Billy Napier to hold a press conference Friday(1/14) morning at 11:30am...

What do you mean?

Billy has made some good hires. A few HR's (Raymond in particular) and some young guys with promise. It's interesting too, even though some big rumored names didn't work out (Tosh and Scott) guys like Raymond and Peterson came totally out of left field and people only knew once the ink was dried.

I think I've been shellshocked a bit between Mac and Mullen into feeling like every hire has to be a big name in order to recruit to the level that we want to get back to the top, but the game is changing rapidly in ways that even people who follow recruiting deeply are trying to figure out.

NIL and boosters are replacing bag men, so a lot of what worked even 2-3 years ago may possibly be obsolete 2-3 years from now.

I like how Napier seems to have a pulse, or an understanding of the importance of, NIL and is quickly implementing infrastructure and support staff to set up deals for recruits.

All this

50 man walk-on roster? geez

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This guy gets it. Always impressed with his pressers

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Yes he does. I like to think that he'll kill it here, but if he somehow doesn't he should start a PR/Marketing firm because he is very good at dealing with the press.

In fact, I have a hypothesis that the reason why he's announcing each and every staff hire (down to assistant director of breakfast burrito making) is that he wants to be in firm control of the media "narrative" around this program in a proactive way. Mullen was always reactive (with everything really, firing coaches, making changes) but especially with dealing with the media when the wheels started to fall off. Remember the Monday presser after the Samford debacle when Dan was going back and forth about "his" narrative about dancing in the locker room vs the media's narrative? While Dan wasn't technically wrong, and I'm personally not a big fan of how media narratives drive situations (in many things outside of sports too), Napier seems to understand that the media narrative is a real thing that he needs to be concerned with and addressed.

Another thing that I liked from this presser is Billy's emphasis on having clearly defined roles for staff. Saban has said multiple times in different interviews how important that is to him, and that he knew that, while he was on the Cleveland Browns, that Belichick was going to be successful down the road (even though they weren't lighting it up at Cleveland) because he emphasized the importance of having clearly defined roles for every member of the organization. In contrast to what we saw this past year, look at how Knox was the RB/Special Teams coach, and really did a poor job with both of them.

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50 man walk-on roster? geez

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I'm surprised that each of them don't have an analyst role and weird fancy title yet