Napier Needs Win Over The U To Change Perceptions

“It's hard to imagine that from 1990-2010 Florida had the best record in all of college football – 210-57-1.”

The word that comes to mind immediately when contemplating Florida’s season opener with 19th-ranked Miami at The Swamp Saturday afternoon (3:30 p.m., ABC) is perceptions. Someone will win. Someone will lose. Either way perceptions are likely to change.

In some quarters, this is being billed as the single most important season opener of the 2024 college football season although it might be difficult to beat Georgia Tech turning game one of Florida State’s jilted lover tour into modern day version of the Hindenburg disaster. It wasn’t the end of the world when the Seminoles crashed and burned in Dublin but half their wiggle room for the expanded College Football Playoff disintegrated on a soccer pitch. If they run the table on the remaining 11 games they’ll get in and have a chance to avenge last year when they were stood up at the altar by folks who thought they weren’t good enough for the playoff without Jordan Travis. They can even get in with a 10-2 record. Three? Well, they say Charlotte in December is lovely when you’re getting ready for the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

The Gators are the longest of shots to make the 2024 College Football Playoff. They have a murderer’s row of a schedule that begins Saturday afternoon with a Miami team surfing the same hype wave Florida State rode into Dublin. After three consecutive losing seasons, the perception is the Gators are on the verge of plummeting into the abyss that is filled with teams who dream of a trip to the Music City Bowl.

It's hard to imagine that from 1990-2010 Florida had the best record in all of college football – 210-57-1 with eight Southeastern Conference championships and three national championships. From 1990-2001 the Gators never failed to win at least nine games (9 three times; 10 six times; 11 once; 12 twice).

Since the 2011 season, the Gators are 98-66, the 39th-best record in college football. From 1980 through 2012, the Gators didn’t record a single losing season. Since 2013, they’ve gone belly up five times including the last three (6-7 in 2021, 6-7 in 2022, 5-7 in 2023).

Napier is 11-14 in his two years at the helm. The national perception is a coach fighting for his life, not all that far from buying a house on Lake Oconee where he can spend his buyout money commiserating among other coaches who bought the bullet after failing to perform to high expectations.

In the past two seasons, the Gators are a handful of plays from a 19-6 record. Considering 12 of the 25 games have been against nationally ranked teams (2-10 record overall; 2-2 at home, 0-5 road and 0-3 neutral site; 1-4 against top 10 teams). If the Gators were 19-6 the last two years, expectations for the 2024 season would be a top ten finish and contention for one of the 12 slots in the expanded College Football Playoff.

At 11-14, however, and facing a brutal schedule that includes eight games against teams ranked in the preseason Associated Press top 25 expectations are divided. Half the experts think Napier will do no better than 6-6 with the Florida administration giving him the axe. The other half prays for seven wins that will send ripples of hope through the Gator Nation while making a statement that Florida football is on its way back.

Even with the schedule, a 7-win season is more than achievable. This is the deepest, most experienced and most talented team Napier has had. Counting the transfers, the Gators have 524 collective starts, more than double what they had a year ago. Seven wins won’t make anyone think the bad years are in the rearview mirror but they will send a clear message that the Good Ship Gator has patched up the leaks and is no longer in danger of capsizing.

An 8-win season, while a monumental task, isn’t completely beyond the realm of possibility. To get to eight the Gators will have to avoid a rash of injuries, particularly to key people, while catching a couple of those breaks that so successfully avoided them in 2021 and 2022. It might also involve a stroke of luck, such as one of the more highly touted teams on the schedule hitting the skids the Saturday before they play the Gators.

Eight wins will certainly make a lot of believers out of Napier doubters. Billy is 51-26 in his head coaching career which includes 40-12 in four years at Louisiana where he won the Sun Belt West three times and the league title in 2021. The doubters say that Napier at Florida is proof that the Peter Principle works, that he was at his height of competence when he was coaching in the Sun Belt and now he is one step beyond his capability.

So, here we have Billy Napier at 11-14, perceived to be coaching for his job if he doesn’t post a winning record. Down at Miami, we have Mario Cristobal, who was the offensive line coach at Alabama from 2013-16 when Napier was coaching the Crimson Tide wide receivers. Cristobal is 12-13 in his two seasons in Coral Gables (1-5 against ranked teams overall; 0-4 on the road; 0-3 against top 10 teams). Prior to Miami, Cristobal was 62-60 in 11 years as the head coach at Florida International (27-47) and Oregon (35-13). At Oregon he won the 2019 Pac-12 title and repeated in 2020 in the Covid-shortened (7 games) season.

In many respects, Miami is a mirror image of the Gators. The Hurricanes won their first of five national championships in 1983. From 1983 until they joined the ACC in 2004, Miami had the best record in college football at 212-42. Since 2004, the Hurricanes are 148-103. When they joined the ACC, just three years removed from their last national championship, the Hurricanes were expected to form a 1-2 punch with Florida State that would dominate college football. It hasn’t happened, in large part because Miami has yet to win an ACC championship, much less make it to the conference championship game.

Napier is Florida’s sixth football coach since Steve Spurrier retired in 2001. Mario Cristobal is also the sixth Miami coach since Butch Davis left Miami for the NFL in 2000. Cristobal played collegiately at Miami as did Randy Shannon and Mark Richt, who neither one could restore Miami to its previous glory years.

Yet, the perception is that Cristobal is the one who will turn things around and make Miami relevant on a consistent basis once again. The Hurricanes are coming off a 7-6 season in which they played only two ranked teams (and lost) then lost to Rutgers in the Pinstripe Bowl. Miami had a good defense a year ago (24th nationally) but an inconsistent offense turned the ball over way too many times (22) and there were far too many penalties (79).

Cristobal dipped heavily into the transfer portal (247Sports ranked Miami’s transfer class No. 7; Florida was No. 5) where he picked up quarterback Cam Ward (Washington State) and running back Damien Martinez (Oregon State) to juice up the offense. The defense was bolstered by tackle Simeon Barrow (Michigan State), EDGE Tyler Baron (Tennessee) and safety Mishael Powell (Washington).

Adding the transfers has added to the perception that Miami will improve at least three wins more than a season ago, challenge for the Atlantic Coast Conference championship and make the College Football playoff either as the ACC champ or at-large. The schedule, which Phil Steele ranks No. 43 in the nation, is so favorable that it’s difficult to imagine the Hurricanes not getting to 10 wins. In ACC play, the Hurricanes don’t play Clemson, play Virginia Tech and Florida State at home and their only tough road game is at Louisville. Florida is the only difficult game among their non-conference schedule (Florida A&M, Ball State and at South Florida).

If Miami wins 10 including the elusive ACC title, the perception will be that Mario Cristobal has restored Miami, but it’s entirely possible the wins will be misleading. Miami is likely to be a team that would be fortunate to go 8-4 against an SEC schedule, but fortunately for the Hurricanes, they have a schedule that should get them into the playoff.

At 10 wins, Miami will be perceived as a good team and Mario Cristobal an outstanding football coach. But what if Miami goes 9-3 or 8-4 and neither sniffs the playoff or the ACC championship? And what if he starts the season with a loss to the Gators in Gainesville? Will Mario Cristobal’s job be on the line if he loses three or four games? Will Miami’s fickle fan base turn on him if he doesn’t deliver the goods?

If Cristobal has one real advantage over Billy Napier it is that he’s a Hurricane through and through. He grew up in Miami, played football at Miami, worked as an assistant coach for the Hurricanes and now he’s the head coach. Win or lose, nothing will change the perception that Mario Cristobal would sacrifice body parts to restore Miami to its previous glory days.

Billy Napier doesn’t have that advantage. He’s from small town Georgia and played his college football at D1AA Furman. He coached for Dabo and Nick and with Kirby Smart at Alabama. He had no connections to UF prior to succeeding Dan Mullen in December of 2021. He’s not particularly outgoing and doesn’t wow the fan base with his sense of humor or charisma. 

When it comes to perceptions, the only way he’s going to change things is to win a lot of football games. Winning seven or eight games in 2024 would be a sigh of relief among most Gator rans but it’s not going to change perceptions. That might make fans happy at Kentucky where fans think a bowl trip to Memphis or Nashville is a pleasant diversion from what is truly important – basketball. At Florida, fans expect championships and for the Gators to win their first championship since the 2008 team won both the SEC and national titles, it will take a miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead proportions.

Napier truly believes the Florida program is on a path that will bring back the championships. He is confident that it will happen here sooner but the fan base and media alike want proof. All he can do is change perceptions one game at a time by winning a lot more than he loses.