Alligator Alley

just my opinion ok ?
but Joe should have been in the top 10.
and I think collinsworth should have been also

Nope not good enough but freaking chas henry is on there

There were 33 spots available so some exceptional players got left off like Neal Anderson, David Galloway and Kerwin Bell for example.

For four years, yes. Chas Henry was a weapon for four years. Teams averaged 1.8 yards per punt return against him. During the 2008 national championship season only five punts were returned. Nearly half of his punts were downed inside the 20. He flipped the field and gave Florida a tremendous field position advantage for four years.

Kearse had one terrific sophomore season in 1997, then essentially spent 1998 trying to avoid getting hurt because he was (a) taking money under the table from Tank Black and (b) he getting ready for the draft.

Yes. The Tank Black scandal implicated Kearse, Mike Peterson and a couple other Gators for taking money.

A lot of folks who weren't around at that time are unaware of what happened in 1998. The Gators had what could have been a national championship team. They lost to Tennessee in Knoxville, a game they gave away with fumbles. Ed Chester went down with a devastating knee injury that cost him a long, prosperous pro career. Players were taking money from Tank Black and there were some on the team that thought Kearse and others spent the last half of the season trying to avoid an injury like the one Ed Chester suffered than to play their hardest on the field. It was a highly dysfunctional season.

Plus, we lost two games, one to each of the teams that played for the National Championship. And, we should have won them both. We fumbled away the Tennessee game and missed a FG in overtime. We lost the FSU game because a defensive back couldn't hold onto an easy pick 6 and the ball went the other way for an FSU touchdown.

We've had a little luck along the way to each of our 3 national titles, but we've had some bad luck too.

I think it is a good list but in the end I think Markese Pouncey will be top ten and his brother top 20. They had as much to do with our success in those years as Tebow/Harvin/Spikes.

Great post. A punter in the top 50 is a joke. I hope we have one of our juniors Playing "clearly to not get hurt" this upcoming season, if it also gets him SEC Defensive player of the year.

I don't have a beef with Kearse. I think he should have been forgiven long ago and brought back into the Gator family a lot sooner than he did. Numerous players and others who were around that 1998 team believe that once Ed Chester got hurt, several guys who were taking money under the table from Tank Black slacked off because they were afraid of getting hurt. Kearse didn't have an insurance policy like Ed Chester did, not did Johnny Rutledge, nor did Mike Peterson.

If you don't want to believe me, then talk to some of the coaches that were around in 1998 and they'll say the same thing. As good as Kearse was, they will tell you that he didn't play as hard as he could in the last half of the season after the Chester injury. The Tank Black scandal hurt the program in a lot of ways and that's just one of them.

As for putting Chas Henry in the top 33 players, look at what he did for four years and how he changed field position consistently by flipping the field. Charlie Strong told me twice that Henry made his defenses so much better because he constantly altered field position and by pinning teams consistently inside the 20, made them know if they got a three-and-out that the offense would get the ball back somewhere around midfield because Brandon James would be running the punts back. Urban Meyer on more than one occasion called Henry "a weapon" because he hit the ball so high that nobody could get a decent runback.

Yes he was a freak. The Auburn game in 1998 was a game that he was nothing short of remarkable.

But, was he better than Wilber? No. Spikes? No. Alonzo Johnson or Ralph Ortega or David Little? I'd say the answer to that was again no. I saw all of these guys play most of the games they played in their Florida careers. All five of those guys never had an off year and all you have to do is check their productivity -- all of them had more than 300 tackles in their careers.

And, I'll say this ... Kearse was a far better pro than he ever was a college player.

Dale Van Sickel is one of my relatives ... and no doubt a great player. I never saw him play and only met him a couple of times at family reunions. I'm old ... just not that old.

It's hard to leave Huey and Collinsworth off ... but look at the guys that are there. Lots of great players and All-Americans. If I had done a top 50 or 66 they would have made the list.