How Napier Stacks Up Against Florida’s Recent Coaches
For the second straight season, Florida coach Billy Napier finds himself in hot water. After back-to-back disappointing losses to USF and LSU, the noise surrounding Florida’s coach has reached a boiling point.
College football analyst Paul Finebaum joined “The Matt Barrie Show” Tuesday and didn’t mince words about Napier’s future.
“If he can’t win anything at the end of this stretch … then the season is effectively over,” Finebaum said. “Then you decide. Do you just want to make a change now to have it in cement? … Billy Napier is not coming back next year. I don’t see a path for him.”
With seven top-15 opponents still looming, the road ahead appears brutal. Florida is already 1-2, and unless it can materialize another monstrous winning streak like Napier’s one to close 2024, Finebaum and others believe his tenure could soon be over.
But how does Napier’s body of work compare to other Gator coaches who Florida has fired?
Florida’s most recent coach, Dan Mullen, lasted four seasons in Gainesville and left with a 34-15 record. He delivered three straight New Year’s Six bowls, won the SEC East in 2020 and at his peak, had Florida ranked No. 3 in The Associated Press poll. Yet even Mullen found the door after slipping to 5-6 in his final season.
Before him, Jim McElwain managed 22 wins in just three seasons, including two SEC East titles and a 10-win campaign that pushed Florida as high as No. 8 in the country in 2015. He was fired midway through 2017 with the Gators sitting at 3-4.
Will Muschamp’s four-year tenure from 2011-2014 ended at 28-21, but he too produced an 11-win season and reached the Sugar Bowl in 2012. At one point, the Gators climbed to No. 3 in the polls under his leadership. Even so, Muschamp didn’t survive after a 6-5 start in 2014.
Stack those records against Napier’s, and the picture becomes clearer. At the start of his fourth season, Napier sits at 20-21 with just one bowl win. The end of 2024 was miraculous, as Florida closed the season with four straight wins, beating No. 21 LSU at home, upsetting No. 9 Ole Miss in Gainesville to spoil its playoff hopes, taking down rival Florida State in Tallahassee and capping it all with a Gasparilla Bowl victory against Tulane. It was a run that gave Gators fans hope for the new season, despite similar troubles to this year’s early in the season. Now the future looks bleak once again.
Florida has long prided itself on competing for championships, not scraping for bowl eligibility. McElwain, Mullen and Muschamp all fell short of those expectations, and Florida pushed them out despite stronger win-loss totals than Napier holds. Unless Napier engineers a dramatic turnaround against one of the nation’s toughest schedules, history suggests he may soon join them on the list of Florida coaches hitting the road.
Category: College Football, Gators Football, SEC
