Florida
Florida football: Chargers assistant Will Harris set to be hired as next Gators defensive backs coach | OnlyGators.com: Florida Gators news, analysis, schedules and scores
Image Credit: Anna Carrington, UAA
Two weeks after Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier’s move to fire a pair of defensive assistants was made public, Florida has finally been able to fill one of those vacancies. The Gators are expected to bring aboard San Diego Chargers assistant secondary coach Will Harris to lead their defensive backs at some point following the team’s Sunday game against the Denver Broncos, OnlyGators.com has learned from a source close to the situation.
Harris has not yet finalized a deal with Florida, but an agreement is expected to be consummated in the next day or two. Gators defensive backs — both those on the roster and those being recruited by the program — have been informed that Harris is the choice with many expecting to hear from him early next week.
Harris was in his first season with the Chargers after serving as a defensive coordinator and secondary coach at Georgia Southern in 2022. That year, the Eagles had one of the worst defenses in the FBS, though their roster and talent level was a significant reason why. Harris spent the prior four seasons coaching defensive backs at Washington where his units ranked among the best in the Pac-12.
In fact, during the 2021 season, Washington allowed just 1,720 yards passing and six touchdowns through the air — both fewest in the nation — while grabbing 10 interceptions. His Huskies secondary units included first-round NFL Draft choice Trent McDuffie and second-round pick Kyler Gordon among multiple All-Pac-12 first- and second-team selections.
“This game is all about relationships. I think one of the biggest things that I did and I learned as I went [through college football] was to connect with our guys no matter what. It doesn’t matter, the more you can connect with your guys, that’s when you build that love and trust and you guys run through walls for one another,” Harris said during an interview after being hired by the Chargers this offseason.
“Another thing our sport has gotten away from, especially in college, is not building confidence within the guys. I’m all about building confidence. Some guys say, ‘Break them down, build them up’. Well, I’m always building confidence in my guys because I believe confidence is cash.”
The former USC star (2005-09), who has a professional relationship with Snoop Dogg stemming from his days in Southern California, had brief stints in the NFL and CFL before moving into coaching. Harris worked his way up through the profession with stops at Northwestern Oklahoma (2013), Humboldt State (2014), Dixie State (2015) and San Jose State (2016-17) before he landed at Washington.
Harris replaces former secondary coach Corey Raymond, the most notable assistant hired as part of Napier’s initial coaching staff who was long known as a star recruiter at LSU.
Florida still must hire a defensive line coach after firing co-defensive coordinator Sean Spencer two weeks ago. It was expected that the Gators would also make changes to their offense and special teams staff, though no further movement has occurred at this point.
Harris’ candidacy for the position was first reported by 247Sports’ Jacob Rudner.
Florida
3 most underrated signees in Florida State football's 2025 class
Florida State football had an embarrassing 2024 campaign where it finished with a 2-10 record. This is not the expectation of what the Seminoles are all about.
Head football coach Mike Norvell understood the urgency as he could not allow the program to snowball into a laughing stock after a productive 13-1 season in 2023. Norvell was heading into a pivotal sixth season with his job on the line.
As a result, he went out and hired a ton of new coaches on his staff, including Gus Malzahn, Tim Harris Jr., Herb Hand, Tony White, Terrance Knighton, and Evan Cooper. This was uncharted territory for Norvell since he had never had to fire multiple coaches like that.
Nonetheless, we were wondering how the Seminoles’ 2025 recruiting class would play out with new coaches as well as the struggling year in 2024.
The recruiting class did well, and it finished with the 20th-best in the 247Sports Composite rankings (prospects can still sign in February). In this article, I want to highlight three of the most underrated signees from Florida State’s 2025 recruiting class.
Florida
U.S. Amateur runner-up Noah Kent is transferring to Florida
Noah Kent is heading home.
The 2024 U.S. Amateur runner-up is transferring to Florida, he announced Saturday. The sophomore at Iowa, whose hometown is Naples, Florida, entered the transfer portal earlier this month, and he made his decision to join coach J.C. Deacon and the 2023 national champions come next fall.
Because of NCAA rules, Kent won’t be eligible to compete for Florida until the 2025-26 season, but he can finish his sophomore year with the Hawkeyes. This fall, he placed in the top 13 all four tournaments, his best finish being a T-5 at the Fighting Irish Classic.
And, of course, he has a tee time at Augusta National Golf Club in the spring.
Kent will essentially be the fourth member of Florida’s 2025 signing class, which ranked second in the country on signing day. He’ll join a talented roster that includes Parker Bell, Mathew Kress and Jack Turner, though with new NCAA roster limits coming, there’s bound to be some unprecedented roster turnover in college golf before the start of the 2025-26 season.
Florida
State Your Case: Do Panthers or Lightning own state of Florida? | NHL.com
There are two NHL teams in Florida: the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
They are separated by about 250 miles and have been fierce rivals since the Panthers joined the NHL for the 1993-94 season. The Lightning joined the League a season earlier.
Florida (21-11-2) and Tampa Bay (18-10-2) meet for the first time this season at Amalie Arena in Tampa on Sunday (5 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, CRIPPS, SN, TVAS).
The teams have played each other 157 times in the regular season; the Panthers have gone 77-51-19, and the Lightning are 70-64-13. There have been 10 ties.
For years, the rivalry was a parochial affair, deeply important to hockey fans in the state but under the radar nationally. Lately, though, Florida supremacy has often meant NHL supremacy.
The Panthers are the reigning Stanley Cup champions and defeated the Lightning in five games in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference First Round last season to start that title march. They reached the Stanley Cup Final two seasons ago, going on a miracle run before losing to the Vegas Golden Knights. The season before that, they won the Presidents’ Trophy with an NHL-best 122 points but lost to the Lightning in a second-round sweep, marking the second straight time that their noisy neighbors ended their season.
The Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 2020 and 2021 before reaching a third straight Final in 2022, losing to the Colorado Avalanche. Tampa Bay won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2018-19.
This season, each team is on course for another appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and has a point percentage of better than .600.
So which team has the merits to claim bragging rights in this all-Florida showdown as the rivals face off for the first time this season? That’s the question debated by NHL.com senior writers Amalie Benjamin and Dan Rosen in the latest installment of State Your Case.
Benjamin: Let’s lay out what the Lightning have accomplished in their 32-season history: They’ve won the Stanley Cup three times, becoming the first team from Florida to win it when they took the championship in 2004. But that doesn’t come close to what they’ve accomplished during the past 11 seasons, starting in 2013-14, when they became a powerhouse. They’ve been to the Stanley Cup Playoffs 10 times in those 11 seasons, making the Stanley Cup Final in a whopping four of them. Let me repeat that: Four trips to the Cup Final in the past 11 seasons, winning twice, in 2020 and 2021. And if that’s not enough, they made two more trips to the Eastern Conference Final, in 2016 and 2018. Forget Florida’s team. They’re the team of the past decade in the entire NHL.
Rosen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what have you done for me lately? Florida’s team fluctuates. It was the Lightning. It is the Panthers. They’ve got the Stanley Cup. They went to the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row. Sure, a few years ago, this wasn’t even a debate. Florida’s team, the Panthers? Please. No shot. Even the top executives with the Panthers would tell you that. But things change. With success come the riches. Just think about the past three seasons for the Panthers: Presidents’ Trophy winners in 2021-22, Stanley Cup Final in 2022-23, Stanley Cup champions in 2023-24. The Lightning lost in the 2022 Cup Final, lost in the first round in six games the next season and lost in the first round in five games to the Panthers last season. Florida’s team is Florida.
Benjamin: OK, sure, you have a point. Florida has done pretty darn well lately. But let’s see how history will judge the state of Florida and its hockey teams. Hall of Famers? The Lightning have got ’em. Though Steven Stamkos has moved on to the Nashville Predators, the Hall of Fame is going to come calling, and the forward will go in as a member of the Lightning. Add in coach Jon Cooper, forward Nikita Kucherov, defenseman Victor Hedman and goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, and you’re talking at least five future Hall of Famers on a single team. That’s not just good, that’s historically good. It’s a group whose names are synonymous with winning, with the Stanley Cup, with the state of Florida. That’s powerful. That says the Lightning win this debate, no question.
Rosen: I have a question. Is Aleksander Barkov not paving his way to the Hall of Fame? Is Sergei Bobrovsky, with a Stanley Cup ring, 400-plus wins and two Vezina Trophy wins as the NHL’s best goalie, not a lock for the Hall of Fame? Is Paul Maurice, who could finish his career with at least the second-most coaching wins of all time, along with his Stanley Cup ring, not also a lock for the Hall of Fame? In the way-too-early department, could Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart be future Hall of Famers? I lied. That’s four questions. But you get the point. You brought up the Hall of Fame and I countered. That’s why the Lightning do not win this debate without question. Could they win it? Yes, certainly, if we were having this debate in 2023. It’s almost 2025. It’s a different world. It’s the Panthers’ world, at least in Florida. The Lightning are just living in it. At least the sun is still shining on them too.
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