SIX BITS: Masters, Brissett, Booth, Tebow, PIT

1 » Only one of the two Florida Gators golfers competing in the 2013 Masters moved on to weekend play. After hitting an even 72 in the opening round on Thursday, Brian Gay shot a +2 (74) on Friday and is currently tied for 37th, three strokes above the cut line. Senior T.J. Vogel, who earned a spot in the major as an amateur event winner, was not as fortunate. He shot a +5 (77) on Thursday but was able to bring his score down with a +3 (75) on Friday. Vogel missed the cut by four strokes, ending his special weekend earlier than he would hoped. “I just had a good time,” he said Thursday after his first round. “This experience, I can’t even explain even in words. I’m just having such a great time playing in front of so many people and it’s just a really cool feeling when you know you hita great shot and you got people cheering for you. And I’m not used to that yet. It’s just really cool.”

2 » Former Florida QB Jacoby Brissett sounds more than slightly perturbed that he lost the starting job to Jeff Driskel last season. In a feature penned by Jeremy Fowler of CBSSports.com, Brissett indicates that he did not receive a fair shot to start for the Gators before throwing a barb at Driskel for his performance in the last game of the season. “It wasn’t right,” he said of the competition. “In the saying that God don’t like ugly, it came up to us in the Sugar Bowl when we couldn’t throw to save our life.” He then took a second shot at Driskel, basically questioning his former teammate’s work ethic while explaining why it was Brissett who should have started at Florida. “Just my competitiveness, I don’t think it was matched with that other guy,” he said. “The willingness to put in that extra work to win.”

Read four more Florida Gators news BITS…after the break!

3 » Former Gators swimmer Laura Booth, a 17-time All-American for Florida who helped the women’s program win a NCAA Championship and herself won two gold medals at the 1993 World University Games, has been diagnosed with acute leukemia and is in desperate need of blood donations. Those who wish to help neither need to live in Booth’s area (New Orleans, LA) nor possess her blood type. Any donation helps. For more information on how you can donate and assist in her recovery, click here.

4 » After being honored by state Governor Rick Scott as a Great Floridian on Friday, New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow hosted a charity event in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL ahead of his annual golf tournament. At the event, reporters asked Tebow about his offseason and future with his current team. Tebow responded that he plans to join team workouts on Monday and will sport a “great attitude” when he arrives. He also said that he does not have any designs on changing positions now or in the future, calling playing quarterback “my dream, [it] always will be.” As far as his future in New York goes: “It’s nothing I can control, and like I’ve said ever since I was at Nease High School, I really try not to worry about what I can’t control,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “Just try to have the best attitude, have the best effort, a great work ethic, and so far this offseason has been a lot of fun. Been my best yet.”

5 » Friday on NBC Sports Network‘s Pro Football Talk, former Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Mike Mularkey discussed what would have happened had Tebow actually been traded to the Jaguars instead of the Jets. “He’s really a hero in that city and there’s still fans today, still with [new general manager] David Caldwell saying ‘We’re not going to have him here,’ there’s still fans that want him there,” he explained. “[The attention] definitely was a concern because we were going to go with Blaine Gabbert. We were not going to go, based on his rookie year, that [Gabbert] was not a quarterback we believed was for the future. We felt like if Tim Tebow came in there – if the trade did not go through, it was going to be OK. We were going to find ways to get the ball to him, but we were going to go with Gabbert. It would have been a distraction. If Blaine would have failed early, it would’ve been a call to bring Tebow in and that’s not something you want for your football team – any kind of distraction.”

6 » Gators guard Kenny Boynton put together a much better showing in his second Portsmouth Invitational Tournament game, going 3-for-4 (2-for-2 from downtown) for 13 points with five assists, four rebounds and just one turnover as a starter in 27 minutes on Thursday. Florida G Mike Rosario did not have a game on Wednesday but did play in back-to-back contests on Thursday and Friday. Suffice to say, he disappointed. In the two games combined (both of which he started), Rosario finished 8-of-27 from the field and 0-of-3 from three, totaling 16 points in 59 minutes with seven dimes, eight boards and four turnovers. Rosario and Boynton play their last games on Saturday at 12 p.m. and 2 p.m., respectively.