Florida's greatest asset, Heisman dark horses, MJ medleys and more

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Linebacker Brandon Spikes and a dominant Florida defense could help the defending champion Gators run the table. Tim Larson/Icon SMI Stewart Mandel's Mailbag Submit a question or an opinion to Stewart. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Stewart Mandel on Twitter

Dear, glorious Mailbag readers:

I thank you for clicking here today, for not abandoning me in the wake of my five-month hiatus. (No, I was not hiding out in Argentina, so don't bother scrounging for any sordid e-mails.)

I won't bore you with too many details, but after 10 nearly uninterrupted years in the sports-media bubble, I decided to take some time away. While doing so, I wrote some humor essays about an array of non-sports topics, most of which you can read here; I became a full-fledged Lost addict (perhaps we can trade theories as to what happened after the flash); the girlfriend and I took a wonderful trip to Italy; and, for the first time since college, I sat back and enjoyed sporting events purely for fun.

One of the highlights: a trip to Las Vegas for opening weekend of the NCAA tournament. If you're a college basketball fan, and if you haven't already, YOU MUST DO THIS AT LEAST ONCE IN YOUR LIFE. For four straight days, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., I sat in an overflow ballroom at Planet Hollywood, surrounded by fans from around the country, watching every game on huge projection screens at the front of the room. As you may recall, on Friday night, both the Siena-Ohio State and Florida State-Wisconsin games simultaneously went into overtime. Every made or missed basket elicited roars from half the room and groans from the other. For me, it was cathartic, and it reminded me what I love most about my beat -- the drama.

With that, it's time to begin chronicling the impending drama of the 2009 college football season. Sometime during the past five months, I officially joined Twitter Nation, and look forward to incorporating tweets into my day-to-day coverage this season. So please, follow along (@slmandel).

Last week I sent out a tweet soliciting questions for this week's Mailbag -- and it worked better than I could have imagined. The 140-character limit forced people to write the kind of short, concise questions that best fit this column's format. While I promise not to do so regularly, this week's Mailbag is an (almost) all-Twitter edition. And it starts the same way last season ended: with Florida on top.

With that favorable schedule, will anybody beat Florida?
-- @akosnitzky

Nobody's unbeatable in college football anymore; but on paper, these Gators have as good a shot at running the table as any team in the last four years. Heading into the season, Florida reminds me very much of USC's 2005 squad (minus the "greatest team of all-time" nonsense) -- a defending BCS champ returning its Heisman-winning quarterback and a boatload of other stars, playing a schedule that, as of now, seems inordinately favorable (no Alabama or Ole Miss in conference play; Charleston Southern, Troy and FIU in nonconference).

If anything, Florida is probably better suited to repeat than were those Trojans because the Gators' strength is their defense. Amid all the hype over Matt Leinart/Reggie Bush/Dwayne Jarrett, et. al., the fact that USC had lost four All-Americas on defense was lost. Those Trojans wound up fielding the most mediocre defensive unit of their current run, one that took its lumps against Arizona State, Notre Dame and Fresno State before ultimately succumbing to Vince Young and Texas. In contrast, Florida's biggest question mark is how to replace all-everything threat Percy Harvin. That's no small feat, but fielding a dominant defense will considerably lessen that concern.

That said, 2009 mirrors 2005 for another reason: Texas lurks around the corner. Lest we forget, the Longhorns were a last-second Michael Crabtree miracle from playing for the national title themselves, and they, too, bring back a superstar quarterback (Colt McCoy) and a loaded two-deep. Texas may have a tougher in-season showdown (against Oklahoma) than any on Florida's schedule, but the Gators have a slightly tougher overall schedule with games against Georgia, LSU, Florida State and a potential SEC title-game foe. Texas' toughest nonconference game will be a trip to Wyoming.

If the 'Horns can get by the Sooners, they have just as good a shot at running the table as the Gators.

Given that all three Heisman finalists (Sam Bradford, Colt McCoy and Tim Tebow) came back, is there anyone else that might have a shot at winning this year?
-- @rmcmillon

That's an awfully accomplished trio for someone to try to usurp, but it's not an impossible prospect. For one thing, Tebow and Bradford will be competing not only against the other contenders, but also themselves. As we've seen in the past, voters hold reigning Heisman winners to almost unattainable standards. Tebow was a more complete player last year than he was the year before, but because he didn't score 51 touchdowns like he did during his 2007 trophy season, he finished third in Heisman voting. Realistically, Bradford isn't going to top last season's 4,464 passing yards or 48 TDs, mostly because Oklahoma's offense figures to be more balanced, and that could hurt him.

There will be plenty of other great players this fall, Cal RB Jahvid Best, Oklahoma State RB Kendall Hunter and WR Dez Bryant, Ole Miss QB Jevan Snead and Ohio State QB Terrelle Pryor chief among them. The best way for one of these guys to take home the bronze statue will be to lead his team to the national-title game -- and hope Bradford, McCoy and Tebow all fall short.

What will the NCAA do to prevent the huge amount of secondary recruiting violations?
-- @gacanefan

Secondary violations have always been fairly commonplace; it's just that they're now getting more media coverage due to both the unprecedented interest in recruiting and the aggressive approaches new coaches such as Lane Kiffin, Gene Chizik and Steve Sarkisian favor. With some of the things these guys have been doing -- be it Kiffin blurting out the name of a recruit on a radio show, Chizik orchestrating a "spontaneous" rolling of Toomer's Corner or Sarkisian blowing a fog machine while recruits ran out of the stadium tunnel -- you can tell they almost want to get caught. And why not? It's free publicity, there are no real repercussions and, most important, the antics impress recruits.

The NCAA isn't in any real hurry to "prevent" such crimes because they're just not that important. That's why they're deemed "secondary" violations and not "major" violations (i.e. paying a player or [apparently] giving away textbooks). Personally, I'd love to see the NCAA slice its rulebook by two-thirds and stop wasting both the schools' and the fans' time with these piddly violations. Washington isn't gaining any "unfair competitive advantage" by blowing a smoke machine. Meanwhile, devilish publicity-hound Kiffin has actually benefited from the fact that the media now report on almost anything involving the words "NCAA violation," even when the violation in question involves something completely trivial.