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Why Cord Sandberg’s baseball retirement could help Florida Gators football

The former Manatee High quarterback signed with Dan Mullen's Bulldogs in high school before choosing baseball.
 
Published July 5, 2018|Updated July 5, 2018

Cord Sandberg was in one of the Phillies' minor-league clubhouses in 2016 when former Mississippi State quarterback Dak Prescott was drafted by the Cowboys.

"All the guys in the clubhouse are like, 'Hey, wait a second, Cord, wasn't that supposed to be you?'" Sandberg said two years ago, when he was playing for the Clearwater Threshers. "I was like, 'It could have been.'"

Sandberg will get another shot at it — which could be the Gators' gain.

The former Manatee High star and 2013 Phillies draft pick announced Wednesday that he was retiring from baseball. After never making it past Double-A, he's going to pursue college football.

And that's where Florida comes in.

Sandberg, a former four-star football recruit, told the Reading Eagle that he has a scholarship offer from Auburn. UF and LSU are pursuing him as a preferred walk-on.

UF would make sense. Not only is he from the state, but he signed to play football for Mullen at Mississippi State before choosing baseball (and earning a $775,000 signing bonus). If he had chosen football, who knows what might have happened? Maybe he would have beaten out Prescott for the starting job. Or maybe he would have replaced him and started for Mullen's Bulldogs in 2016 or 2017.

I interviewed Sandberg two years ago for a project about the future of football in the concussion age. My theory was that more top multi-sport athletes like Sandberg would chose sports other than football because of the long-term risk of football-related head trauma. Sandberg said the longevity of a professional career in each sport played a role in his decision.

Cord Sandberg, seen here with the Clearwater Threshers in 2016, is going back to football. [ TIMES FILE ]

He was happy with his choice, even if he admitted to thinking about taking over for Prescott when he was in bed at night.

"I always think about what-ifs," Sandberg said then. "But it's obviously never, I wish I would have."

Clearly. That's why the 23-year-old told the Eagle that he has hardly touched a football since signing with the Phillies.

Sandberg will be rusty physically, but maybe not too rusty mentally. He said he spent his Saturdays in the fall watching college football, even as he was trying to make it to the majors.

"Some people don't like watching with me," Sandberg said then. "I have to rewind it to see, if it was a touchdown or a big run, I want to see how the play developed. Who messed up? Who busted coverage? What coverage were they in? Who was the quarterback reading on that play? It's kind of fun to break plays down and look at that…"

He'll have more up-close opportunities to break plays down soon — whether it's in Gainesville or elsewhere.