For Billy Napier and the Gators, this is a $100-million football game

Let’s start with the obvious. Whether you’re in Jacksonville Saturday or soaking up the Florida-Georgia game on your big screen at home, you’ll see countless Georgia fans emblazoned with D-a-w-g-s across their chests. As a Gator fan you have the right to feel a bit snooty when you see that. We are Gators. We went to college. It’s D-o-g-s. Let the big dog spell.

If we go by the oddsmakers in Las Vegas who believe 2nd-ranked Georgia (6-1, 4-1 SEC) is going to obliterate the unranked Florida Gators (4-3, 2-2 SEC) then feeling snooty about Florida’s academics and overall superior athletic department might be the only win the Gators secure this weekend.

Georgia is favored by 14.5 points but it should be noted that the spread has dipped 3.5 points just since Sunday. So, the money says the Gators will be a teensy bit more competitive in Jacksonville.

Competitive enough to spring an upset? Georgia fans and most of the national media would tell you that would take a miracle of walking on the water proportions. Weren’t we thinking the same thing when Vanderbilt knocked off Alabama just one week after the Crimson Tide kneecapped Georgia, 41-34?

So it’s possible. Probable? Hardly, but possible for sure.

There was a time when Georgia fans thought the same thing about the Florida Gators. From 1990-2010 Steve Spurrier (11-1), Ron Zook (2-1) and Urban Meyer made it one of their life goals to do whatever it took to crush Georgia like cockroaches. Since Urb called it quits as a Gator, things have tilted strongly in Georgia’s favor, particularly since Kirby Smart took over in 2016. Kirby is 6-2 against Florida and he brings a 3-game winning streak into Saturday’s game (3:30 p.m., ABC).

Kirby is irritating and not just because he’s had Florida’s number in such a big way or that he’s won national championships (2021, 2022) while the Gator Nation languishes in the thought that Billy Napier could very well become the fourth consecutive coach to go down in flames before reaching the end date on his contract. Kirby is irritating because his fine collection of big, fast human beings seem to have no regard whatsoever for the law. Break the law and Kirby might make the perp run a couple of extra laps after practice. Kirby’s seemingly nonchalant attitude about the plethora of arrests is indeed irritating but let’s face it, he understands that the majority of college football championships are won by teams who do the best job of integrating a handful of high character Boy Scouts with a locker room of borderline psychopaths. He’s got a locker room filled with guys who fit that profile perfectly.

At Florida, Billy Napier seems to have the Boy Scout thing down pat. Gators go to class and they’re good citizens. Can these same good citizens  foam at the mouth as soon as they take the field? Back in the day, Florida  had the ultimate Boy Scout and more than a few who were all too familiar with a police blotter. It was easy to overlook the transgressions because the Gators were winning.

If you took a poll of Georgia fans, most would probably blame the media for blowing all the arrests out of proportion. Boys will be boys and they’ve got way too much testosterone, which is why they’re such good football players.  They do indeed think Florida’s irritation with Kirby is nothing more than a case of jealousy, claiming Kirby is simply following Urban Meyer’s uber-successful plan to win. Urban had two national championships in six years, going 65-15 without the benefit of the College Football Playoff. Kirby has two national championships in eight years and the playoff has gotten him to the national championship game two other times.

For now, at least, Georgia is what Jerry Clower once called “the tall hog at the trough.” Georgia is indeed the tallest hog in the SEC. Everybody else is trying to catch up. It has taken Kirby Smart eight years to achieve icon status in Athens. He’s 100-17 in just eight years on the job. Georgia legend Vince Dooley needed 25 years to go 201-77-10 and he only won one national championship.

Kirby has it going so well that Georgia ranks fifth nationally in athletic department revenue (approximately $210 million). Florida, meanwhile isn’t floundering, but the $189 million UF brings in pales in comparison, not just to Georgia but to SEC financial behomoths Texas A&M ($279 million) and Texas ($271 million). Now, Texas A&M and Texas are in a different stratosphere since they can ask boosters to drill another oil well or frack up some natural gas. Georgia’s $21 million advantage over Florida has everything to do with winning football games.

Ron Zook, who recruited so many of Steve Spurrier’s 1996 national championship team and 20 of the 22 starters on Urban Meyer’s first national title, said, “It’s not the Xs and Os, it’s the Jesses and Joes” that make championship teams. Georgia spent $5.3 million a year ago to bring in its latest crop of Jesses and Joes. Florida, on the other hand, spent $2,892,538. Georgia is in the national championship hunt. Again. Florida is hunting a catfish bowl game that will pit a pair break even teams in a bottom feeder game that will be played before January 1.

Because of championship success, Georgia has money to burn so the Gators see a playing field that isn’t anywhere close to level. Georgia starts out with a clearcut advantage because it spends more money to lure the best prospects to play in Athens. Florida increased its spending by $1.2 million from 2022 to 2023, but even with the increase Georgia still doubles Florida’s recruiting budget. Think of Georgia’s recruiting machine as a Ferrari. Think of Florida’s as a Honda Accord. Accords are certainly nice cars that will get you from point A to point B comfortably but the Ferrari will get you there in style and so much faster.

That brings us to Saturday. Can Florida’s Honda Accord somehow get to the finish line before the Georgia Ferrari? From a pure talent perspective Georgia’s Ferrari might have to throw a piston. Win or lose, Kirby Smart won’t feel the heat although the Bulldogs will have to go 4-0 the rest of November to make the College Football Playoff.

Florida, on the other hand, desperately needs to break the Georgia cycle of dominance on the field. For Florida to return to college football prominence it has to start winning big games against teams with winning records. The Gators’ have yet to beat a team with a winning record. Georgia has the look of a team ready to steamroll anything that gets in its path.

A steamroll loss will ignite the fires that burn among alumni who have given up on the notion that Billy Napier can inflate the Florida program back to a championship level. Napier needs two wins to make a bowl game, but more important, he needs to beat Georgia. Napier’s coaching seat is blowtorch hot and a win over the Bulldogs is no guarantee that he will be coaching the Gators next year. A win would, however, go a long way toward greasing the return skids among the people who write the biggest checks. A well-played close call loss might even pause some of the fire Billy rhetoric, particularly if the Gators can get to break even in their final four games.

A 6-6 season can be had if the Gators win one of the next four games (Georgia, at Texas, LSU and Ole Miss) and close out by piling on a few tons of misery to the country cousins in Tallahassee. Given the difficulty of the schedule, the improvement since the loss to Texas A&M and the potential of a light it up offense led by DJ Lagway and Jadan Baugh, a 6-6 record will almost certainly assure Napier that he will return for 2025.

But what happens if Georgia does what it’s done the last three years against the Gators and has the game won by halftime? A cash call might be in order. Napier has a $26 million buyout. Assistant coaches are on 2-year contracts so they’ll require buyout money as well, plus there is Napier’s army of analysts, consultants and recruiting specialists. Figure it will take a minimum of $40 million to jettison Napier. The ensuing coaching search and all that entails bringing in a new HBC, assistants and his personal army of analysts, consultants and recruiting specialists will require at least $50 million. Depending on the profile of the new coach, the cost could reach $60 million.

This puts Saturday’s game in a totally different light. For Georgia, it’s just another stepping stone on the way to a possible third national championship in eight years. A loss would hurt but won’t kill Georgia’s chances of the playoff or even a run at a national championship. Georgia won’t be denied a spot in the 12-team playoff field if it can finish the regular season 10-2.  

Florida’s perspectives are far different. This is a potential $100 million game. A win and Billy Napier probably saves his job while also saving the UAA and boosters a cool $100 million. Florida isn’t poverty stricken and wouldn’t have to hold bake sales and car washes to fork over $100 million, but it would hurt the bottom line in a very big way.

Can the Gators do it? Can they spring the upset? The oddsmakers don’t seem to think so. You would be hard pressed to find any talking head on the networks who believe the Gators can finish the deal with a win over Georgia.

Florida’s margin for error is very small. The Gators have to play a near perfect game to leave Jacksonville with a win. They can’t turn it over. They have to effectively block the edge so that Lagway has time to throw. The defense can’t miss tackles, has to get pressure on Carson Beck and has to stuff Trevor Etienne at or near the line of scrimmage.

More important, Napier can’t afford brain fog moments like the fourth down jet sweep or the decision to kick the extra point instead of going for the win against Tennessee 20 days ago in Knoxville. This is a game in which Napier can’t roll snake eyes when he makes big decisions or else he and his band of Boy Scouts are going to lose the best chance the Gators have had to beat Georgia since 2020. He needs to coach as if he's got $100 million on the line.

Win and Gator fans have a reason to feel snooty once again. Lose it and those annoying Georgia fans are going to be barking out D-a-w-g-s. They can’t spell and they’re so obnoxious.