That said, claiming the top step on the Olympic medal podium is no longer a given for U.S. swimmers.

Nine days of thrilling competition at La Defense Arena wrapped up Sunday night with the Americans barely pulling out the lead in the gold medal standings thanks to a victory in the last race.

The U.S. finished with just eight golds, its fewest since the 1988 Seoul Games and one ahead of its biggest rival, Australia.

More notably, the rest of the world totaled more victories (20) than the United States and Australia combined, the first time that’s happened since the 1996 Atlanta Games.

The Americans will certainly be intent on improving their performance heading into the home games at Los Angeles in 2028, when swimming will have in its largest, most spectacular setting yet — a temporary pool inside SoFi Stadium with a capacity for some 38,000 fans.

Still, with more and more international swimmers getting their training in the U.S. — and prominent American coaches such as Bob Bowman spreading their knowledge to other countries — a more diverse list of gold medalists is likely to be the norm going forward.

“This sport is growing and I can’t help but feel like we’ve been a part of that,” American gold medalist Bobby Finke said. “It’s something we should take home and be proud of.”

Two of the biggest swimming stars in Paris, France’s Léon Marchand and Canada’s Summer McIntosh, train in the U.S. but won a bevy of medals for their home countries.

Marchand, who captured four individual golds as well as a relay bronze, is coached by Bowman, best known as the guy who guided Michael Phelps throughout his record-setting career. It was a bit strange to see Bowman in a France shirt, working on the coaching staff of Marchand’s nation.

After a break to savor his Olympic triumph, Marchand will return to the U.S. to continue his work with Bowman, who now heads the swimming program at the University of Texas.

“Look at Bob Bowman. He doesn’t care if you’re from the USA or whatever,” said Shane Ryan, an American-born swimmer who competes for Ireland. “He just wants to coach the fastest swimmers at all times.”

McIntosh trains with a team in Sarasota, Florida, where she honed the form that produced three individual gold medals — the most ever by a Canadian athlete — and a silver.

“I think competition is great,” said longtime American stalwart Ryan Murphy, who trains with several international athletes at Cal-Berkeley including Spain’s Hugo González. “He’s pushed me a lot. There’s plenty of days where he’s right next to me and helping me get better.”

Murphy said it’s only natural in today’s information-driven world that more nations are rising up to challenge the U.S.

“People will take a video of what they’re doing in practice and put it up on social media right away,” he said. “The learning curve is so quick around the world. That’s a big reason why there’s so many talented athletes across the world now.”

The U.S. certainly has its shining moments in Paris.

Katie Ledecky won two more golds, moving her into a tie for second place among all athletes on the career list with nine. She also joined Phelps as the only swimmers to win the same event at four straight Summer Games with her victory in the 800-meter freestyle.

The women’s team produced several more stars, including Torri Huske (three golds, two silvers), Gretchen Walsh (two golds, two silvers) and Regan Smith (two golds, three silvers).

But there were plenty of disappointments, particular on the men’s side.

Caeleb Dressel, a big star at the Tokyo Games with five gold medals, finished sixth in the 50 freestyle and didn’t even qualify for the final of the 100 butterfly.

Murphy settled for a bronze in the 100 backstroke and, like Dressel, failed to qualify for the final of his other individual event, the 200 back.

In all, the American men produced only two gold medals, and they didn’t pick up an individual victory until Finke’s world record in the 1,500 freestyle on the final night.

“You always want to be better,” said Anthony Nesty, head coach of the men’s team. “Yes, we want our athletes to win gold medals, but the other teams have great athletes as well. We have to go back, all the coaches in the U.S., get back on it and hopefully four years from now we have a better result. From the men, for sure.”

The depth of the American team remains its biggest strength. Even with four of its most prominent stars — Dressel, Murphy, Lilly King and Simone Manuel — managing only one individual medal (Murphy’s bronze in the 100 back), the U.S. easily led the overall medals table with 28.

Three of the four world records set at the meet came from the Americans, two of them in relays.

“Whether our athletes won a gold medal or failed to make a semifinal or whatever it might be,” said U.S. women’s coach Todd DeSorbo, “you’ve got to learn from it, go back home and be better.”

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Was all that toil since the last Olympics — all the work on the practice track and in the weight room in the name of finding a centimeter here or a millisecond there — really going to be worth all the trouble?

Ten seconds passed, then 20. Then, nearly 30. And then, the answer popped up.

Yes, Lyles is the 100-meter champion at the Paris Olympics. The World’s Fastest Man.

Just not by very much.

The American showman edged out Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson on Sunday by five-thousandths of a second — that’s .005 of one tick of the clock — in a race for the ages.

The final tally in this one: Lyles 9.784 seconds, Thompson 9.789.

The new champion said that before he left for Paris, one of his physio guys ensured him this race would be a squeaker.

“He said, ‘This is how close first and second are going to be,’” Lyles said as he pinched his thumb and his forefinger together so they were almost touching. “I can’t believe how right he was.”

For perspective, the blink of an eye takes, on average, .1 second. That was 20 times longer than the gap between first and second.

It was so close, that when the sprinters crossed the line and the word “Photo” popped up next to the names of Lyles, Thompson and five others in the eight-man field, Lyles walked over to the Jamaican and said “I think you got the Olympics dog.”

Thompson, who raced three lanes to the left of Lyles and had no clue where he was on the track, wasn’t convinced.

“I was, ‘Wow, I’m not even sure, because it was that close,’” the Jamaican said.

Time would tell. It always does. When Lyles’ name came up first, he snatched his name tag off the front of his bib and held it to the sky. Moments later, he shouted at the TV camera: “America, I told you I got this!”

The first four racers were separated by less than .03. The top seven all finished within .09 of each other.

America’s Fred Kerley came in third at 9.81. “That’s probably one of the most beautiful races I’ve been in,” he said.

In the photo finish, Kerley’s orange shoe crossed the line before anyone, or anything. But it’s the chest breaking the barrier that counts. Lyles’ chest crossed first.

This was the closest 1-2 finish in the 100 since at least Moscow in 1980 — or maybe even ever.

Back then, Britain’s Allan Wells narrowly beat Silvio Leonard in an era when the electronic timers didn’t go into the thousandths of a second. The same was true in 1932, when Eddie Tolan won the Olympics’ first ever photo finish.

Lyles conceded that during the excruciating wait, he was pretty sure he had dipped his chest just a tad too soon. Dipping, it turns out, is one of the few things he doesn’t work on over and over again at his training track in Florida.

“But I would say I have a decent history with dipping,” he said, recalling races he won in high school and as a junior.

The 9.784 marked a new personal best for Lyles and made him the first American champion in the marquee race at the Olympics since Justin Gatlin in 2004.

Lyles is hoping to go even bigger than that, and maybe take this sport back to a day when it was Carl Lewis and Edwin Moses lighting up the track — a must-see affair, the likes of which Lyles headlined in front of around 80,000 on a warm night at the Stade de France.

The mission started after Lyles settled for a bronze medal in Tokyo in his favorite — and then, only — sprint, the 200. Those COVID-impacted Games were a terrible experience for Lyles. He rededicated himself to bettering his mental health, but also looked for a new mission — the 100 meters and, with it, a chance at track immortality.

The practice was tough for a sprinter never known as a great starter, but he stuck with it. When he won the world championships last year, then backed it up by winning the 200, his goal for Paris was very much in sight.

But when he came into the Olympic final having finished second in both his qualifying races and staring across at one sprinter who had run faster than him this year — Thompson — and another who had beaten him twice this year — Jamaica’s Oblique Seville — he knew this would be no coronation.

Thompson added another roadblock when, during the introduction, he let out a primal scream, the likes of which Lyles has been unleashing in some of his biggest races.

“I thought ‘Man, that’s my thing, that’s crazy,’” Lyles said.

Lyles galloped and leapt about 20 yards down the track before returning to the starting line, where the runners waited some three minutes for the gun to finally sound.

It was worth the wait.

Now, the question that could be debated for years is: What was the difference in this one?

Could it have been Lyles’ closing speed and that lean into the line that he thought was mistimed?

Was it his ability to stay in reach of everyone among this straight line of sprinters over the first 60 meters — a skill he’s been working on in tedious practice after practice since he took on the shorter sprint?

The answer: all that and more.

“Everyone in the field came out knowing they could win this race,” Lyles said.

It took 9.784 seconds, then about 30 seconds more, for the scoreboard to flash the name of the man who actually did.

“Seeing that name, I was like ‘Oh my gosh, there it is!’” Lyles said.

Gold (and bronze) for Ukrainian high jumpers
Yaroslava Mahuchikh won Olympic gold in the high jump for her war-torn country of Ukraine and, as a bonus, had company. Her teammate Iryna Gerashchenko won the bronze and the teammates hopped, skipped and jumped around the track parading their blue-and-yellow flags in a heartfelt celebration.

Mahuchikh needed fewer tries to clear the winning height of 2 meters than Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers, and so, added the sport’s biggest prize of all — Olympic gold — to her world championship and world record.

Kerr vs Ingebrigtsen is a go for heated men’s 1,500
The best rivalry in track will culminate Tuesday when reigning world champion Josh Kerr of Britain takes on defending Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway.

They squared off in Sunday’s semifinal, too, and Ingebrigtsen edged out the Brit, looking over to him twice as they surged down the homestretch, to win a race that felt like it meant more than it should have in 3:32.38.

“They should be expecting one of the most vicious and hardest 1,500s the sport’s seen in a very long time,” Kerr said.

Did Ingebrigtsen agree?

“Depends who you ask, maybe,” he said. “I mean, racing is what you want it to be.”

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Although the results of Napier’s make-or-break moves won’t be evident for months, defensive end Justus Boone was ready to show the effects at Florida’s annual media day Tuesday.

“If I take this shirt off, I’m ripped up,” Boone said.

Boone and the Gators will wait for their season opener against in-state rival Miami on Aug. 31 at the Swamp to unveil whatever progress they’ve made heading into Napier’s third season in Gainesville.

This is much is clear: Napier didn’t hesitate to retool every floundering aspect of his program following Florida’s third consecutive losing season, the last two under his watch. Napier is 11-14 in two years in Gainesville, a stint that includes consecutive losses to Kentucky and a 1-7 mark against rivals Georgia, Florida State, LSU and Tennessee.

Napier fired two defensive assistants two days after a season-ending loss to the Seminoles in November and then essentially benched 30-year-old defensive coordinator Austin Armstrong, special teams coordinator Chris Couch and strength coach Mark Hocke in the weeks that followed. All three remain on staff but no longer in charge of anything.

Veteran coach Ron Roberts is now running the defense. Former NFL assistant Joe Houston is directing special teams. And Tyler Miles is heading the strength program. Napier also retooled the nutrition side and promoted Russ Callaway to co-offensive coordinator.

The importance of those moves was evident when Napier brought Roberts, Houston, Miles and Callaway to media day.

“We’ve got to go execute our formula,” Napier said. “We haven’t quite done that in all parts of our team.”

Roberts is tasked with fixing a unit that allowed 38.2 points a game in five consecutive losses to end the season. The Gators managed just 22 sacks — their fewest since 2013 — and three interceptions en route to missing a bowl for just the third time since 1990.

Houston is assigned with eliminating a variety of special teams gaffes that have plagued the program, culminating with botching a late-game situation against Arkansas in which the field goal unit ran onto the field while the offense was lining up to spike the ball.

The illegal substitution penalty that followed resulted in a 5-yard loss and seemed to be the difference in Trey Smack missing a 44-yard field goal with seconds left. The game went into overtime, and Florida lost 39-36.

Houston installed a “launch pad” on the sideline to help moving forward. The mat has a circle for each special teamer to stand in. It should prevent the Gators from lining up with too many or too few players.

“It’s essentially a sideline huddle,” Houston said.

Miles’ impact is already being felt. The Gators have 62 players topping 20 mph in sprints and 45 guys lifting more than 300 pounds in the weight room, dramatic improvements from the previous two years.

“Finish is a word that’d been used quite a bit this summer,” said Napier, whose team dropped close games to Arkansas, Missouri and FSU in November. “I think how we train just might be the difference.”

Although Napier will continue to call plays, he’s giving Callaway more input and responsibility. Callaway’s approach is straightforward and simple: get the ball in the hands of your best players, most notably sophomore receiver Eugene Wilson III.

Wilson will be as important to Florida’s offense as anyone, including returning quarterback Graham Mertz, senior running back Montrell Johnson and highly touted dual-threat quarterback DJ Lagway.

All four opened training camp Tuesday by checking into an on-campus dorm, a drastic change from last year’s posh hotel.

“We’re trying to create an old-school feel to training camp where they appreciate when they move back into that nice apartment here in a couple of weeks,” Napier said.

Maybe, just maybe, old-school results might follow. The Gators were picked to finish 12th in the 16-team Southeastern Conference, a prediction that quickly found its way back to Florida’s locker room.

“We’re not worried about trying to prove anybody wrong,” Boone said. “We’re just looking to prove ourselves right. We just want all our work to not go in vain.”

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The county voted 5-2 to approve spending about $312.5 million for its share of the ballpark costs from revenue generated by a bed tax that can only be spent on tourist-related and economic development expenses. The St. Petersburg City Council approved spending $417.5 million for the stadium earlier this month.

The $1.3 billion ballpark will guarantee the team stays put for at least 30 years. It’s part of a broader $6.5 billion redevelopment project that supporters say would transform an 86-acre (34-hectare) tract in the city’s downtown, with plans in the coming years for a Black history museum, affordable housing, a hotel, green space, entertainment venues, and office and retail space. There’s the promise of thousands of jobs as well.

“This is so much more than a baseball stadium. It is poised to become, if we do it right, a world-class tourist destination,” said Commissioner Janet Long. “It’s more than about the baseball stadium. It’s a transformational, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,”

The linchpin of the project is the planned roofed stadium, scheduled to open for the 2028 season. It caps years of uncertainty about the Rays’ future, including possible moves across the bay to Tampa, or to Nashville, Tennessee, or even to split home games between St. Petersburg and Montreal, an idea Major League Baseball rejected.

The rest of the project would mainly be funded by a partnership between the Rays and the Houston-based Hines global development company. It will take decades to complete.

The site, where the Rays’ domed, tilted Tropicana Field and its expansive parking lots now sit, was once a thriving Black community displaced by construction of the ballpark and an interstate highway. St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch says one of his priorities is to right some of those past wrongs in what is known as the Historic Gas Plant District.

The Rays typically draw among the lowest attendance in MLB, even though the team has made the playoffs five years in a row. This year, the Rays have a 54-52 record, placing them fourth in the American League East division.

The ballpark plan is part of a wave of construction or renovation projects at sports venues across the country, including the Milwaukee Brewers, Buffalo Bills, Tennessee Titans, Jacksonville Jaguars and the Oakland Athletics, who are planning to relocate to Las Vegas. Like the Rays proposal, all the projects come with millions of dollars in public funding that usually draws opposition.

A citizen group called No Home Run and other organizations opposed the deal, with the conservative/libertarian Americans for Prosperity contending the track record for other publicly financed sports stadiums is not encouraging.

County Commissioner Chris Latvala said he’s a huge baseball fan and recounted many fond memories of following the Rays, but he still voted against the project.

“I want professional baseball to stay here, I want the Rays to stay here, but at what price?” he said. “This will be a $1 billion publicly funded subsidy to a billionaire. I’m not willing to put my name on that.”

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The Miami Dolphins’ fifth-year quarterback will no longer need to worry about his future with the club after he signed a four-year extension on Sunday. The deal will pay Tagovailoa an average of $53.1 million per year beginning next season. He also received a $42 million signing bonus.

“Now that all of this is done and this is behind us, we know that heavy is the crown,” Tagovailoa said. “Whoever is wearing that, right now, I’m the highest-paid employee in this office. I’ve to get my —whatever — together. I’ve got to get that right and moving the guys in the direction that we need to go.”

The deal ended months of negotiations and questions about whether the Dolphins would make a long-term investment in Tagovailoa.

After being the fifth overall selection in the 2020 draft, Tagovailoa has experienced peaks and valleys. As a result, Dolphins management took longer to entrust Tagovailoa with an extension than Cincinnati did with Joe Burrow or the Los Angeles Chargers with Justin Herbert. Those two QBs were picked along with Tagovailoa in the first round of the 2020 draft.

“There are just so many semantics and hoops that you have to go through to get something like that done, especially maneuvering other contracts around,” Tagovailoa said. “I’m happy that we got this thing done. It’s unbelievable.”

Dolphins fans were allowed to attend workouts for the first time in the 2024 training camp schedule on Sunday, and Tagovailoa greeted them with the catchphrase “Show me the money” from the 1996 movie “Jerry Maguire.”

“Somebody told me that I wouldn’t say it,” Tagovailoa said.

Tagovailoa overcame a difficult 2022 season, when a concussion sidelined him for four regular-season games and a playoff loss against Buffalo. He played in all 17 games last season and threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards.

“My perspective — happy but also expected it to get done,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said. “And now that it’s done it’s about moving forward because maybe it’s a handshake and a smile but not a celebration. It’s a cool point for the organization to move forward and moving forward we are.”

McDaniel has been arguably Tagovailoa’s biggest supporter since he took over in 2022. With McDaniel devising schemes to suit Tagovailoa’s skills, the Dolphins averaged a league-best 401 yards per game last season.

“Word gets around quick and I don’t think he knows that I know. I’ve been told from several birdies that are here in the facility that are upstairs as well that he went to bat for me,” Tagovailoa said of McDaniel’s role in the negotiations.

The Tagovailoa-McDaniel link will face added scrutiny, especially with the Dolphins’ lengthy drought of postseason success. Miami’s wild-card round loss at Kansas City last season extended to 24 years its gap between playoff wins.

“We haven’t won the games we wanted to win, deep into the playoffs and win the games that matter,” Tagovailoa said. “I could have had the worst passing rating and threw for a thousand yards but if we were in those games and winning those games, and we got to go and win the championship, I would trade all of that.”

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Now they’ve had cycles in back-to-back seasons.

Xavier Edwards became the second Marlins player ever to hit for the cycle Sunday, as the rookie went 4 for 4 and hit his first career homer in a 6-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers. He also scored both of Miami’s runs.

The Marlins had their inaugural season in 1993, but they’d never had anyone hit for the cycle until Luis Arráez accomplished the feat while going 4 of 5 with two runs and a pair of RBIs in an 8-4 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on April 11, 2023.

“Really cool,” Edwards said. “Luis’s the first and we were teammates for about a month-and-a-half last year. He’s a great guy, great hitter and great teammate. Really cool to kind of follow in his footsteps and get the second one. Definitely very excited and very grateful for it.”

Edwards homered off Tobias Myers on the opening pitch of the game, drew a leadoff walk from Myers in the third, doubled against Jakob Junis in the fifth and tripled off Joel Payamps in the seventh. The triple also was the first of his career.

The homer came on Edwards’ 185th career plate appearance. Myers noted after the game that he and Edwards were former teammates in the Tampa Bay Rays’ farm system.

“He’s a good hitter,” Myers said. “He’s always been that way. He’s always been able to put the ball in play and make things happen.”

By the time Edwards stepped to the plate for the final time with two outs in the ninth inning, he was well aware how close he was to a milestone. But he also had to face Devin Williams, a two-time NL reliever of the year.

“I hate to say it, but I’d been thinking about it for the last two innings or so leading up to my last at-bat,” Edwards said. “I was like, ‘All right, I think I’ve got a single left.’ For whatever reason, I was thinking in my head two-strike hit. I don’t know why. Probably not that great a thought process.”

Sure enough, Edwards hit a grounder to the left side on a 1-2 changeup, sprinted down the line and reached first just ahead of the throw from shortstop Willy Adames.

“I would have been pretty upset with myself if I didn’t hit a single,” Edwards said. “I usually spray a lot of singles, so I would have been pretty upset about not getting a single. So I’m really glad I did.”

Edwards was the eighth player ever to hit for the cycle during the same game in which he hit his first career homer, according to Elias Sports Bureau. The last person to do that was San Francisco’s Fred Lewis in 2007.

This has been an eventful year for Edwards, who missed the start of the season with a foot infection but has come on strong lately. Edwards, who turns 25 on Aug. 9, is batting .379 with a .462 on-base percentage in 25 games.

“He’s hitting the ball the other way, he’s walking, hitting it with power,” Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. “His at-bats are super calm at the plate. There’s not much swing-and-miss. He’s never off balance. He puts it in play. You like him in leverage spots. He’s been outstanding. I’ve said it before: I knew he was going to be pretty good at the plate. I didn’t know he was going to be this good at the plate.”

Even so, Edwards seemed an unlikely candidate to hit for the cycle because he hadn’t hit a homer before Sunday. Only 10 of his 56 career hits have gone for extra bases.

He managed to leave Milwaukee with a couple of souvenir baseballs — one for his first career homer and one for completing the cycle. Edwards had a good idea where he planned to send them.

“Once we’re back home, I’ll probably give them to my mom,” Edwards said. “She’ll take good care of them and put them somewhere safe.”

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Gauff, the reigning U.S. Open champion, is set to make her Olympic debut at the Paris Games and will be the first tennis athlete to carry the U.S. flag. She and James were chosen by Team USA athletes.

“I mean, for me, the Olympics is a top priority. I would say equal to the Grand Slams. I wouldn’t put it above or below, just because I’ve never played before. This is my first time,” Gauff said earlier this year. “Obviously, I always want to do well, try to get a medal.”

Gauff and James, the 39-year-old leading scorer in NBA history, both compete in sports that are outside the traditional Olympic world and get attention year-round, not just every four years.

The 20-year-old Gauff made the American team for the Tokyo Games three years ago as a teenager but had to sit out those Olympics because she tested positive for COVID-19 right before she was supposed to fly to Japan.

Now Gauff, who is based in Florida, is a Grand Slam title winner in singles and doubles. She won her first major championship in New York in September, defeating Aryna Sabalenka in the singles final of the U.S. Open, then added her first Grand Slam doubles trophy at the French Open this June alongside Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic.

The same clay courts at Roland Garros used for the French Open will be where matches are going to be held for the Paris Olympics. The draw to set the brackets is Thursday, and play begins on Saturday.

Gauff is seeded No. 2 in singles, matching her current WTA ranking behind No. 1 Iga Swiatek of Poland, and will be among the medal favorites.

She and her usual doubles partner, Jessica Pegula, are seeded No. 1 in women’s doubles. It’s possible Gauff could also be entered in mixed doubles, but those pairings have not been announced yet.

“I’m not putting too much pressure on it, because I really want to fully indulge in the experience,” Gauff said about her Olympics debut. “Hopefully I can have the experience multiple times in my lifetime, (but) I’ll treat it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

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Napier arrived at SEC Media Days on the hottest seat in a conference where they say “it just means more” — so that makes it the hottest seat in the country.

The vibes around the Gators seem ominous. Napier sounds hopeful.

“I love our team, and I really like what I’ve observed,” he said Wednesday. “I just think we’ve got for the first time, we’ve got some stability. The roster’s kind of stabilized. I think we’ve got competitive depth. There’s credible leadership at the players level.”

Napier was hired away from Louisiana-Lafayette after the 2021 season, taking over after Dan Mullen was fired. He stepped into a program that had fallen behind in recruiting, facilities and staffing.

Napier hired an army of analysts and staffers with a plan to try to stack the type of high school recruiting classes that would give the Gators a team that looked more like Georgia’s and Alabama’s.

It’s not that Napier ignored the transfer portal, but a methodical rebuild can be a tough sell at a program that has won three national titles.

The Gators went 6-7 with future first-round NFL draft pick Anthony Richardson at quarterback in Napier’s first season. In need of signs of progress in 2023 to ease the worries of fans and lock in blue-chip recruits, the Gators regressed to 5-7.

Now, Year 3 seems as if it’s a make-or-break season for Napier, who rattles off stats that support optimism.

Florida returns 17 starters and players who have made 463 career starts and 41,000 career snaps. The Gators rank fourth in the SEC in returning production.

Still, all the talk about Florida this offseason has focused on a daunting schedule and Napier’s job status.

“It was just chatter,” quarterback Graham Mertz said. “That’s exactly what it is. I mean for us, and I always tell my guys every day, I’m like, look we can focus on what people are saying or we can focus on what we are doing.”

Napier sees a team ready to win the close games that have gotten away from the Gators the past two years (six losses by a single possession).

“Change doesn’t happen overnight,” Napier said. “Timing is everything, right? When we took the job, what we inherited, the work that needed to be done. I think we’re on schedule to some degree.”

Year 3 is often when things click for a new coach. See, Texas under Steve Sarkisian.

“I think part of it was our culture. We had to keep building our culture, the things that were important to us, and that takes time. It takes time to learn the schemes,” Sarkisian said. “You bring in coaches and you have an idea of what you want to run, and that’s nothing against a previous staff, but maybe they didn’t recruit the types of players that fit what we wanted to be and how we wanted to play. So that takes time, too.”

The Longhorns had a losing record in his first season, then made a jump to 8-5 in 2022 that left many Texas fans still not quite convinced Sark was the guy.

“But as you continue to stay committed to who you are and you stay committed to your course of action, you stay committed to what you believe in, over time you start to reap the benefits of that,” Sarkisian said.

Last season removed the doubt. The Longhorns made the College Football Playoff for the first time, Sarkisian received a four-year contract extension and Texas will enter this season — its first in the SEC — with national title hopes.

Nobody is expecting the Gators to take that big of a leap, especially against that schedule. The Gators’ schedule looks as if it was made by someone who is holding a grudge against Napier.

Florida faces Georgia, Texas and Mississippi, all top-10 teams in last season’s final AP Top 25. Add Tennessee, LSU and Texas A&M in conference. And then there’s the nonconference schedule of Miami, UCF and Florida State.

“Look, the great thing about our schedule, we don’t have to take this on as individuals. We get to do this as a team,” Napier said.

Napier talks about how the rapidly changing landscape of college football (NIL and loosened transfer rules) made rebuilding Florida more challenging.

“So we already knew that we had a ton of work to do at Florida,” he said. “You know, from a facility standpoint, infrastructure, modernizing the approach, best practices, improving personnel. But then here we go. The evolution of the game starts while we’re doing that.”

Napier said he thinks a lot about how he would have done some things differently and is trying to adapt on the fly.

Napier is Florida’s fourth coach since Urban Meyer left after the 2010 season, having won two national titles.

The instability hasn’t helped Florida get back to championship level. Whether Napier can show enough progress in Year 3 to earn patience will define the Gators’ season.

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The $6.5 billion project, supporters say, would transform an 86-acre (34-hectare) tract in the city’s downtown, with plans in the coming years for a Black history museum, affordable housing, a hotel, green space, entertainment venues and office and retail space. There’s the promise of thousands of jobs as well.

The site, where the Rays’ domed Tropicana Field and its expansive parking lots now sit, was once a thriving Black community driven out by construction of the ballpark and an interstate highway. A priority for St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch is to right some of those past wrongs in what is known as the Historic Gas Plant District.

“The city’s never done anything of this scope,” said Welch, the city’s first Black mayor with family ties to the old neighborhood. “It’s a momentous day for our city and county.”

The linchpin of the project is the planned $1.3 billion ballpark with 30,000 seats, scheduled to open for the 2028 season. That would cap years of uncertainty about the Rays’ future, including possible moves across the bay to Tampa, or to Nashville, Tennessee, or even to split home games between St. Petersburg and Montreal, an idea MLB rejected.

Stu Sternberg, the Rays’ principal owner, said approval of the project — which also requires a vote by the Pinellas County Commission — will settle the question of the team’s future location.

“We want to be here. We want to be here to stay,” Sternberg said Wednesday.

The Rays typically draw among the lowest attendance in MLB, even though the team has made the playoffs five years in a row. This year, at this week’s All-Star break, the Rays have a 48-48 record, placing them fourth in the American League East division.

The financing plan calls for the city to spend about $417.5 million, including $287.5 million for the ballpark itself and $130 million in infrastructure for the larger redevelopment project that would include such things as sewage, traffic signals and roads. The city envisions no new or increased taxes.

Pinellas County, meanwhile, would spend about $312.5 million for its share of the ballpark costs. Officials say the county money will come from a bed tax largely funded by visitors that can be spent only on tourist-related and economic development expenses. The county commission is tentatively set to vote on the plan July 30.

The rest of the project would mainly be funded by the Rays and the Houston-based Hines development company.

The ballpark plan is part of a wave of construction or renovation projects at sports venues across the country, including the Milwaukee Brewers, Buffalo Bills, Tennessee Titans and the Oakland Athletics, who are planning to relocate to Las Vegas. Like the Rays proposal, all of the projects come with millions of dollars in public funding that usually draws opposition.

Although the city’s business and political leadership is mostly behind the deal, there are detractors. Council member Richie Floyd said there are many more ways the ballpark money could be spent to meet numerous community needs.

“It still represents one of the largest stadium subsidies in MLB history. That’s the core of my concern,” Floyd said.

A citizen group called “No Home Run” and other organizations oppose the deal, with the conservative/libertarian Americans for Prosperity contending the track record for other publicly financed sports stadiums is not encouraging.

“The economic benefits promised by proponents of publicly funded sports stadiums fail to materialize time and time again,” said Skylar Zander, the group’s state director. “Studies have consistently shown that the return on investment for such projects is questionable at best, with most of the economic gains flowing to private interests rather than the general public.”

Still, the project seems to have momentum on its side. For former residents and descendants of the Gas Plant District neighborhood, it can’t come soon enough.

“All over this country our history is erased. That will not happen here,” said Gwendolyn Reese, president of the African American Heritage Association of St. Petersburg. “Our voices will be heard. And not just heard, but valued.”

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Williams was 84.

He started his NBA career as business manager of the Philadelphia 76ers in 1968, then had stints as general manager of the Chicago Bulls, the Atlanta Hawks and the 76ers — helping the franchise win a title in 1983.

A few years later, Williams was involved in starting the process of bringing an NBA team to Orlando. The league’s board of governors granted an expansion franchise in 1987, and the team began play in 1989.

“Pat Williams simply brought magic to Orlando,” Orlando Magic Chairman Dan DeVos and CEO Alex Martins said in a joint statement. “His accomplishments will always be remembered. Armed with his ever-present optimism and unparalleled energy, he was an incredible visionary who helped transform the world of sports in multiple ways. From bringing the Magic to Orlando, to transforming sports marketing and promotions, he was always ahead of the curve.”

Williams was general manager in Orlando until being promoted to senior vice president in 1996.

“There is no Orlando Magic without Pat Williams,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “He was held in such high regard in the basketball community and was a friend to me and so many generations of league executives. Pat was never at a loss for a kind and supportive word and always brought great enthusiasm, energy and optimism to everything he did throughout his more than 50 years in the NBA.”

Williams never stopped pushing for more in Orlando, either. He spoke often about why he wanted the city to get a Major League Soccer franchise — it eventually did — and as recently as last year was trying to build momentum to get a Major League Baseball franchise for the city.

Baseball was Williams’ first sporting love; he played at Wake Forest. He signed to play in the Philadelphia Phillies’ organization in 1962, eventually became a front-office worker and was picked as the Minor League Executive of the Year by The Sporting News in 1967.

“He loved a challenge, and when he moved our family to Orlando to start the Magic, he was full of excitement and energy that he displayed every day,” Williams’ family said in a statement. “We all grew up believing that anything is possible because of his unwavering enthusiasm for what he was passionate about. Those who attended the games, saw him at church, or spent time with him in a social setting know that he never met a stranger and was always quick with an encouraging word. He was a giver, a teacher, the ultimate cheerleader, and he was a lifelong learner.”

Williams was at one time dubbed the “king of the lottery,” given the success he and the Magic had when he showed up to represent the club at the league’s annual event to determine who gets the No. 1 pick. Lottery luck fell his way three times, bringing Shaquille O’Neal, Anfernee Hardaway and Dwight Howard to Orlando.

“Most teams have a trophy case full of trophies,” Williams once told The Associated Press. “We have a case filled with pingpong balls.”

His cases were filled with far more than those. Williams wrote more than 100 books and ran 58 marathons, including the Boston Marathon 13 times. Diagnosed in February 2011 with multiple myeloma, Williams became an avid fundraiser for cancer research and sat on several boards for cancer groups throughout the country, including the Board of Directors for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.

He also was a motivational speaker, often addressing groups on leadership, teamwork and the mental challenge that comes after being diagnosed with cancer, among other topics.

Williams was born in Philadelphia and raised in Wilmington, Delaware. He was honored with the John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He was a member of the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame, the Magic’s Hall of Fame as a member of its inaugural class in 2014, and the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame.

“The Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award was created to honor colleagues like Pat Williams who has demonstrated his enthusiasm for the game of basketball throughout his life,” Hall of Fame Chairman Jerry Colangelo said in 2012, when Williams received the honor. “Pat not only made a major impact in his leadership to cultivate the Chicago Bulls organization and bring a championship to the Philadelphia 76ers, but he invested an incredible effort to bring a successful franchise to Central Florida.”

Williams is survived by his wife Ruth and 19 children, 14 of whom they adopted from foreign countries.

“Pat forever changed the sports landscape in Orlando,” DeVos and Martins said. “He shined a light on what those who called Orlando home already knew — that Central Florida was a fabulous place to live, work and play. We all owe him a debt of gratitude and he will certainly be missed, but never forgotten.”

Memorial arrangements were still pending as of Wednesday night, the Magic said.
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