ESPN College Football

Posted by ESPN.com's Chris Low

	Joe Murphy/Getty Images
	Tennessee freshman receiver Nu’Keese Richardson will be in for a rude reception on Saturday.

Tennessee freshman receiver Nu’Keese Richardson was at the center of all the controversy last February that has made Saturday’s grudge match at the Swamp one of those must-see games of the 2009 college football season.

He knows what kind of reception is coming.

“It’s not going to be a nice one, I know that,” said Richardson, who was committed to Florida for nine months before changing his mind and signing with the Vols. “That’s why you play the game. I don’t worry about the outsiders. I just try to do my job to the best of my ability.”

Richardson, a Pahokee, Fla., product, is part of a promising freshman class for the Vols. Their debut against Western Kentucky had everybody talking.

But last week in the 19-15 loss to UCLA, the Vols’ freshmen all but disappeared from the radar. Running back Bryce Brown had 34 yards on 11 carries, and that’s about it.

Now it’s onto their first road game and not just any venue, either. The Swamp has been known to rattle the knees of the most battle-tested juniors and seniors.

Throwing a bunch of freshmen out there can really get dicey.

Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin, though, said he won’t be hesitant to play his young guys, including putting Richardson back deep to return punts.

Fellow freshman David Oku has also been returning kickoffs for the Vols.

“You’ve got to have confidence in them, and they have to feel your confidence,” Kiffin said. “If you start pulling all your younger guys because you’re going into a hostile environment, I don’t know that that really shows you believe in your team.

“Are they going to be perfect? No, we’re going to try and make it perfect. But they need to play. We’re in our first year as a program, going into our third game. If you have a philosophy that you’re going to play your younger players that you know are eventually going to be great players, there’s going to be some pains in that.”

Kiffin can live with those pains and insists he won’t be scared to play his talent, no matter how young and inexperienced they are or what the storylines may be that particular week.

“You can’t just go back to the old-school theory and sit them on the bench and say they’re not ready because they’re too young and play all your older guys,” Kiffin said. “That’s not how we operate.”

It’s just that kind of thinking that sold Richardson on Kiffin and the Vols and pried him away from the defending national champion Gators, thus triggering a few comments from Kiffin at a certain recruiting breakfast back in February that are still ringing in the Gators' ears.

“His confidence level is beyond what you’d expect,” Richardson said of his head coach. “That’s one of the main things that I love about him.”

Posted by ESPN.com's Chris Low

	Dale Zanine/US Presswire
	Wideout Riley Cooper hasn't missed a beat for the Gators.

Riley Cooper doesn’t know what he would have done had the Texas Rangers told him "no" in August.

Florida coach Urban Meyer doesn’t know what the Gators would have done without Cooper.

“I’m just glad the cards played out right and that I’m here,” said Cooper, who’s been Florida’s leading receiver in the first two games with 10 catches for 187 yards and a touchdown.

Without Cooper, even with Florida’s wealth of talent, the Gators’ receiving corps would look pretty shaky right now.

“Thank God he came back,” Meyer said following Florida’s season-opening 62-3 rout of Charleston Southern. “We’re struggling right now if we don’t have Coop.”

How close was it?

Cooper doesn’t really want to know and neither does Meyer, for that matter.

After being selected by the Texas Rangers in the 25th round of June’s amateur baseball draft, Cooper requested that he be allowed to play his senior season of football at Florida before reporting to the minor leagues.

The Rangers offered him a reported $250,000 contract.

“That was the toughest part, the waiting,” Cooper said. “I told Texas that’s what I wanted to do, and they took a few weeks to get back to me. I was sitting there biting my nails and nervous about not knowing what was going to happen, if they would let me do it or not.”

When he got the answer he was hoping for, one of the first people he called was his roommate, Florida quarterback Tim Tebow.

“He didn’t put any pressure on me during the whole deal, but he’d call and tell me that he was praying for me,” Cooper said. “He knew how much I wanted it to work out.”

For a guy who went all spring and all summer and didn’t play any football, the 6-3, 215-pound Cooper certainly hasn’t looked rusty. He’s emerged as the Gators’ go-to receiver and is also one of their most physical blockers at the receiver position.

Go back and watch him help clear the way for Jeffery Demp’s touchdown last week while blocking without his helmet.

Surprisingly, despite playing baseball all offseason, Cooper said his timing on the football field came back pretty quickly when he joined the Gators for preseason practice in August.

“The big thing was getting back into shape,” Cooper said. “Baseball shape and football shape are completely different. So getting back into shape was the main thing. But running routes and some of the other things took a day or two, and I was right back into it.”

There’s still some uncertainty hovering over this Florida receiving corps heading into Saturday’s game against Tennessee. Cooper has been the one constant, which is why Meyer was so ecstatic to get him back.

In both the SEC Championship Game and BCS National Championship game last season, Cooper made key plays. He also has a nose for the end zone. Of his 40 career catches, 10 have gone for touchdowns.

“I knew with Percy (Harvin) and Louis (Murphy) leaving that I would have to play an expanded role,” Cooper said. “We’ve still got a lot of young guys at receiver. They have a bunch of talent, but some of those guys have to get in the playbook a little bit more and start getting after it.

“We don’t have a lot of depth. But the younger guys are doing a lot better with that stuff. They’re bringing their books home. They’re getting a lot better in practice and making plays. We definitely have more work to do. If I said we didn’t, I’d be lying to you.

“But we’re getting there.”

Posted by ESPN.com's Chris Low

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Call it the calm before the storm, one that’s been brewing ever since Lane Kiffin rode into the SEC nine months ago and took direct aim at the guy who’s won two of the last three BCS national championships.

That guy would be Florida’s Urban Meyer. And if you haven’t noticed, he doesn’t always play nice.

Meyer’s been known in the past to run up the score, maybe kick a late field goal, even call a few timeouts in the final seconds just to rub it in.

	Don McPeak-US PRESSWIRE
	Tennessee head coach Lane Kiffin has made this weekend's matchup with Florida personal.

But it’s debatable whether it’s ever been as personal for him as it will be Saturday when Kiffin leads his Tennessee team into the Swamp.

We’ve seen the clip ad nauseam this week of Kiffin chortling that he was looking forward to singing "Rocky Top" all night long after beating the Gators in the Swamp.

We’ve also seen the one where Kiffin makes his infamous cheating remark about Meyer.

It’s that last one that got him, the one the Florida players said makes this game personal. Of course, they said that back in March before they were muzzled.

“We’ve got a family bond here, and when somebody attacks somebody in your family like that, it’s on,” Florida cornerback Joe Haden said.

Added Florida center Maurkice Pouncey, “That’s OK, because they’ve got something coming.”

Again, that was back in the spring.

The buildup to the game this week has almost been dull unless you count Kiffin trying to paint the Gators as the second coming of the 1985 Chicago Bears.

Oh yeah, that and Tennessee president Jan Simek throwing Kiffin and the whole university under the bus.

It’s almost as if Kiffin is trying to squeeze that toothpaste back in the tube.

Doesn’t work that way, though.

He said what he said, and now it’s his players who must face the consequences.

Kiffin doesn’t agree that he put his players in a tough spot Saturday with some of the things he’s said. Granted, it’s not as though the Gators have taken it easy on the Vols the last few years. They won by 24 last season in Knoxville and by 39 two years ago in the Swamp.

In that game two years ago, Tim Tebow was still in the game late and still throwing the ball.

The Vols melted in the Swamp that day in one of the more embarrassing performances by a Tennessee team in recent memory.

Could it really be a lot worse than that beatdown two years ago?

We’re going to find out. One thing’s for sure: If the Gators can score 60, they will.

Nonetheless, Kiffin dismisses any role locker-room motivation might play in this game. The thing he’s most concerned about is the team the Gators will put on the field.

“I don’t know that that really works,” Kiffin said. “What works is when you recruit really good players and you coach really well, which they have, and when you have Tim Tebow and throw the ball to Percy Harvin and you hand it to Demps and Rainey.

“That makes motivation work really well, when you recruit great players on defense and coach them as well as Charlie Strong does. That’s how you haven’t given up a touchdown all year.”

Kiffin’s greatest challenge might not be so much what happens Saturday, but rather what happens after Saturday.

How do the Vols recover physically and mentally if it's indeed as ugly as everybody thinks it's going to be?

Moreover, how long will it take for Tennessee to close the obvious talent gap between the two teams?

“We know we’re going to get there. It takes some time,” Kiffin said. “Just like they hadn’t won two national championships in three years four years ago. They didn’t have the depth that they have. It takes a while to build that.

“We were here one month before signing day. We’ve had one signing class. We have to sign a class like we did last year and even better. If you do that for four years in a row, then you have a roster like they do.”

Kiffin has been hesitant to this point to mention a timetable for getting Tennessee’s program back among the elite in the SEC. But he threw out the three-year window Tuesday.

“We need to be rolling by Year 3,” he said.

Merely standing may be the safest goal for this Saturday.