It’s early June, mid-baseball season, the pro basketball and hockey playoffs are on and the Buccaneers have just held a looksee for new head coach Raheem Morris.

The Outback top dogs are holding their own Outback Bowl Summer Splash at Saddlebrook.

The college football magazines hit the news stands this week, so, it also looks like time to wonder along with the collegians of coaches, like Steve Spurrier and Ron Zook of Illinois, along with the rest of that great college football fraternity.

Both Spurrier and Zook, once at Florida, are figured as contenders in their conferences. The Sporting News College Football Preview is out and Spurrier made it to No. 3 in the SEC East, and Zook to fourth. Ohio State is the chosen winner.

The Gators, with returning Tim Tebow favored to win a second Heisman Trophy, are favored to take lead Florida to a back-to-back national championship. Florida will have a shot at a third national title in an era. Can you old Gators out there belive it?

“We have a chance to do something very special,’’ said Brandon Spikes, Florida linebacker who like Tebow stuck around for this final season and final possible college successes.

They asked professional football to wait a year.

The national champion Gators return most all of the starters on both sides of the ball, 22 of 24 including special teams. Unheard of. Lost was versatile wideout Percy Harvin but returning are Aaron Hernandez, Deonte Thompson, Riley Cooper, Carl Moore and David Nelson. Coach Urban Meyer isn’t hurting. Morever, well, one observer called the Gator schedule a cupcake one, but, all know SEC games are scheduled knowing a loss is always a possibility and Florida State is still on the schedule.

FSU, concerned because of an ongoing NCAA investigation,have given the Gators the worst memories. Florida State is picked to win the Atlantic Coast Conference. Florida’s so-designated by some cupcake schedule includes Georgia, LSU there, Kentucky, and, hey, Tennessee in the third game, after Charleston Southern and Troy, at The Swamp in Gainesville.

  That Tennessee game will pit new head coach Lane Kiffin, who did not heed the cautionary warning that words are like bullets, said in his first press conference, after beating the Gators he’d be singing Rocky Top all night long. He then said Gator Coach Urban Meyer violated a recruiting rule for which he had to apologize. He broke, the magazine reported, two more recruiting rules before insulting South Carolina by telling a Spurrier recruit “he’d be pumping gas like all the others recruits from that state who had gone to South Carolina.’’

Yipes. Monte’s son saying that?

Anyway, so it has gone with the Kiffin and Tennessee Saga after the Kiffin arrival. The Vol public relations folks have been busy. Plenty to clean up before the Kiffinmen open against Western Kentucky and then UCLA at home before heading to the Swamp.

Young Kiffin and bride lived in Tampa when they were but pups and working with the Bucs. Nice couple. We all want to take something said and recorded.  Sporting News picked the Vols fourth in the SEC in the year ahead, one behind Spurrier.

Sporting News selects the University of South Florida Bulls to finish third in the Big East, behind Pittsburgh and West Virginia. They wonder, well, “with the experience of Matt Grothe and linebacker George Selvie can they ever break through?”

The Bulls open this fall home to Wofford, away at Western Kentucky, home to Charleston Southern, then in Tallahassee for the true season-opener against the Seminoles. They will then be on their way—at FSU, Syracuse here, at Cincinnati, here to Pittsburgh and at West Virginal before Rutgers here. Miami, Louisville and Syracuse end a good season. It is a schedule that can truly establish the Bulls and Coach Jim Leavitt.

The trouble with all this is, it is only early June, but, it is the Outback Bowl celebration.