Florida announced Thursday that it’s sticking with Billy Napier as its coach, a guy who’s 15-18 overall and has won eight SEC games into his third season.
Good.
The Gators – yeah, you, the fans who demand national championships the second a coach arrives on campus – have a great coach in Napier who was dealt a bad hand, didn’t play it well early on but has this program headed in the proper direction.
And college football can change so fast.
Florida State went undefeated in the regular season a year ago only to completely collapse this season. Miami went 12-13 in coach Mario Cristobal’s first two seasons only to have the rebuild kick into high gear this season as the Hurricanes are 9-0, ranked fourth overall and clearly in the national title hunt.
I’m not making excuses for Napier. He’s paid gobs of money to win football games. He has been a disappointment up to this point.
The start of this season was ugly – and embarrassing – as Miami came in and crushed the Gators in The Swamp and then the Hurricanes went over to the recruit section and told them to come to The U.
Florida then lost to Texas A&M, lost to Tennessee and lost to Georgia to get to 4-4 with an absolutely brutal schedule to close out the regular season. This probably won’t be a late-season turnaround, feel-good story in Gainesville.
Which is why it was savvy for athletics director Scott Stricklin to release his statement Thursday as the Gators close the season with games against Texas, LSU, Ole Miss and Florida State.
But at least now there’s clarity.
There was a reason why Stricklin only interviewed Napier for the Florida job. An understudy of both Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban – national champions who run very specific styles of a program – Napier is whip-smart and organized.
He’s a willing recruiter and that only works if the players know you have job security. He’s likable – maybe too nice for the cutthroat SEC where other coaches would sell their mothers down the river for a win or to land a commitment.
There is a long list of coaches – even at Florida – who didn’t work out. Will Muschamp didn’t last four seasons. Jim McElwain didn’t last three. Dan Mullen would tell you he’s the smartest guy in any room he’s ever stepped in but he didn’t last four in Gainesville.
But Frank Beamer didn’t have a winning season until his third at Virginia Tech. Bill McCartney had three-straight losing seasons including a 1-10 campaign in Year 3 before turning Colorado into a national power. Two of Mike Krzyzewski’s first three seasons were losing ones at Duke and then he never had another one after that.
Napier is not without blame. Coming in and asking prospects to send workout videos of themselves was ridiculous and totally bush league. The handling of the Jaden Rashada situation was absurd and could still have consequences.
But Napier has learned under the best this game has to offer. Florida is not there yet but is there truly a bad loss this season. Miami is damn good. Texas A&M has been a huge surprise in coach Mike Elko’s first year. The Tennessee game was blown but the Gators battled into overtime. And the Georgia game was tied into the final minutes when the Bulldogs finally pulled away.
Let Napier work. Let him get busy in the portal and in high school recruiting. Florida fans need to fight the urge that is inherent in Gainesville of having no patience unless the coach is Urban Meyer or Steve Spurrier.
I was told when things went south earlier this season that the money was being put together to buy Napier out, just get rid of him, start fresh and start over.
That would have been the wrong move.
Maybe Napier gets no better, maybe he isn’t the right coach for this program. Maybe Stricklin gets sent on his way for standing behind Napier.
But it was the right move to keep him. Slowly, painfully slowly, the Gators are moving in the right direction and keeping Napier, keeping stability in recruiting as signing day is less than a month away, was the right thing to do no matter how the final month of the season plays out.