The scabs on his knees and his torn up index finger are not football injuries for Florida safety Keanu Neal.
They don’t stem from the bone-crunching hit he leveled on running back Matt Jones on Thursday or any of the other big hits he’s laid so far during fall camps.
No, Neal’s bumps and bruises come from a scooter accident he had a few weeks before camp started with his girlfriend Kytra Hunter — a Florida gymnast on the back of it.
Motorized scooters have been one of Florida’s toughest opponents during coach Will Muschamp’s tenure in Gainesville.
All-American punter Kyle Christy fell off one leading to a shoulder injury that forced him to have surgery in the 2013 offseason.
Offensive lineman Tyler Moore crashed on his prior to the Georgia game in 2013, breaking his right arm and sidelining him for the rest of the season.
Defensive lineman Joey Ivie also cut his foot during a scooter accident prior to the Florida State game in 2013. The then-freshman was forced to sit out last season’s season finale because of it.
Muschamp won’t ban scooters from his players but does ask them to exercise caution when using them. Since Neal is alright, Muschamp was able to laugh the situation off.
“He had a tire slip this summer. His girlfriend is a gymnast. She’s a much better athlete than him.” Muschamp said. “Nothing happened to her. He messed his finger up. She’s a lot better athlete. I should have recruited her.”
Neal echoed Muschamp’s notion that Hunter was the better athlete on the scooter that day.
“She like landed and skid on her stomach and kicked her legs back or something like that and bounced up,” Neal said. “I like tumbled and hit every part of my body but she came out with a little scratch and I came out with every scratch that you can think of.”
When Neal’s on two legs instead of two wheels, he’s the best safety on the team according to Muschamp. He lends stability to a secondary group that — outside of Vernon Hargreaves — is full of inexperience, inconsistency and injury.
“It means a lot to me to be considered that,” Neal said. “But I’m not gonna think about that too much because you know it’s good to think of yourself as an underdog and continue to compete every single day.”
Neal says the attitude of competitiveness is one every team should have — the want to get better day in and day out should be a constant. He says this year his effort has gotten better as has play recognition — oftentimes for younger players the game tends to slow down in their second season.
The biggest thing he learned last year watching from the sideline was effort as well as the need to be technically sound.
He’s learned to “bring my arms” when getting ready to tackle someone, a technique that minimizes the launching of the body that has become such a taboo in football nationwide and something that referees are calling more and more thanks to college football’s targeting rule.
He has an image on Florida’s team, not of just another Gator that had a mishap on a mo-ped, but as a heavy hitter, maybe even following in the footsteps of Reggie Nelson, Major Wright and Matt Elam at the safety position.
“I just love to play football,” Neal said. “And I’m a physical player and you know the hits come and I’ve kinda built that image on the team as a hitter so that’s just what I do.”
