Florida Gators message boards are in full panic mode after Billy Napier announcement

It seems Florida is content with mediocrity.

Scott Stricklin, the athletic director at Florida, announced Billy Napier is staying in Gainesville next season. This comes after Napier was on the hot seat entering the season. But at 4-4 on the year, Stricklin gave the vote of confidence to Napier.

Quite a few fans expressed their disdain with the announcement on message boards.

According to college football writer, Pete Thamel, there’s belief Napier has the young core to turn it around. Thamel said in a tweet, 70 percent of Florida’s NIL money is tied to its freshman and sophomores.

He added there's a feeling within the program that former five-star prospect DJ Lagway is tied to Napier and Napier is the best person to build this young core into being a winning program again.

It probably doesn’t help that Napier has a massive buyout of his contract either at $26.7 million. Despite going 6-7 last season and approaching a second-straight losing season, the Gators have faith in Napier. 

Unfortunately, the fan base doesn’t; and for good reason too. 

Florida fans rightfully frustrated as Florida commits to Billy Napier for 2025 season

If what Thamel said is true and there was fear that if Florida parted ways with Napier that he’d take Lagway and the young core of this team with him, this move makes a lot of sense. He deserves a chance to build something with a youthful team. 

That said, how he’s mishandled this year’s team should raise red flags. Things got bad when he played both Graham Mertz and Lagway for multiple games throughout the early part of the season.

He started losing the fan base and the Gators ended up on the wrong end of the joke that was football schools in Florida. It got so bad that after Miami embarrassed the Gators at “The Swamp”, several Miami players were appealing to Florida’s recruits at the game. 

But Stricklin and the Florida athletics department see something apparently fans don’t. Maybe they’re more patient than the fans are. Maybe Napier can take the young core to be the future of the Gators football program. 

That starts with this season. We’ve seen moments where it makes sense that Stricklin still believes in Napier. The Gators went toe-to-toe with Tennessee and Georgia, despite losing both games. Since that loss to Texas A&M, we’ve seen a coach that looked like he was fighting for his job and a team that looked like they were playing for their coach.

Fans are understandably frustrated with what Napier’s done this season and how underwhelming the year started. But things seem to have turned around. Enough that the athletic department is standing by Napier. 

Maybe the fan base shouldn’t jump ship just yet. Napier might be the perfect coach to get Florida back to being respectable in the SEC.