David Jones

FLORIDA TODAY

GAINESVILLE - Kurt Roper knows what it's like on the other side of the field when Florida suffers a upset loss. He was on the Ole Miss staff in 2002 that knocked off the sixth-ranked Gators in Oxford, 17-14. Fans stormed the field and tore down a goal post and hauled it off to the Grove.

The Rebels actually won twice in a row against UF, along getting a 20-17 win in Gainesville in 2003.

"If you remember, we had a guy named Matt Greer who picked off two passes, returned one for a touchdown and one to the 1-yard line,'' Roper said. "And they scored 14, turned it over a few times. Long time ago.''

Roper spent some time with Mike Shanahan on Monday.

"First time I've met him,'' Roper said. "I actually played for coach Mike Heimerdinger, who has a background here. When I went to Rice I was a quarterback for about a week and then they moved me to defensive back. But he and Coach Heimerdinger worked together a long time. . . . But yeah, obviously Coach Shanahan has got a lot of Florida ties."

It's not unusual for Roper to be adjusting to a new location. His father was also a college coach.

"You know, I didn't think there was anything better,'' he said of growing up a coach's son. "That was my personality to it all. I thought I was the lucky guy in school that everybody thought 'wow, he gets to go out on the football field' or 'he gets to to go in the locker room after the game.' I just thought I was so fortunate and everybody was, whether they were or not, you felt like everybody was envious of that situation. Now the moving? I always thought that was just part of it. I didn't mind it.

"There were tougher moves than other moves when you got older, but we always knew we were moving when my dad would come home and say 'hey boys, we need to talk.' Well that was just we were moving, I don't even know why we're talking. So I enjoyed it. I got to live coast to coast, north to south and learned a lot and had friends all over the country. The one difference is everybody asked me where's home. The longest place I've ever lived is Oxford, Miss., because I coached there six years. And Durham, N.C., because I coached there six years. Those are the things, but I don't think I could have had a better childhood.''

What he learned from his dad?

"Intensity,'' Roper said. "My dad was a defensive football coach. He was a defensive coordinator. He was really a no nonsense guy. He'll be down here and everybody will get a chance to meet him. He's not the guy you're meeting. It's kind of like Bill Cosby said, it's a man trying to get into heaven now. He was really intense and tough to grow up around if things weren't necessarily going well all the time on the football field, but again, I had the perfect childhood. It was great. His intensity to the football field I think is probably what rubbed off on me the most.''

Roper's playing background includes being a high school quarterback.

"I was on a good team. We had good players. But it was such a different process at that time,'' he said. "You know, really I learned plays and we went out and ran plays and that was it. My first meeting in college was with Coach Heimerdinger. We'd go in and we're having a meeting the night before the first practice and he starts talking to me about defenses. And I never even thought about defenses. I'm sitting there going, 'Hey wait a second, what play are we running? Tell me the play.'

"And he's talking to me about how a defense is going to be manipulated by this formation and it's going to remove this guy. And I'm already looking out the window and I see the other guys going to eat dinner. I'm thinking what am I doing? You know what I mean? What's going on here? So I think I think it was all eye opening. I don't really know that I start getting a huge understanding of it until I really started coaching it and coach Cut (David Cutcliffe) started teaching me how to coach it.''

BATTLE CONTINUES: Roper said there's no decision between Treon Harris and Will Grier yet for the backup QB job and it sounds like it could change throughout the fall.

"It's fun to watch. I think those two guys are talented individuals, I think they're good people, so they understand how to compete and still be a good teammate. And that's not easy to do, but I enjoy being around them,'' he said.

Could he use two quarterbacks? Maybe.

"I have in the past. I think the biggest thing is to have a guy, a second quarterback, that can go play the game if something happens to the first one. But in the past, at Duke we had a guy that was capable of,'' Roper said. "You know really where it all started Sean Winfrey became our starting quarterback at Duke. Sean was obviously a heck of a quarterback; he's with the Falcons right now. But his skill wasn't running the football. It wasn't going to be zone read or quarterback powers or any of that, it wasn't really his skill. So we felt like those were good situations to bring in Brandon Connette at that time to get our numbers right in certain situations and run the football. So we felt like it was a package that we needed in low red, short yardage, that type stuff. And so it's just growing from there but it really got down to just taking advantage of strengths if that makes sense. So we'll use two if they earn the right but really it gets into how does it help us win.''

The timeline for a decision?

"It's obviously getting close to decision-making time, but I also think it's a fluid thing that can change at any time just because you don't know what's going to happen. So obviously we got to start on who's going to spend the time getting the two reps as much as possible. But you never know how it's going to be fluid throughout the year,'' Roper said.

LIKES LEAK: Chris Leak took over as receivers coach when Joker Phillips left the program amid a recruiting controversy.

"You know, I think he's done a really good job. I think the guys are working hard for him,'' Roper said. "I think they're getting better fundamentally on some of the things that he's working on with releases and things like that. So you see development in the group, and I think you see a group that goes to the field and work hard for their coach. And that's what you're looking for. But I think he's done a good job.''