Sports Shorts

* When kicker Roberto Aguayo was cut, his departure (and subsequent waiver signing by the Chicago Bears) left a lot of disappointment and second-guessing in its wake. What the Bucs paid in moving up to draft him with a number two pick last year will linger on. GM Jason Licht will always have a legacy asterisk. But the Bucs weren’t about to throw good money after bad and jeopardize a promising season with a crap-shoot kicking game. And, oh yeah, you know “Hard Knocks” was disappointed too. You knew they had been hoping to milk the kicker competition for a few more melodramatic weeks. But at least they had access to the awkward exit when Dirk Koetter and Licht broke the news to Aguayo.

* More than Vols-Gators. We now know that the University of Tennessee’s visit to Gainesville on Saturday, Sept. 16, may not be the only headline-gathering, boisterous-crowd event scheduled that week. That Tuesday, Sept. 12, could possibly feature white supremacist activist Richard Spencer speaking at an on-campus event. Spencer–yes, that Richard Spencer–was in the news last week for his role, and that of his supporters, in the violent protests in Charlottesville, Va.

Spencer would be speaking at an event organized by the National Policy Institute, an organization–not affiliated with UF–that is dedicated to the “heritage, identity and future of people of European descent in the U.S. and around the world.”

UF President Kent Fuchs says he finds such a presence on UF’s campus to be “deeply disturbing.” He also explained that legally UF could not discriminate against the NPI in considering its request.

Too bad obvious public safety concerns and common sense can’t carry the day.

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