Billy Napier isn’t coaching for his job against UCF. He’s coaching to try to avoid being the worst coach in Florida Gators history. (John Raoux, AP)
At this current juncture of the Billy Napier tenure, the mainstream approach to take would be something like “How Can Billy Napier Save His Job?” or some similarly SEO-friendly headline that leaves the door open for his possible survival at Florida in non-fantasy type terms.
Ask Billy Napier what he’s coaching for the rest of the season, and he’ll likely tell you he’s coaching for his players, and for all the people in the building. And that’s probably true– at least in his mind.
Ask the credentialed media what he’s coaching for the rest of the season, and they’ll likely tell you he’s coaching for his job, in a last-ditch attempt to save his career. And that’s probably true– at least in a hypothetical sense.
Those make for nice stories, but they’re simply not grounded in reality. They paint the picture of a far rosier scene than the one that actually exists in Gainesville right now. They exist under the premise that Billy Napier actually has a path to coaching the Florida Gators in 2025– which is about as realistic of an idea as Mike White coaching a basketball team to an SEC Championship.
I’ve prided myself on never running In All Kinds Of Weather as a truly “mainstream” site. The IAKOW brand has been at odds with what’s considered the “mainstream” thing to say ever since this smarmy, elitist defensive quote from the UAA about Steve Addazio all the way back in 2010. I’ve never held any interest in playing games to gain favor; when I publish something, either with my voice or my keyboard, it’s as authentic and unfiltered as you’ll get.
So with that in mind, let’s cut to the chase once more. No, beating a helpless Mississippi State team on the road changes nothing. Billy Napier is not going to survive here. Unless you care to explain how he’s going to coach himself to a road win over a top five team (Texas or Tennessee) or beat Georgia in Jacksonville, and then win every other game left on the schedule, there is no path to salvation for him; he cannot wriggle out of the abyss he dug for himself.
And please, spare me the song and dance about the power vacuum at the top of the University food chain. The hell with the power vacuum at Florida, with an interim school President, and the hell with a worthless athletic director who chose to prioritize the public thinking that everything was fine instead of actually addressing the disturbing allegations of abuse against women’s basketball players. Power vacuums don’t last long at a school like Florida, because eventually, someone– or a group of people– will fill them. And while they might delay a guillotine drop, they won’t prevent it from happening entirely.
Napier is cooked, finished, out of chances, a dead man walking, a parasite that’s been caught with a timeframe to surgically remove it set in stone. He can’t clean up the mess he made in Gainesville.
So no, he’s not coaching to save his job against Central Florida. He’s already coached himself out of that job. The boosters’ first attempt at a coup to get him out of Gainesville failed simply because of timing, and the lack of a respectable interim coach option to finish the season. A second coup won’t have to contend with either of those obstacles, as with fewer games to play the downside of demolition without a full-time head coach in place is really no worse than the demolition that coach is overseeing anyway.
In fact, Billy Napier can no longer (realistically) achieve anything positive; he’s simply trying to avoid further negative results. Beating UCF, for example, is what Florida is supposed to do, with significantly more natural talent, prestige, and the home environment on its side. Losing to UCF, on the other hand, would be the ultimate ignobility.
And it would be an unfortunate, but fitting, bow on his tenure at Florida– one that was marked by losses, frustrating losses, and embarrassing losses.
As it stands right now, Billy Napier is 12-16 at Florida. That appalling 42.86% winning percentage qualifies Napier as the third worst coach in the 120-year history of Gator football. The four other coaches who make up the five worst coaches in school history– Raymond Wolf, Tom Lieb, Josh Cody and Alfred Buser– all coached the Gators either in the direct midst of, or in the immediate aftermath of, one of the two World Wars that pulled countless young men between the ages of 18-22 away from the football fields and into military duty.
Napier, for his part, has a different kind of army– one comprised of dozens of staffers designed to make sure that everything is followed to a T. One of the so-called “soldiers” inside those buildings described the efficiency the staff operates with as “not unlike that of a military operation.” Also like a true modern army, Napier has millions of dollars at his disposal with which to operate.
And yet, the results are appalling. Not only is Napier’s raw winning percentage the third-worst of any full-time, non-interim head coach in program history, but his 1-8 record against rivals, four consecutive losses to Power Five programs in the Swamp, and 8-16 overall record against Power Five programs are comfortably enough data to garner hyperbolic takes– except they aren’t hyperbole. The rage that’s generated every time his team does something to lose a game is not an overreaction, or a failure to see the big picture. On the contrary, that rage is because of the big picture.
Now throw in a loss to UCF on top of all that data that’s amassed. And the situation in Gainesville will verifiably become all-time ugly.
Losing to UCF next Saturday would mark five straight losses in the Swamp to FBS teams. For perspective, Steve Spurrier lost five games in the Swamp in his entire career, spanning a dozen years from 1990-2001.
Another nauseating statistic a loss to UCF would trigger is that it would be Florida’s third straight non-conference loss in the Swamp to an FBS team. The last time that happened? The 1946-47 seasons; the Gators lost to Miami and Villanova in the Swamp in 1946 and lost its home opener to North Texas State in 1947. Florida flirted with the statistic again in the infamous 1979 season after losing its 1978 finale to Miami, but a tie in the Swamp to Georgia Tech broke up the string.
But wait, it gets even uglier than that. Let’s zoom out and look at this from a 30,000 foot view. With a loss to UCF, Napier would actually vault over Josh Cody’s 41.9% winning percentage and take over second place in the “worst Florida Gators coaches of all time by winning percentage” department with what would then be a 41.4% winning percentage. He’d have work to do to catch Raymond Wolf for the gold medal at 35.9%, but a road trip to Tennessee the week after UCF comes to the Swamp would put him still another step closer.
Not to play any sort of defense for Raymond Wolf, but coaching right on the heels of World War II, before black people were even allowed to play in the SEC, is not comparable to the posh lifestyle Napier is able to enjoy as Florida’s coach. The numbers are worse for Wolf, but the Florida program was nothing during his days, with no past success to sell to recruits, no private jet to frequent to get those recruits, and, oh yeah– he was dealing with the immediate aftermath of World War II.
And again, keep in mind that Napier is working with exponentially more resources than not just every single one of his predecessors at Florida, but most of college football as well. That’s perhaps what makes all of this the most infuriating– even more so than the inevitability that UCF fans will get to run their mouths for all eternity because they happened to catch Florida in the midst of their worst coach ever.
It’s not like UCF beating Florida would be some sort of upset, either. ESPN’s FPI gives the Knights a 59.4% chance to win, and given the way they run the ball (375.7 yards per game leads the FBS) and the way that Florida allows teams to run the ball (188.8 yards per game, outside the top 100 of the FBS) it’s totally reasonable to foresee UCF controlling the ball for 40 minutes and ground-and-pounding their way to a 38-21 type of win.
So you want to know what Billy Napier is coaching for? You really want to know? That’s it. He’s coaching to avoid going down in history as the worst Florida Gators coach of all time. Beating UCF does nothing to save him. It’s a mere foothold on the rock walls deep in the subterranean trench he’s dug himself. He’d still have thousands of feet to climb simply to poke his head above water.
But I do contend that Billy Napier is a nice man, and I do believe he’s trying his best. So because of that, I’d rather him not go down in history as the worst coach in school history. By beating UCF, he can probably at least avoid that.
