Don't Step To Will Muschamp About His One-Play Suspensions

Florida's season opener on Saturday was suspended after just one play, a kickoff, after rain and lightning strikes made the game unplayable. Two days later, coach Will Muschamp announced that three suspended Gators would be reinstated. This struck some observers as funny. It was not funny to Muschamp.

On Monday, UF announced the reinstatement of WR Demarcus Robinson and DTs Darious Cummings and Jay-nard Bostwick. Robinson had also missed the final two games of last season; Cummings and Bostwick ended up missing just that single play of the Idaho "game." A game that won't be made up because it's Idaho-Florida.

Muschamp was criticized for going easy on his players. In today's teleconference, he blasted anyone who thinks justice wasn't served:

"It's not just about suspending players for games. There's a lot things that go into discipline. It's about altering and changing behavior, which we've done. I think our discipline speaks for itself and how we've handle our football team, OK?

"If it was about suspension, you'd never have an issue. Right? At the the end of the day, it's more than that. There's a lot of things that go into those situations, a lot more than people know. And it's very frustrating for me as a coach ... to have someone being critical and you don't even have all the information.

"At the end of the day, I make the decisions in this program, I handle the discipline in this program and it's been handled very well."

Muschamp's not wrong—a lot more than just missing game time makes up an effective punishment.

Still, I hope he can see the humor here. It is funny that Florida effectively suspended two players for 10 seconds. It is really funny that those two Gators missed a grand total of one special-teams play that they wouldn't have been in for anyway. It is legitimately hilarious that they were held out from a game that was declared a no-contest and may as well never have occurred.

And funnier than all that: anyone who thinks there is a meaningful competitive difference between suspending players for a single play vs. Idaho than for an entire game vs. Idaho.

[ Orlando Sentinel]