Cultural Shift: How Billy Napier is Transforming the Florida Football Program

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” – Sun Tzu from “The Art of War”

This is not a hit piece on former Florida football coach Dan Mullen and his staff. They had their own way of doing things and for their first 35 games – UF went 29-6 – what they were doing worked. Then, for reasons which are still uncertain, things went sideways in a hurry, starting with three straight losses at the end of the 2020 COVID season. The carryover to 2021 was evident as the Gators took a roller coaster ride that drove the fan base insane. How could a team that could dominate Alabama for three quarters lose by 23 to South Carolina? How is it that the Gators struggled to win their final two games just to get invited to a third tier bowl?

The questions linger. How can you go from a team that plays in the Peach, Orange and Cotton bowls on consecutive years go so far in the tank that it can’t get fired up to beat UCF in the Gasparilla Bowl, knowing fully well that UCF was treating it like its Super Bowl?

Well, the past is the past and there is no sense in lingering there. As is said so often, you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Mullen and his staff were pink-slipped, Billy Napier was hired, and a brand new era of Florida football has been ushered in.

Perhaps, we should change that. Ushered doesn’t begin to explain what Napier has done in a little more than two months. It’s like he’s brought in a HAZMAT team and they are busy sterilizing everything football related, diligently removing the toxicity that was allowed to creep into and destabilize the entire program.

Rather than go into gory details, here is just one example of how things have changed. Shortly after taking over as Florida’s head coach, Napier brought in Kelsee Gomes from UNC as the director of sports nutrition. Immediately, the food got better and more importantly, the way the players ate was improved. Instead of hot boxes where players got their food and took it home, buffets became the norm. Instead of carloads of unopened, uneaten food being taken nightly to a homeless shelter, players saw their diet improved. Better nutrition makes for bigger, stronger, faster football players, the kind you need if you intend to not only compete with but win against the likes of Alabama and Georgia.

A better diet was only one element of each player’s daily routine that Napier changed immediately. He came to UF determined to grab each player by his football lapels and shake out the old way of doing things.

“The self-discipline of the player, what he eats, is he hydrated, the sleep component, the attitude of the player, the body language of the player,” Napier said in describing just a few of the changes that have taken place.

It amounts to a total team makeover that begins with taking personal inventory. No two players are alike, but understanding what each player puts in his body, how he rests and what goes on in his head contribute to the overall wellness of the team. Getting everybody on the same page in the first few weeks led to the second phase of Napier’s eight-phase plan for 2022 success.

We’re now in the Identity Program. It’s a good name for this phase because it goes far beyond what we’ve grown to know as mat drills, those early morning workouts designed to push players to their competitive limits and toughen them up both in the weight room and with drills intended to increase strength and agility while stressing teamwork and camaraderie.

It is an exercise in team building, every bit as important as improved strength and agility. Napier understands, as did the ancient Chinese warrior Sun Tzu, that the preparation for the battles that will be fought on the football fields of the Southeastern Conference in the fall has already begun. Knowing the enemy is certainly important, but right now the focus is on knowing yourself. It’s important for every player to know that he’s capable of exceeding his perceived limitations and understanding the importance of working together with teammates.

“This has nothing to do with physical talent or ability,” Napier said a week ago when he met with the media to answer questions about the pre-spring practice preparations that are his Identity Program.

And just what is an Identity Program and what makes this different than the approach taken at any one of the 130 Division I football schools that engage in some sort of pre-spring workout program?

“Identity is the qualities and beliefs that make a group different than other people,” Napier said. “I think every team around the country does an offseason program. We would like to think we do it better and that we have a specific plan in this area, so the key here is that the players make a commitment to the prescribed work the right way, really believe in the power of routine, structure discipline. And, certain this workload will challenge self-discipline for the players. We need to control the controllables and we need to work hard to create the identity of our team and that starts inside out.

“It starts with the players as people. We all know that significant change is always made from the inside out.”

Hone in that word discipline. Now think back to the SEC Championship Game against Alabama in 2020. Florida lost that game, 52-46. Kyle Trask, who lit up Alabama for 408 yards and three touchdown passes, might tell you the Gators simply ran out of time. There was no stopping him that day. Another two minutes? Well, maybe the Gators would have been in the College Football Playoff.

So why didn’t Florida win the game? You could point to key penalties, all of them involving discipline, that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

There was that first quarter personal foul that negated a third down stop at the Alabama 34. That kept a touchdown drive alive. In the second quarter a Florida player eased up before he reached the sideline. Alabama got the snap off while he was still on the field. A substitution infraction negated an incomplete pass on third down. For the second time, rather than punt, Bama went on to score a TD.

Two touchdowns right there, both of them because of a lack of discipline. A week earlier Florida lost to LSU in the “Shoe-Gate” game. Another case of no discipline.

In 2021, the Gators lost to Kentucky in Lexington, a game in which UF was flagged for 15 penalties. There were eight false starts and two delays of game. Florida took a 20-13 loss in a game that a disciplined team could have and should have won by two touchdowns.

Fast forward to the Gasparilla Bowl. Florida players were seen partying well into the night on the eve of the bowl game. The Gators were nonchalant. Because they had never beaten Florida, UCF viewed this as the most important game in school history, which had everything to do with why the Knights won the game.

In this 29-17 beating – and it could have been worse – the Gators committed eight penalties good for 85 yards. UCF on the other hand committed four. Penalties didn’t necessarily cause the Gators to lose the game, but they contributed in a mighty way.

It is fairly obvious from Napier’s demeanor that he’ll live with effort penalties, but penalties that are the result of a lack of discipline? No way.

Evident in the way the Gators ended 2020 and throughout the 2021 season was a lack of leadership. It’s easy to place all the blame on a coaching staff now departed, but players have to be held accountable as well.

“When your best players are the most accountable players on your team, you have a chance to do something special,” Urban Meyer said during Florida’s run to the 2008 national championship. There is a trickle-down effect of accountability. When your best players lead by example and hold themselves accountable, their words resonate with the rest of the team. There is a reason why the Gators would have run through brick walls to follow the leadership of Tim Tebow, the Pouncey Twins, Ahmad Black and Brandon Spikes.

Is there an alpha male or several alpha males capable of rallying the team around them by their work ethic? That’s another reason for the Identity Program. It is to help Napier and his assistants learn who the leaders are so they can lean on them once spring football practice begins.

“We spent a lot of time talking to the team about the way you put yourself in a position to be a leader is to do that with your example,” Napier said. “It’s the most powerful tool that we have for them to be consistent, for them to establish some credibility so that down the road here when they do speak up and we do give the opportunity that they can be impactful. We’re in the process of figuring all that out.”

Billy Napier has been on the job at Florida a little more than two months, during which time he has hired a coaching staff that most experts say is the most impressive group of assistants brought in by any new coach. Additionally, he’s brought in his “army” of support staff that is designed to significantly narrow the advantages of Alabama, Georgia and several other schools that have, in the past, spent more money and more man hours attracting talent and then doing whatever is necessary to develop the talent into the best players.

By the end of the spring, Florida’s new stand-alone football facility will open its doors. It will not only have all the bells and whistles that attract recruits, but long needed improvements training, nutrition and every other aspect of a Florida football player’s daily life.

When the fall arrives and it’s time for the battles to shift to the stadiums that make up the SEC, Napier’s team of assistants and analysts will have viewed hundreds of hours of film on every Florida opponent. Knowing the enemy is only part of the winning process. What happens between now and the fall will allow Napier to know his team, who the leaders are, who the followers are, where the strengths are and unfortunately, where are the weak links.

There are no guarantees that the Gators are going to win every battle, but because Napier’s plan is to ensure there will be no lack of preparation for anything that comes there way, we can know there will be no fear and perhaps, there will be a level of confidence that we haven’t seen in some time. Back in the day, the Gators were known for their swagger. That has been missing for some time.

From 1990-2009, the Florida Gators were the envy of the rest of the Southeastern Conference and the winningest team in the entire nation. During that 20-year span, the Gators were 202-52-1, nine games better in the win column than second place Ohio State, and 20 more wins than Tennessee, the second best team in the SEC. During that time, Florida won three national championships and eight SEC titles. Since 2010, the Gators are 95-57. They’ve endured three losing seasons. They haven’t won an SEC title and have only made it to the SEC Championship Game three times.

There is no shock and awe when it comes to Florida football anymore. When the Gators show up, they’re still hated by everyone else but that’s because old habits are hard to break. No one thinks of UF as unbeatable anymore and that is precisely what Billy Napier intends to change. He knows that he what has to be done to physically close the gap between Alabama and Georgia, who reign supreme at the top of the SEC. That’s why he brought in strength and conditioning coordinator Mark Hocke, who is the assistant head coach.

But in addition to transforming bodies and improving speed and agility, Hocke will be working daily to conquer an even greater distance than the physical gap between the SEC’s tough guys and that is the distance between the ears of this football team.

If they don’t believe in what they’re doing and in the people who are leading them into battle, they won’t win on the field. The Gators need to regain the swagger and the confidence that made other teams quake at the thought of playing the University of Florida.

As Sun Tzu once said, “Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

That’s what Billy Napier is trying to instill, that confidence that comes with being stronger physically, tougher emotionally and supremely confident that there isn’t a team out there that can beat the Florida Gators.