Scott Stricklin has made a mess of Gator football. And I think he likes it that way. (Photo credit: Matt Pendleton, Imagn Images)
As Billy Napier has bumbled and stumbled his way to the worst record of any Gator coach since the 1940’s, I’ve pointed out his various missteps from a football standpoint.
I talked about the need for a special teams coordinator after Jason Marshall muffed a punt for a touchdown against Vanderbilt in 2022. I talked about how calling six straight passing plays— all six of which fell incomplete— to start the second half against FSU in 2022 after gashing them on the ground was all the proof I needed that Billy Napier was not cut out to be the Gators’ play-caller. And I talked about how, despite Anthony Richardson sitting on the bench more than he should have under Dan Mullen, the failure to develop him was Napier’s fault as both the head coach and the offensive coordinator.
All the Gators’ subsequent issues— the special teams’ inability to execute the fire drill field goal against Arkansas in 2023 and then Tennessee in 2024, repeatedly failing to count to eleven as recently as this past Saturday, a slow-developing shovel pass to Dante Zanders on a 4th and 3 that was stuffed by Utah in 2023, carelessly letting 40 seconds bleed off the clock between plays down three scores against Kentucky in 2023, an insanely bad trick play design that never should have seen the light of day destroying all Florida’s momentum against FSU in 2023, a generic failure to grasp the very concept that some routes need to be run beyond the sticks, an even more generic failure to dial up clutch situational play-calls, and the absolutely flabbergasting regression of five-star signee DJ Lagway— and yes, I do mean all of those issues, were easily predictable.
For good measure, Billy Napier’s program made sure to tack on a few added levels of bonus humiliation along the way. Things like two players taking the field with the same jersey number at the same time, trotting out the single worst defense in school history in 2022, surrendering a school record 702 yards to LSU and then losing to Missouri by surrendering a 4th and 17 in back-to-back weeks, and shifting momentum in not one but two games that Florida would lose— both at home— with the single most disrespectful thing a player can do: spitting in his opponent’s face.
So frankly, I have no interest in talking about how or why Billy Napier’s offense floundered yet again in a mortifying 26-7 loss to Miami last week. Nothing is gained by that anymore. The latest episode of special teams stupidity was every bit as predictable as Napier’s play-calling, which Miami shut down to the tune of eight three and outs on the Gators’ eleven drives of the night.
We’ve been there, and we’ve done that. I first called for Billy Napier to fix these problems in 2022; it is now 2025 and he’s done exactly zero to address any of it. So I’m finished doing the football analysis thing with this regime. It’s pointless. Instead, it’s time somebody called this program out for what it is: a real-life vaudeville-era circus act that willfully chooses to drain its fans of every penny possible over winning games at every possible turn.
But the problem isn’t Billy Napier’s burden to bear anymore. Napier is just a stupid person, plain and simple. If you think that’s an ad hominem insult, it really isn’t; it’s merely a classic case of Hanlon’s Razor. The man is just not all there mentally. He’s made that abundantly clear by refusing to hire an offensive coordinator because he thought that his opponents would just magically forget the last fifteen years of game film of him running the same five or six plays out of the same two tight-end sets.
And that’s not his fault. People are born with different levels of intelligence. Napier did not choose to be born with an intelligence level that’s far below average, and he’s not a bad person for at least being smart enough to recognize that he could hire an agent who would be able to swindle some school out of millions of dollars in a contract’s sunk costs.
No, the problem lies squarely in the man who’s spent the last decade pretending to be Florida’s athletic director: Scott Stricklin.
Now, the idea that Stricklin sucks at his job is not exactly a fresh observation. I’ve force-posted the stat for weeks now about Stricklin making nine coaching hires at Florida and five of them having SEC winning percentages of less than 40%. And I feel I’ve beaten the horse to death about how Stricklin hired not one but two different coaches who wound up needing to be fired because they abused their athletes.
This article isn’t about any of that. And it’s not even about Stricklin’s inherent, genetic desire to prioritize placing pretty buildings all around campus over placing elite athletes inside the existing buildings who can help the fans inside those buildings enjoy the experience of winning. Both of those are entirely separate nightmares that need their own topics.
No, today we’re talking about something even worse: how the actions of Scott Stricklin have told us all that he enjoys destroying Gator football.
I don’t claim to know for certain what motive he could possibly have for this, but there are two possibilities that stick out.
The first possibility is the double agent conspiracy explanation. Scott Stricklin was born in Jackson, MS, went to Mississippi State, and by the time he earned his degree from Starkville, was a full-fledged #HailState fan. So he worked his way up the MSU athletic department, became their AD, and actually had a decent level of success there.
But then, in 2016, he took the Florida AD job— and left his heart behind in Starkville. And while I won’t go as far as to say that he engaged in a deliberate attempt to bring Florida down so that Mississippi State could surpass Florida in terms of athletic prestige, he certainly wasn’t shy about sharing his continued love for his alma mater.
Here is a compilation of tweets that Stricklin has published since taking the Florida AD job professing his continued love for his alma mater, which remember, is a direct competitor to Florida as an SEC school. Each of those words links to a different tweet. It wasn’t an oopsie. Florida paid its athletic director as he openly rooted for another school in his conference.
To be very clear, I’m not even trying to connect the dots and saying that Scott Stricklin falsely saw the Florida Gator brand as a direct competitor to the perennial bottom feeder program he came from and engaged in a deliberate campaign to demolish that Florida Gator brand from within for that purpose. But if I were saying that, it still wouldn’t be as crazy as the various nuggets of horseshit he’s flung at his own paying fans in his various defenses of Billy Napier.
We’ve been down that road before. Read this article and then read this one if you need a refresher. And if you’re still not sure whether or not you should loathe the things he’s done at Florida, read this.
Again, though, I’m not saying that Scott Stricklin is purposely dragging Florida down so his alma mater can surpass them as an athletics program. The simple fact that I really don’t care much for conspiracies in general has led this possibility to be one that I only gave cursory consideration to. Besides, there’s a much more plausible explanation.
Stricklin’s online activity may be exactly as robust as the average citizen of North Korea, but even he knows that the fans hate him. I know this for a fact because last year at a Gator baseball game, I half-jokingly referred to him as “the Antichrist” and was promptly told by someone in the know that he was offended not by the fact that I publicly elucidate my hatred for him on a continuous basis, but by the fact that I even lightheartedly compared him to the Biblical devil. For the record, that wasn’t my proudest moment, and I wouldn’t do it again, but hearing that he doesn’t even care that someone with my platform has such a venomously foul opinion of him told me everything I needed to know.
So it’s no longer a theory; it’s a proven fact by now. Scott Stricklin knows that Gator fans despise him. And as such—and to be fair to Stricklin, this is human nature— the moves he has made show that he despises Gator fans right back.
Under Jeremy Foley, Florida fired Ron Zook for going 8-4, 8-4, and 7-4, and Will Muschamp two years after he went 11-2 and one year after going 4-8. Stricklin, for his part, has fired a coach who won the SEC East back-to-back years and was midway through his first truly tough season when he lied about receiving death threats. He also fired his friend, Dan Mullen, for being 34-15—including three straight New Year’s Six Bowls, which, had the 12-team CFP existed, would have included playoff berths all three times.
But the criticism has ratcheted up on Stricklin since he fired Dan Mullen for a number of reasons, including (but not limited to) his efforts to sweep the women’s basketball scandal under the rug, his desire to wipe 10,000+ seats out of the Swamp, his insistence on giving Mike White a seventh season despite White finishing in the top four of the (then-weaker) SEC standings just two times in six seasons, and his outright refusal to make NIL a priority for years as other programs gladly took advantage and began beating Florida out—in various sports—for top recruits.
And Scott Stricklin, with all the competitive fire of a narcoleptic sloth, chose not to take actions that would challenge the narrative that he was not interested about winning, but instead send the message of, “Oh, you think I’m unserious, huh? Well, I’ll show you what unserious really looks like.” Thus, the last flying fuck he may have had to give about guiding the Florida Gators to success on the football field went and flew itself right out the window and crash-landed inches in front of a speeding Mack truck’s front tire.
There’s no better explanation out there. This is by far the most logical explanation on the table. Scott Stricklin is doing this on purpose to stick it to Gator fans for daring to question His Majesty’s decision-making over the past few years. We talked about Hanlon’s Razor; this is the related principle of Occam’s Razor. We’ve reached the point in time where the most logical possibility on the table is willful sabotage.
We’re more than a full calendar year beyond the point of debating that Billy Napier is not the coach for the Florida Gators football program. The debate ended against Texas A&M on September 14, 2024; it is now September 25, 2025. We’re 54 weeks beyond the point of accepting arguments and dissent on this topic as rational.
It can’t be as simple as Stricklin having a gargantuan ego and desperately wishing for a miracle that proves him right and the fans wrong about Napier; that was the explanation for keeping him last year. The window to deploy that explanation has come and gone. Again, it’s been 54 weeks since the argument to keep him left the realm of sanity.
For perspective, 54 weeks is enough time for a baby to be conceived in the womb, gestate, be born, and live the first three to four months of its life. That’s how much time has elapsed since any previously reasonable opinion to be more patient or give Napier more time ceased to be reasonable. And because that extra time has elapsed since the decision to keep Napier lost any respectability, when you consider all the resources Napier has at his disposal, the argument that Napier is legitimately the worst coach in school history gains more and more credence with each day that he’s allowed to continue wreaking havoc on this program—and any dissenting argument devolves into the territory of being outright laughable.
Miss me with the “timing” argument. “We need to wait for the right time to fire him.” Wrong answer. The best time to fire Napier was last September. The next best time is now.
Miss me with the “portal window” argument. Wrong answer. Players are going to hit the portal whenever they feel like it, whether they’ve played four games or not. Most actually won’t do so until the end of the year, as the rest of the season is a chance for them to rack up film for their next stop.
Miss me with the “giving Napier every last chance” argument. Wrong answer. Napier already exhausted all his chances and began burrowing into the negatives with the clusterfuck he gave us against Tennessee last year. He’s at about minus-50 chances remaining. He now owes us about 50 chances back.
And please, for the love of all things holy, miss me with the idea that his buyout shrinks by $2M if Florida lets Napier finish the season. That’s called a sunk cost. Florida is paying that $2M to Napier one way or another. The choice is to either pay Napier $2M to continue digging Florida’s grave even deeper into the subterranean trench he’s created, or pay him $2M just to fuck off and not do that. Or in less vulgar terms, take his hands off the control panel and at least stop making things worse.
The only viable path forward is to make a change in leadership. Now. Not after Texas inevitably terminates Florida’s souls again, not after the weekend, not after South Park, now. And for any change to be forced to happen, the rest of our voices need to not merely be deafening, but speaking the words that correctly label Stricklin’s refusal to fire Napier for what it is.
This is certifiably insane. It is demonstrably disconnected from reality. It is not merely a difference of opinion, because Stricklin’s insistence on ramming laissez-faire down our throats for the worst coach in school history does not deserve the respect that the phrase “difference of opinion” tends to lend to the opposing viewpoint. Because Stricklin’s decision to allow Napier to continue coaching the Florida Gators is not tethered to any sense of reality, logic, or reason.
Unless, of course, you take the approach that Stricklin is willfully demolishing this program just to get back at Gator fans for being mean to him. Which is why I floated that as a possibility. Because that’s the only explanation that I can think of that makes any sense.
And unfortunately, thanks to Stricklin essentially giving himself an extension through 2030, this nightmare doesn’t end simply by firing Napier. That’s only step one of a long process needed to get Gator football back to where it’s supposed to be.
Since it’s pretty clear by now that Stricklin isn’t going to be fired for incompetence, the next best thing is to lock him in a straitjacket, strap an electronic monitoring bracelet around his ankle, shut off his house’s WiFi, and place him under house arrest until the next football hire is made. Is that too harsh? Fine— then I’m open to any alternative courses of action that ensure Scott Stricklin has absolutely nothing to do with this next football hire.
Go ahead. I’m listening. Any alternative that achieves the same effect, I’m all ears.
Not only can Stricklin not be the one to choose the next coach, he has to be kept as far the holy hell away from the process as possible. For this hire to be successful, Stricklin’s track record shows that he cannot have ANY involvement. Not select the candidates, not conduct the interview, not negotiate the contract, not discuss any stipends or budgets for NIL or a potential staff of assistants, not even replace Napier with a temporary appointee to finish out the season as interim coach. If Florida is going to be successful in football with its next coach, Scott Stricklin cannot be allowed to put his grubby paws anywhere close to the operation.
But I’ve lost faith in any possibility of that happening either, and that puts me in the position of having to just accept things for what they are. It’s the final stage of grief. I went through the other four already, and occasionally I’ll briefly flash back to the anger stage before the acceptance overtakes it once more.
It is my genuinely held belief that Florida football will one day be successful again. There are too many resources at Florida’s disposal for that day to never come. That day, though, is blocked from being moved any closer toward until not only Napier and Stricklin are gone, but the rest of Stricklin’s deputies who do his bidding are purged from their offices in Gainesville as well.
And until that purge takes place, we’re all left with the reality that the current Czar of Florida athletics is simply not interested in fielding a competitive football team.
Do with that information as you please.
Just don’t get your hopes up that Gator football will achieve anything close to its program’s well-defined standards until the leadership changes… from the top on down.
