The Florida Gators are hiring Chip Kelly, maybe. They’re also maybe not.
Florida players tweet thinking-face emojis in unison right as Chip Kelly rumors swirl
It’s either a well-coordinated trolling attempt or a sign that something’s happening. You decide which.
I’m not sure which it is, though rumors flew all Sunday that the Gators are closing in on the former Oregon head football coach to fill the same job in Gainesville.
Then, around 8 p.m. ET, a bunch of Gators started to tweet, as flagged by 247Sports’ Thomas Goldkamp:
Those are all “thinking face” emojis. That’s a versatile type of emoji. You can use it for deep thought during problem-solving exercises, or you can use it to ironically suggest that someone’s said something stupid that needs to be pondered in full. Personally, I use the thinking face to indicate general oddity.
I choose not to believe that more than a dozen teammates would tweet the exact same suspense-inducing emoji at the same time by sheer coincidence. There are also some Florida recruits using the emoji, like blue-chip, class of 2018 QB Matt Corral:
Also going on throughout Sunday:
Sleuths figured out Florida’s administration had been in New Hampshire, where Kelly lives:
And earlier in the day, Kelly had joked on ESPN about the whole situation:
Also, shortly before the surge of emojis:
The source of that:
Landing Kelly would be an extra big deal for Florida, though UCLA’s likely in on the race as well.
Florida’s fan base is intoxicated by offense, almost to a fault. To blame are people like Steve Spurrier, Danny Wuerffel, Tim Tebow, and Urban Meyer. When Florida has won, it has been with an offensive identity. Ask Will Muschamp and Jim McElwain what happens when you lose on top of doing so in as ugly a way possible.
Spurrier piloted the program to an Orange Bowl berth in 1966 as a quarterback. He won the Heisman and led the team to a 9-2 record (the second time in the program’s history the Gators had won that many games). There wasn’t much more success until the violation-ravaged late 1980s gave way to Spurrier’s return in 1990. From there, Florida torched scoreboards en route to one national title and six SEC titles. He was a vanguard of the forward pass in the SEC.
When Urban Meyer came to town in 2005, he brought his own ingenuity in the form of a modern spread. Behind a motivational-speaking, battering-ram QB, the Gators again asserted national prominence, with offense as the star. Florida won two more championships with Tebow, one with him starting.
Defenders Wilber Marshall and Jack Youngblood are in the school’s ring of honor, but don’t resonate like the signal callers, three of whom have statues outside of Florida’s stadium.
If you want to follow Goldkamp’s helpful list of UF players for more emojis, it’s here:
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