Florida Gators head coach is resigning from his position.
First things first: despite any saber rattling you may have heard over the weekend from national columnists, Billy Napier will not be fired by Florida this year.
It’s too expensive. Just about $32 million would be payable to Napier alone in buyout money, with half of that amount due within 30 days of his termination. The entire amount would surpass the existing record buyout of $21.7 million, which Auburn paid to fire Gus Malzahn, by more than $10 million. According to reports from the time of hire, Napier does not have an offset clause that would reduce the buyout by the amount of money that a subsequent job would pay him. As a result, it looks like the UAA would be responsible for the whole sum as well.
Subsequently, it would be necessary to buy out the remaining present coaches, buy out the new head coach from his current position, and buy out all of the new assistants from their current positions. It’s a lot more than UF has ever demonstrated it is prepared to spend on this kind of activity.
Plus, there’s the matter I’ve brought up before that should Napier get fired, it’s highly unlikely that Scott Stricklin would get to hire the replacement. Therefore on top of dealing with the enormous financial cost and likely torpedoing the current top 5 ranked recruiting class, you’re also looking at an AD search on top of it. It’s probably too late in this year to find a new AD and then have them make a well considered hire in time to salvage something for the December signing day.
So no, Florida’s not going to fire Napier this year.
The reason it even has to be addressed is
because Napier has moved slowly from the start. Whether he thought of it in these terms or not, he chose to take a Year Zero in 2022.
The concept of a Year Zero, popularized mainly by Bill Connelly and the Split Zone Duo crew, is that sometimes a new head coach walks into such a giant mess that first-season struggles shouldn’t totally count against him. He has to take a Year Zero before even getting to a Year 1 where you can judge how well the guy is doing.
Napier declared up front that he would not be enrolling in a sizable transitional recruiting class. He fulfilled his promise on that. Only eighteen high school prospects sent in letters of intent, and nearly all of the previous commits left the class to sign elsewhere. Over the summer, he did add two JUCOs, bringing the class size up to a still-small twenty. Regarding the one-time transfer rule’s new age, he brought individuals from Louisiana with him for half of his six portal takes.
