What do Florida football and Apollo 13 now have in common? | Whitley

Before we discuss whether animal sacrifice can help a team win, please note that Florida football fans finally got some good news over the weekend.

No, Billy Napier did not add a witch doctor to his army of analysts. He did hire New England Patriots special teams assistant Joe Houston. It’s easy to imagine how that phone conversation went.

Houston: “Hello.”

Napier: “Houston, we have a problem.”

With all due apologies to Mission Commander Tom Hanks, I can’t resist the Apollo 13 analogy. Those words became famous when Hanks calmly relayed them to Mission Control after an explosion on the spacecraft.

(Note to anyone who’s lost the plot: It wasn’t just a movie. It happened in real life, with Jim Lovell playing the part of Tom Hanks).

Fans have been not-so-calmly relaying similar cries about Florida’s special teams. The truth is the Gators haven’t been completely atrocious with things like punt and kickoff coverage the past two years.

They have been a comedy of errors when it comes to communication and cohesion. When you continually have problems with things like players wearing the same number, fans wonder if the coaching staff has the I.Q of a moon rock.

Enter Houston, sort of.

He won’t be an on-field coach at UF. He’ll work with “GameChanger Coordinator” Chris Couch, who is the supposed point man in UF’s Rubik’s Cube special teams system.

I’m not sure what Couch has done to keep his job, but it’s been glaringly obvious things needed to change. It took the collective ingenuity of the world’s greatest rocket scientists to save the Apollo 13 astronauts.

Surely Houston and the Gators can figure out how to put 11 special teams players on the field at the same time. If they can’t, the world’s greatest witch doctors won’t even be able to save the Napier mission.

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Stud of the Week: LSU and South Carolina’s women’s basketball teams.

Their game got more viewers (1.56 million average) than the Boston-Miami NBA game. Somewhere, Red Auerbach was choking on his victory cigar.

Dud of the Week: BYU, for making nine students take off T-shirts that spelled out “Horns Down” when Texas played the Cougars. Next, BYU will force students to undergo sensitivity training if they boo opposing teams. …

Dud II: Analytics. They said it was smart for Detroit to go for it twice on fourth down instead of kicking field goals in the NFC title game. Somebody forgot to tell the 49ers’ defense to play along with the numbers.

Dud III: Ageism. Hall of Fame coaches Bill Belichick (71) and Pete Carroll (72) can’t get jobs. Maybe the NFL should institute a Rooney Rule requiring teams to interview at least one candidate who has no idea who Nicki Minaj is. …

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore challenged Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly to a bet over Sunday’s KC-Baltimore game. Problem was, the Chiefs play in Kansas City, Missouri, which, at last check, is not in Kansas.

In related news, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis bet California Gov. Gavin Newsome a crate of oranges that the Gators will beat Texas this November. …

About that witch doctor, the Egyptian Football Association sacrificed a cow last week in hopes the country’s soccer team would beat Congo in the Africa Cup of Nations tournament. No dice.

Congo eliminated the Pharaohs 8-7 Sunday. The EFA defended its action, however, noting that ESPN Analytics says teams that sacrifice cows before games have a 3.8% greater chance of winning than teams that sacrifice chickens. …

Just who is Nicki Minaj? Asking for a friend. …

Georgia freshman guard Blue Cain was named after the school color of Duke, where his father attended. Here’s hoping UGA coach Mike White signs a guard whose father is a big Syracuse fan. Imagine Georgia having an “Orange and Blue” backcourt. …

A pair of dentures Winston Churchill wore during World War II are expected to fetch at least $10,000 at auction next week in London. That would still be $400,000 less than someone bid for the dentures Tom Brady wore in Tampa Bay’s 2021 Super Bowl win over Kansas City. …

Update: After learning he’d bet that the Gators will beat Texas, Florida legislators have filed to have Ron DeSantis removed from office due to mental unfitness. …

RIP Uga X. The retired Georgia mascot entered the eternal transfer portal last week at age 10. The way NIL and the portal are going, I half-expect Albert the Alligator to put on a red sweater and transfer to Georgia. …

I will sacrifice the entire herd at Yellowstone Ranch if CBS promises not to show Taylor Swift in a luxury suite at Super Bowl LVIII. ….

Cam Newton said last week that he would step out of retirement for only one NFL team – his hometown Falcons. Newton added he’d also return to play for Auburn if the Tigers gave him a cost of living raise over the $200,000 they paid him in 2010. …

If you’re too old to run a football team at 72, shouldn’t you be too old to run a country at 78-plus? Asking for millions of voting friends. ….

That’s about all the space we have for this week’s Whitley’s Believe It Or Not. Till next time, if you see Bill Belichick on the side of a road wearing a "Will Coach for Food" sign, please don't send him to Kansas City, Kansas.

David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidEWhitley

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Houston hopes to cure Florida football's special teams misery