The University of Florida parted ways with football coach Billy Napier on Sunday.
Napier’s buyout is worth more than $21 million, with half the amount due within 30 days, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel. His contract reportedly does not include offset language, which means he’s due all of it even if he lands another job.
Wide receivers coach Billy Gonzales will serve as the interim coach.
“Today I met with Coach Napier and informed him that a change in leadership of our football program would best serve the interests of the University of Florida,” Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said in a statement. “On behalf of Gator Nation, I want to sincerely thank Billy and his family for their tireless commitment to the Florida Gators. Billy built a tremendous culture of accountability and growth among the young men he led each day. His organized and detailed approach had a meaningful impact across all levels of our program. As Coach Napier has often said, this is a results-driven business, and while his influence was positive, it ultimately did not translate into the level of success we expect on the field.
“Billy has been a trusted and important part of UF athletics. He is an outstanding man. I wish Billy the very best in the future, as he and his family deserve nothing less.”
Napier, 46, finishes with a 22-23 all-time record, the worst for a UF football coach in more than 75 years. Raymond B. Wolf was the last full-time coach to finish his Florida tenure with a sub-.500 record, going 13-24-2 from 1946-49.
He is the fourth straight Florida coach to not make it past the fourth year of his tenure. Napier struggled to get big wins consistently for Florida, finishing with a 5-17 record against ranked opponents.
Loading ...Under Napier, Florida was 5-16 away from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, which included zero ranked wins. He finished a combined 3-10 against Florida’s main rivals: LSU, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida State.
Napier also received heavy criticism for not delegating primary play-calling responsibilities to an offensive coordinator so he could focus on the whole team and not spend most of his time tending to the offense.
Florida never cracked the top 30 in total offense among Division I teams, with the unit’s best finish coming in 2022 at 38th. Since then, Florida has ranked 47th in 2023 and 66th last season. Through seven games, Florida is 124th in the country, averaging 15.6 points per game.
UF will owe Napier 85% of his remaining contract, which comes out to $21.7 million. Under his contract, half of the buyout is due within 30 days of termination, with the rest paid in yearly installments starting July 15 and continuing through 2028. He had made $7.4 million annually as part of the original contract he signed with the program in November 2021.
Napier’s firing would have opened the 30-day transfer window for any player on the Gators roster who wants to enter the portal for next season. But under the new NCAA transfer portal ruling, players must wait until the school hires a new coach, then give the new staff five days to convince them to stay before entering the portal.
READ: Who Will Replace Billy Napier? Florida’s Coaching Search Begins
Napier arrived in Gainesville in 2022, after a successful tenure at Louisiana Lafayette, where he went 40-12 in four seasons (2018-2021), including a 12-1 record in his final season. He had a storybook start at Florida, beating then-No. 7 Utah 29-26 in his debut. A 4-2 start to the year quickly went sideways, as the Gators dropped five of their last seven games to finish the season 6-7.
A year after losing quarterback Anthony Richardson to the NFL, Napier went to the portal and brought in former five-star Wisconsin quarterback Graham Mertz, who helped the Gators get off to a 5-2 start with wins against No. 11 Tennessee and at South Carolina before another midseason collapse.
UF dropped its final five games, including a home overtime loss against a two-win Arkansas and a road loss at LSU, where Jayden Daniels accounted for 606 total yards.
Florida was a fourth-and-17 away from knocking off a top-10 Missouri team, but the bad defense that plagued the Gators all year came back and the Tigers converted before hitting a game-winning field goal. The season ended with another blown lead at home against Florida State to finish the year 5-7.
Last season marked the first year that the majority of the players on the roster were Napier’s guys, including five-star quarterback DJ Lagway. While Mertz was the starter, the pressure to play Lagway mounted by the game. Florida opened the year with a disastrous 41-17 home loss to Miami and lost Mertz for the next game due to a concussion.
Lagway started Week 2 against Samford and lived up to the hype with an 18-for-25 performance for 456 yards and three touchdowns. The urge to play Lagway only ramped up after Mertz returned and struggled in his next couple of games, but Napier remained persistent in playing the veteran. Eventually, Lagway got the nod for the starting job after Mertz went down for the season with a torn ACL against Tennessee on Oct. 12, 2024.
Unlike the previous two seasons, Florida turned around a sluggish 4-5 start and finished the year with four straight wins to finish 8-5. That momentum carried into the offseason, when Florida was picked as a dark-horse contender for the College Football Playoff.
The Gators got off to another slow start that included an 18-16 home loss to USF as 17.5-point favorites and another road loss to LSU, highlighted by Lagway’s five interceptions. Napier was asked heading into the Miami game if he felt that his job was on the line..
“I’m trying to solve problems. You’re trying to find the right combination of things to help. We’re a handful of plays away from winning that game [last] Saturday,” Napier said. “You’ve got to try to be as objective as you can and you got to get consumed with how you help the players, how you help the players improve, how you help the position of the players a little bit better spot here and there and keep the human element intact. That’s the really important part.
”In my opinion, a man is not defeated until he blames someone else. So I think it’s key for us to evaluate what we can do, every individual within the team and organization, to contribute and help us get better.”
Staring at 1-3, Florida returned home out of the bye week and upset No. 9 Texas 29-21. The Gators played their best game of the year and it finally looked like the team everyone thought we would see heading into the season. Napier wanted to use the Texas win as a multiplier heading into the Texas A&M game. Instead, the Gators went on the road and were outclassed again, falling 34–17 to a superior team. Napier finished 0-14 against ranked opponents away from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
With his seat on fire and his team now 3-4, Napier was asked numerous questions about his job security the week leading up to the Mississippi State game. Napier said that he and Stricklin have weekly conversations about the state of the program and where he wants to see improvements. But with numerous other Power 4 coaches already fired before him, he acknowledged that this is what you sign up for as a college coach.
“They pay us, they compensate us well. So these are challenging jobs in today’s climate, in particular. … We understand we live in a production world and you got to produce,” Napier said. “I have no issue with that.”
Even in a 23-21 win against Miss. State, the signs were all over the wall that Napier’s time in Gainesville was at a close. Multiple “Fire Billy” chants echoed The Swamp throughout the game and as Napier ran off the field he was met with a barrage of boos. Napier faced the same series of questions postgame regarding his job, answering all of them but with a much more emotional attachment.
“I think I’m built for it. I’m made for it, I chose the coaching profession, I was called to coach. The good comes with the bad, the bad comes with the good. The game’s about the players, I’m proud of the players and the way they played. Never going to make everybody happy,” Napier said, choking up a little. “You get these leadership positions, you’re in charge, these are the things that come with it, right? I love the game of football, I love the game.”
Florida (3-4, 2-2 SEC) heads into its second open date before taking the short trip over to Jacksonville for the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party against No. 5 Georgia (6-1, 4-1) on Nov. 1.
