The pain continues for the Gator Nation following a 39-36 home loss to the Arkansas Razorbacks that represented the latest setback for head coach Billy Napier and his Florida football program.
It was a game the Orange and Blue needed to win — not just to earn bowl eligibility but also to help prevent a third-straight losing season for the gridiron gang. Do you know the last time the Gators had three-straight sub-.500 efforts on the gridiron?
Back when the nation was fighting a World War… from 1945 to 1947.
Following the fiasco in the Swamp on Saturday, USA TODAY Sports’ Dan Wolken published his “misery index” weekly column in which he surveys the national landscape for the programs suffering the most. Florida was the headliner for the Week 10 edition.
“Last year, Napier lost a lot of credibility with the Florida fan base when he ended his debut season with consecutive losses to Vanderbilt, Florida State and Oregon State to finish 6-7,” Wolken begins. “But there was promise in the offseason of improvement, excitement about new facilities and a recruiting uptick — a real chance for Napier to get some momentum and have the fan base fully behind him.
“Instead, what happened? Florida looked awful in the season opener at Utah, but seemed to recover in September by notching a good win over Tennessee. Then the Gators got stomped 33-14 at Kentucky, weren’t even remotely competitive with Georgia and have now suffered a true humiliation with Saturday’s 39-36 overtime loss to Arkansas in the Swamp.”
It actually gets worse. Wolken also noted a peculiar habit back at Louisiana-Lafayette that certainly raises some eyebrows.
“In 2019, Napier said scholarship players would be required to donate $50 to the athletic department’s fundraising arm, though later the school clarified that it was only encouraged,” Wolken explains. “Napier defended it with a lot of platitudes, saying he wanted to build a culture of gratitude for all the work that went into making the players’ jobs easier.
“That’s a nice idea, but the mechanism was all wrong. At a time when we should have been talking about schools paying players, the idea of players paying the school was a failure to read the room.
“Why is that relevant to Florida? It’s a question of style over substance,” Wolken continues. “Napier is a genial person, but he’s the king of coach speak. He loves quoting famous people. He loves a buzzword as much as a first down. He says what he thinks you want to hear.”
Anyone who has listened to Napier’s pre- and post-game press conferences knows this fact all too well.
“And that’s a great way to get a big-boy job like Florida,” Wolken concluded. “It’s not necessarily a great way to keep it, especially at a school that chewed through three coaches in 11 seasons before Napier showed up.”
May I please have, “Things that make you go ‘Hmmm’ for $1000, Alex?”
Next up for Florida are the LSU Tigers, who host the Gators in Baton Rouge on Saturday, Nov. 11. Kickoff time and broadcast information has yet to be announced.
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