, and both his piece tracing Norm Roberts' New York roots and he one following Matt McCall's road to a plum job at his alma mater are worth your five minutes. That second one also has some quotes from John Pelphrey on his return to Florida. It's hard to not like the staff Billy Donovan has.

Continue reading this post »

Chomping at Bits is mega-sized today, and is heading home for the weekend. Whee!

More Muschamp contract details: I still haven't seen Will Muschamp's contract, so I may have to work on that, but the Orlando Sentinel and Only Gators have plenty more details about Muschamp's deal. Only Gators, in particular, has a fantastic chart listing all of the football assistant coaches' salaries, as well, and I wish I could show it to the guy in one of my classes this semester who told me that Charlie Weis was making more than Muschamp. If only. Meanwhile, ESPN's SEC blog positions Muschamp as "stuck in the middle" of the SEC coaching fraternity when it comes to salaries, which strikes me as a rather stupid phrasing, given Muschamp's paucity of head coaching experience.

Reche Caldwell arrested for, well, you can guess: Is it any surprise at all that the only thing current or former Gators appear to be getting arrested for right now is holding that sticky icky? Reche Caldwell was arrested for marijuana possession and driving with a suspended/revoked license on Thursday in Hillsborough County, according to the Tampa Tribune. The most important detail of this story is that Reche Caldwell's real first name is Donald.

Continue reading this post »