Best of luck to Joe Hamilton at Texas A&M. (Photo credit via Florida Gators)
The Florida Gators’ football program is officially snakebitten.
According to Rivals’ Brandon Howard, Florida is losing Joe Hamilton, the Gators’ director of scouting and recruiting relations, to Texas A&M for what is thought to be a considerable pay raise. The Gators had recently promoted Hamilton to his role in Gainesville this offseason as part of a wave of moves made by Napier to try to right the ship. Instead, Hamilton will be returning to the Lone Star State, where he grew up.
Hamilton, who initially worked with Napier at Louisiana in the position of quality control with a focus on player personnel and recruiting, then came with him to Florida as a defensive analyst after helping Napier land the Sun Belt’s top recruiting classes three years in a row. At the same time Hamilton was promoted, Napier also promoted Jacob LaFrance to the trailblazing new role of “General Manager” at Florida. The thinking behind the shifting of roles was to create a fresh start– and there was reason to believe it would work, because Hamilton is really good at his job.
But the move backfired. Hamilton’s departure now leaves another void on the Florida staff– and it continues a rather unsettling pattern of Gators turning into Texas A&M Aggies. Multiple defensive players, including linebacker Scooby Williams and defensive back Jaydon Hill, and coaches, including linebacker coach Jay Bateman and defensive line coach Sean Spencer, from the 2023 Gator football team are now going to be part of the Texas A&M football program in 2024.
Then there’s the case of five-star quarterback signee DJ Lagway. Hamilton and Lagway were known to have an extremely close personal relationship, meaning that Lagway lost that connection when Texas A&M poached Joe Hamilton. At this current time, Lagway is not thought to be considering a departure of his own.
But it’s also clear that the cavalry in Gainesville is collapsing. This offseason, a laundry list of important assistants have voluntarily left the program, including offensive line coach Darnell Stapleton, linebackers coach Jay Bateman, strength and conditioning coach Craig Fitzgerald, and now Hamilton. And that doesn’t even include the two defensive assistants that Napier fired.
Yes, staff shuffling is common in the college football offseason. But not this much– and not this late into the offseason. As we talked about on the show today, that’s a consequence of losing games in the regular season— your program becomes less desirable. Does Hamilton leave so easily if Florida was 9-3 in each of the past two seasons? Maybe he still leaves, but it likely requires more effort from the Aggie program to pull it off. So to say there’s cause for concern would be an understatement.
At this point, all we can do is pray that Napier rebounds once more and keep the crumbling pieces of his foundation together.
