The 7.4 million dollar man is here to rebuild UF football better than before

Photo by Chris Spears

“Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man.” – Oscar Goldman from “The Six Million Dollar Man” television series that was based on the novel “Cyborg,” written by former Gainesville resident Martin Caidin

Scott Stricklin must have felt like Oscar Goldman when he surveyed a Florida football program that crashed and burned during the 2021 season. A once great program that from 1990-2009 won three national championships, eight SEC championships and went 202-52-1 did a belly landing in 2021, forcing Stricklin to fire Dan Mullen, the coach who just a year earlier seemed to have the Gators within an eyelash of the College Football Playoff.

Mullen was the third Florida football coach since 2011 and all three were chewed up and spit out by expectations that are considered outlandish at most Division I schools, but then again, most Division I schools never had a 12-year run like the one Steve Spurrier had from 1990-2001 (122-27-1, six SEC titles, one national title) or the 6-year run of Urban Meyer (65-15, two SEC titles, two national titles). When you’ve had that kind of success, an 11-year run of 87-51 (35-15 under Mullen) with nine bowl games just doesn’t cut it. Mullen went to three consecutive New Year’s Six bowl games, but during the third year, the engines started sputtering, leading to a 6-6 flameout in 2021.

Stricklin knows and understands the expectations all too well. He came to Florida from Mississippi State, which has never sniffed a national championship in football and only last spring (baseball) came home with the first NCAA title in any sport. At Florida, any year without at least one national title in some sport is considered borderline disastrous. It had to pain him to see Mullen, who he brought to Gainesville from Mississippi State, fall so short of the higher expectations, particularly when it seemed the Gators were going onward and upward until The Great Shoe Toss Incident of 2020.

Mullen was 29-6 when Marco Wilson tossed the shoe that set up LSU’s Cade York for a game-winning 57-yard field goal in a fog-shrouded Swamp last December. Up until that point, the Gators seemed to have one foot in the College Football Playoff door. The door slammed shut on Florida a week later in the SEC Championship Game. Not even Mullen’s next generation offense quarterbacked by Kyle Trask throwing laser-guided passes to The Unicorn (Kyle Pitts) and The Rubber Band Man (Kadarius Toney) could save the Gators from a second straight loss and when Pitts and Toney (and others) opted out of the Cotton Bowl, UF was in for an epic beatdown at the hands of Oklahoma.

The shoe toss just like the silly penalties that cost the Gators a 6-point loss to Alabama was only a symptom of deeper issues within the Florida program that continued to manifest themselves during the 2021 season. Mullen went from 29-6 in his first 35 games on the Florida job to 6-9 in his last 15, but Stricklin pointed out at the press conference when he announced Mullen was gone that wins and losses were only part of the problem.

This was like Oscar Goldman surveying the wreckage of Steve Austin’s NASA test plane and making the decision to rebuild only this rebuild will cost more than $6 million. This rebuild is going to cost $51.8 million over a seven-year period to fix, in other words $7.4 million per year. Do understand that “Cyborg” was written in 1972 so we do have to account for inflation. And we have to take a bit of Hollywood-style license with the script since it isn’t a man that needs to be rebuilt, but a football program.

Billy Napier – Florida’s $7.4 Million Man – is in charge of turning the Florida Gators into the bionic football program that can slug it out with Nick Saban, Kirby Smart, Jimbo Fisher and all the other mere mortal coaches who make the Southeastern Conference the toughest football league in the country.

This will not be an easy job for a variety of reasons but let’s start with the single most important factor in the rebuild – the approximately 65-70 scholarship players that Billy Napier inherits. None of these guys were recruited by Napier, nor were they recruited to play in a system even remotely close to the one that Napier brings to Florida from his 4-year stint as the head football coach at Louisiana. Some of the inherited players will adapt to the new system easily while others will feel like square pegs trying to fit into a round hole so they’ll be looking for new places to call home. That’s almost expected. Already five Gators have put their names in the NCAA transfer portal and we don’t know if Napier will take an open door approach to welcome them back if they have a change of mind or if he’ll move on quickly to who and what is next.

Given Napier’s pedigree as a coach, having grown up in the profession under the watchful eyes of Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban, smart money is that he’s one of those don’t let the screen door hit you on your way out types.

At his initial press conference, Napier made it abundantly clear that he wants players who want to be Gators. That goes for the ones who are already on the roster and it goes for recruits. He is a no-nonsense type who isn’t going to tolerate a lot of drama.

“Our mission here is to make life-changing impact on the players, for them to experience success in life as a result of time in our program,” Napier said on Sunday. “As people first and foremost, we’re going to be values-based here. Our players are going to understand commitment. They’re going to understand self-discipline. They’re going to understand sacrifice, resiliency.”

That doesn’t sound like a coach who will tolerate players who think they can write their own ticket. The players on Florida’s roster will have a chance to audition for Napier and any assistants that have been hired on the field in the week leading up to Florida’s December 23 Gasparilla Bowl game in Tampa. Since the early signing day is December 15, Napier and his coaches will be able to watch football practice and evaluate for (a) who wants to be here, (b) who needs to be looking elsewhere and (c) what positions need to be addressed on the recruiting trail.

Napier has already done several in-home visits and he’ll be at it through Sunday. Then comes the early signing day on December 15, a day that might not yield a large number of future Gators who have signed their letter-of-intent.

The most important recruiting Napier does in December will be to fill out his staff of assistant coaches and bring in what he describes as “an army” of recruiting analysts and specialists. Stricklin is not only paying Napier $7.4 million but he’s opened up his checkbook to increase the salary pool for assistants and double or triple the money for infrastructure positions.

Through Thursday, Napier had announced the hire of three assistants. Running backs coach Jabbar Juluke and co-defensive coordinator/safeties coach Patrick Toney were hired from Louisiana and they have been out recruiting. Wednesday, Napier pulled off a stunning coup by bringing in LSU recruiting coordinator/secondary coach Corey Raymond, long considered the best secondary coach in the country and author of recruiting classes that have finished fourth and third nationally in the last two cycles.

It is being leaked out that Jacksonville Jaguars defensive line coach Tosh Lupoi, who made a name for himself as the nation’s top recruiter when he worked for Nick Saban at Alabama, will be joining the Florida staff once the NFL season is over. Ja’Juan Seider, a Belle Glade native who was on Jim McElwain’s Florida staff in 2017, is expected to be joining Napier from Penn State.

Once he has a full staff working together, recruiting can take place in earnest. As we’ve seen in transition classes from former Florida coaches Ron Zook, Urban Meyer, Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Dan Mullen far too many snap judgments were made resulting in very few contributors. With each of these coaches, the second class – the first full recruiting class – was a vast improvement.

Napier said that taking over at Florida and expecting a great recruiting class by December 15 is like “getting into the game and there’s three minutes left in the fourth quarter.” He is on record saying that he wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the Gators sign only a few on December 15. Based on the rash of de-commitments from kids who were recruited by Dan Mullen, there may be only a handful who remain in place but that’s okay with Napier because he doesn’t have to rely strictly on high school kids. On paper it seems like an entire recruiting class is about to be lost, but Napier knows the high schools aren’t the only place to find players.

Napier got the Louisiana program off the ground by taking advantage of the exceptional relationships he had with the junior college coaches and kids so that’s an option. And then there is the transfer portal. It is thought by some industry analysts that the portal will max out somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 players and no doubt a good many of them will let it be known they would gladly consider an offer from the University of Florida but not all of them can play at this level. Working the transfer portal has to be done systematically to bring in players who have the potential to provide immediate help. Napier’s old friend Mel Tucker, who served with him on the Alabama staff, used the portal to bring in 21 players who helped transform the Spartans from a losing team to one that will be in a New Year’s Six bowl.

So, strengthening the roster can be done even if it’s not the traditional way with 25 high school recruits.

“We’re going to evaluate the situation a little bit this week and over the next 10 days or so, but you can expect us to be very conservative, very patient, trying to position ourselves for post-signing day to evaluate all the players that are left over, all the players in the transfer portal,” Napier said. “And then when we do have our entire staff and organization put together, position ourselves for some really strong weekends in January, and then try to close strong in February.”

It took awhile for Oscar Goldman to figure out all that the rebuilt Steve Austin could do with his bionic parts, but the rebuilt Steve Austin was even better than the one who crashed his NASA experimental plane. It was worth every dime of the $6 million it took for the rebuild.

Scott Stricklin is betting that his $7.4 million man will be able to rebuild the Florida football program better than it has been in years. What attracted him to Billy Napier in the first place was the way he systematically broke every phase of the football program down into functioning parts, each part relying on the other so that when everything was in place, it was like a well-oiled machine.

The Gators need a well-oiled machine, but the Gator Nation has to understand first and foremost that it isn’t going to happen overnight. Based on what he has done in the past, no one should be the slightest bit surprised if Napier has success sooner and not later, but it will require patience for the $7.4 million man to do it right. He won’t cut corners, but no one will outwork him either.

Given all that he has at his disposal, Billy Napier has the tools to turn the Florida Gators into the bionic football program capable of restoring Florida to football glory. When Oscar Goldman ordered the rebuild of Steve Austin, he knew the technology was there to make Austin even better than before. When Scott Stricklin ordered the rebuild of the Florida football program, he was willing to bring in a $7.4 million man to make it better than before.

Now for the hard part, putting in the work and effort to make it succeed.