The Alligator Army Weekly Open Thread, Vol. Something: A quiet SEC Media Days?

We arrive at 2021 SEC Media Days with, I think, a lot less to talk about than in many years prior.

Florida’s representatives — coach Dan Mullen and defenders Zachary Carter and Ventrell Miller — have questions to answer, sure. Mullen’s going to be asked about Brenton Cox’s injury status, about Florida’s recruiting, about whether the Gators can call themselves an elite program if they faceplant against Alabama and Georgia this fall. Mullen’s going to be asked about retaining Todd Grantham, too, and Carter and Miller will need to put a smiling face on questions about how and why Florida’s defense will improve from what it was in 2020.

And everyone in attendance is going to be asked about the elephant in the room, the rising numbers of COVID-19 cases tied to the Delta variant that is sweeping the United States. The Gators come to Nashville with cases spiking to the thousands per day back home, and while it’s not clear how much more outreach their program — which turned its home stadium into a vaccination site and made sure to have multiple major figures publicly acknowledge getting the vaccine — can do, the specter of a pandemic that seems likely to linger into another season is going to be a topic of discussion no matter how tired everyone is of hearing about it and how tired every answer will be.

But I don’t expect Mullen to say anything particularly outrageous, nor do I think Carter and Miller, veteran leaders, are liable to make headlines with their tongues. This should be, at least for Florida, a low-key trip to Talk About Town.

And I’m okay with that. Are you?