Welcome to the start of a brand new college football season. It’s essentially here now that the conference media days have come and gone and the Florida Gators and Miami Hurricanes have officially opened practices in preparation for the upcoming 2019 college football season.
Florida begins year two under head coach Dan Mullen and Miami opened up the Manny Diaz era of Hurricane football on Friday with the first practice for the program. The reason for the relatively early start to fall camp, which typically gets underway for most programs in August, is Florida and Mami are scheduled to play each other in Week 0 on August 24 in Orlando, Florida.
“I was so excited today just to be able to coach football, regardless of the role,” Diaz said on Friday. “It’s fun to actually have something to do and a practice to take part in.”
In an effort to reach out to fans, Miami opened the first practice of the summer up to fans, with a reported 1,000 fans coming out to check out the evening practice.
🗣B R O T H E R H O O D
— Florida Gators Football (@GatorsFB) July 26, 2019
✅ #GatorsCamp Practice #1
😤 #RelentlessEffort
🗣 #GRIND
📆 #GatorsFanDay — August 11 #GatorsTogether 🐊 #GatorStandard pic.twitter.com/kVkup4Kr58
Florida and Miami aren’t the only programs getting started in Week 0. Arizona will play at Hawaii later that same day. Both programs opened their fall practices on Friday as well. Arizona opened their first practice with the official renaming of the practice field after former Arizona head coach Dick Tomey.
“This is what we work all summer for,” Arizona cornerback Jace Whittaker said as the Wildcats got started. “So antsy, (on a scale of) one to 10, I was a 20. It just feels great to be playing football again.”
Welcome to the start of a new college football season. Let’s get going.