Photos from the second half as the Florida Gators defeat the Kentucky Wildcats 48-20 at Ben Hill Griffiin Stadium in Gainesville, Florida. October 19th, 2024. Gator Country Photo by David Bowie.
I am not sure whether Billy Napier will be Florida’s head coach next year.
There were media reports earlier this season that boosters had pooled enough pledges to pay his buyout. But then as the team has looked at lot better following the first open date, there is now some doubt about whether he will be dismissed or not. The injury to DJ Lagway that submarined the team’s otherwise terrific performance against Georgia further adds uncertainty about the simple matter of how much Napier’s performance can even be judged.
I follow the team very closely because I cover it for this website. If I have no idea whether Napier will be around next year, then certainly players considering their options for the 2025 season don’t either.
And that’s a huge problem.
Right now, Florida is sitting on the No. 51 recruiting class in the country according to the 247 Sports Composite. The Gators have just 11 commits, and some of those in the fold have been taking visits elsewhere. It goes without saying that absent a major closing effort, the 2025 class would be Florida’s lowest ranked haul ever by a wide margin.
For comparison, Florida State is sitting at 1-8 on the season. Five of the losses have been by more than one score. Just about everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. Yet, the Seminoles sit four spots higher at No. 47 with the same count of 11 recruits but a higher average player rating.
Napier has been twisting in the wind for about a year now. Before the 2023 season even ended, highly rated players began emptying out of the ’23 class. Napier was able to keep Lagway and LJ McCray, but more than a half dozen blue chip recruits flipped elsewhere down the stretch.
That’s what happened when Napier was in trouble but not in imminent danger of being fired. There was never a scenario where he got dismissed before his second season was up.
But now that he really could get fired, Napier is having trouble getting players to commit in the first place. The ’25 class only has two players above the low 4-star level, and both are Gator legacies: Vernell Brown III and Ben Hanks, Jr. As long as Napier’s job status for next year is unknown, it’s going to be essentially impossible to gain the commitments of the caliber of player that Florida wants absent some kind of preexisting tie to the university.
The current era and the calendar don’t do Napier any favors either. Recruiting down the stretch has two parts: high school and JUCO recruiting in advance of the early signing period that goes December 4 to 6, and the winter portal period that runs December 9 to 28.
Florida plays FSU on Saturday, November 30. Early signing day is four days later, and the portal period begins nine days later. If UF was to fire Napier after the final game, it won’t have time to run a coaching search and sign anyone of note in the ’25 class. It will have to be a rushed deal just to get someone aboard in time for the portal window, but coaching changes these days usually trigger an exodus of players. The new coach realistically would have less than a week after accepting the job to re-recruit the current roster and begin to recruit likely dozens of portal transfers.
UF must provide certainty on Napier’s status as soon as possible. If it’s not going to keep him, then the firing needs to happen early enough to run a replacement search that doesn’t have to be kept super quiet on account of Napier still being around. And if it’s not going to fire him, it needs to say so in order for him to have any hope of retaining the meager number of recruits he has committed in the class and adding more before December 4.
You don’t have to look far to find all the reasons that are out there to can him. There are reasons to keep him too, though. Florida is presently No. 26 in the SP+ ratings and No. 23 in the FEI ratings, the premier play-by-play based and drive-based analytics, respectively. The Gators really have gotten better this year, and the schedule really is so difficult that there is no margin for error. The injuries to stars like Graham Mertz, Lagway, Tre Wilson, Jason Marshall, Montrell Johnson, and others aren’t Napier’s fault and may have cost the team some games.
Plus, the University of Florida writ large has a leadership vacuum at present. Former university president Ben Sasse resigned abruptly earlier this year, leaving UF little choice but to turn to former president Kent Fuchs as an interim. A full-time president is expected to come next year. Scott Stricklin has made two football hires by now, and usually ADs don’t get to make three. Plus, Stricklin hired coaches in both women’s basketball and soccer that soon after had to be fired due to complaints about maltreatment. He’s on shaky ground too.
UF the institution needs to get its house in order, in other words. In that light, it’s defensible to keep Napier simply so the next president and perhaps next athletic director can make their own decisions without a brand-new football coach with a brand-new buyout — on top of what’s been paid to make Dan Mullen and would have to be paid to Napier to go away plus NCAA v. House settlement obligations.
If the leadership vacuum is so severe that no one can make a choice right now, then the decision’s already been made: keep Napier around so future leaders can pick their own guy. However, going ahead and firing Napier, in light of the poor records by program standards he’s put up, is also defensible.
Whatever the case ends up being, Florida needs to make an announcement yesterday. Otherwise, it will either be subverting the guy it wants to keep or putting the next guy in a deeper hole than necessary.
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