There is an old baseball player you’ve heard of, despite him not being a hall of famer. He’s been dead for 61 years. He had a career batting average of .281 across 15 seasons. He won consecutive American League home run titles in the dead-ball era, smashing 12 dingers in 1916 and a whole nine of them in 1917. He did a World Series starting at first base for the 1923 New York Yankees though, batting cleanup behind Babe Ruth.
You know his name, but not for any of that stuff. You know Wally Pipp because he missed a game with a headache, giving up his job to Lou Gehrig for the day. Gehrig, having pinch hit in the prior game, then played the second of his 2,130-game appearance streak. Pipp would leave the Yankees after the season, having never gotten the job back.
I was not alive a century ago, so I don’t know exactly when getting Pipp’d became a verb for a player being passed up for a starting job due to injury. It’s an only somewhat accurate shorthand anyway. Pipp was more than a dozen years into his MLB career, and he’d started the ’25 season off slowly like many on the team. He wasn’t the first Yankee to be benched that season. Gehrig had been called up briefly to the majors in each of the prior two seasons, but 1925 was his first one with significant actions in the majors. The Iron Horse was just beginning to gallop, while Pipp was entering his twilight.
It’s less of a just-so story when framed with the context, but Pipp remains synonymous with a guy losing a starting job due to an injury. Pipp’s story became entangled with the 2026 Florida Gators after Aaron Philo couldn’t go against Texas, leaving a spot open for Tramell Jones to lead the team to victory in Austin.
Philo officially has not been Pipp’d just yet. The Georgia native is reportedly going to get the start against UGA.
Jones’s success, mostly in the second half, against the Longhorns ignited a two-week debate about who should start. The case for Philo is largely that he was the starter to begin with for a reason, given his command of Buster Faulker’s offense. The case for Jones is that he has more zip on his throws and appears to be a bit quicker on the ground, traits that can be useful against a tough defense like those of Texas and UGA. He also rebounded from a rough start to make some good plays in Austin, whereas Philo never experienced a similar resurgence against Missouri or South Carolina.
One of the other arguments for Philo is that he wasn’t the problem against the Tigers and Gamecocks. That’s true as far as it goes, though he had a couple of turnovers against Carolina that finally were something other than a pass ricocheting off of a receiver’s hands. Probably nothing was going to turn around things against Mizzou, given how everyone on the Gators appeared to struggle mightily, and there was nothing either Philo or Jones was going to do to tackle LaNorris Sellers or cover Nyck Harbor.
These last two paragraphs drive home the real Rorschach test: on one hand, Jones made a real difference against Texas in a way Philo didn’t against Missouri or South Carolina. Philo certainly didn’t lose those games for Florida, but he didn’t go out and win them for UF either. On the other hand, Jones didn’t truly win it against the Longhorns either, even if he was a key contributor with plays like his fourth down strike to Dallas Wilson shortly before halftime and his third down run to seal it late. It was an ensemble effort. But on the third hand, that ensemble effort factor means Jones’s contributions against Texas wouldn’t have seemed so big if the Gator offensive line and defense played in Austin like they did against Mizzou and Carolina.
It’s entirely possible that there wasn’t much of a choice to be made behind center against the Bulldogs. Neither signal caller is completely healthy right now, and Jon Sumrall hasn’t been all that forthcoming about that fact. For as much credit as he’s gotten for being a straight shooter, he plays just as many games with injury reports as most coaches do.
To wit, he revealed in his Monday press appearance that Jones had “bumps and bruises” after getting his first substantial playing time against Texas. That certainly makes sense. Football players take hits that make them sore for many days after, and everyone’s joints take a lot of abuse no matter what you’re doing on the field.
However by Wednesday, bumps and bruises turned into Jones being questionable on the injury report. Lest you get any direction from that, though, Philo was also listed as questionable.
It does seem a little silly from the outside. The two players are similar enough that it doesn’t matter a whole lot for game preparation purposes. This is not a question of whether Leak or Tebow is starting. And if there was some kind of significant gap in how well the two perform, we would’ve seen it by now. Jones has some edges over Philo with his physical traits, but they’re not so wide as to overcome Philo’s three years’ worth of experience playing for Faulkner versus Jones’s one.
The Gators did beat Texas with Jones, but they also lit up Auburn and Ole Miss with Philo. I’m reasonably convinced it matters more whether Vernell Brown III plays than who is taking the snaps. In any event, this decision about quarterback is the biggest in-season one yet for Sumrall, and the outcome of his first big rivalry matchup is riding on it.
