Best memes and tweets as rival SEC fans celebrate Florida's decision to stick with Billy Napier

At the start of the 2024 college football season, Billy Napier seemed like a dead man walking at Florida, only hanging on to the job because the Gators didn't want to swallow his massive buyout just yet. After a 1-2 start that included blowout home losses to arch rival Miami and ostensible conference peer Texas A&M, it felt like just a matter of time before the coaching carousel would commence.

But then, slowly but surely, the tide started to turn. Florida reeled off three wins in four games, the lone loss a near-upset in overtime on the road against a top-10 Tennessee team. Five-star freshman quarterback DJ Lagway, Napier's biggest recruiting win to date, was seeing the field more and more, and looked like he belonged. Suddenly, the whispers began: Could Napier actually be in the process of saving his job? Was firing him worth the risk of losing a bevy of young talent in the transfer portal?

Now, just days after his injury-ravaged Gators hung with second-ranked Georgia well into the fourth quarter, we have our answer: Florida AD Scott Stricklin issued a press release on Thursday afternoon, announcing that Napier would return as the team's head coach in 2025 — an outcome scarcely conceivable just a couple of months ago.

As improbable as this may seem, it's not impossible to understand the logic behind keeping Napier. Lagway seems like a quarterback worth building around, and his fate with the program is almost certainly tied to the coach who recruited him there. We've seen genuine improvement over the last few weeks, even if some of Napier's late-game decisions remain head-scratching. With renewed NIL commitment heading into this winter and a lack of obvious replacement candidates out there, why not roll the dice and see if this upward trajectory can continue as freshmen and sophomores become upperclassmen?

That's all well and good. Florida's SEC rivals, however, don't care about any of that. All they care about is that a coach with a combined 15-18 record over two-plus seasons in Gainesville is sticking around a little longer, and they immediately took to social media to dance on Gators fans' graves.

The rest of the SEC had a blast with Florida's decision to keep Billy Napier

Tennessee fans. Georgia fans. Texas A&M fans. Miami fans. You name it: All of them congregated, ready to celebrate another year of watching Napier manage the clock in the most confounding ways imaginable. Just minutes after Stricklin's statement was released, the party was on in the replies.