Neil Blackmon Article on Florida Football Rebuild

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How bad has it been at Florida of late? Is Florida a slow-build situation more akin to Clemson, where Dabo Swinney needed years to build an established winner after Clemson spent nearly 2 decades playing for second behind FSU in the ACC?

There’s value in the perspective of a visual.

The Gators boast one of the SEC’s four winningest programs since full integration came to the SEC in 1972, ranking third behind Alabama and Georgia in win percentage over the 51 years of fully integrated football. But Florida hasn’t won the SEC since 2008, has posted 3 losing seasons since 2017 after having none from 1980-2016, and is coming off their worst decade, from a win percentage standpoint, since the 1970s. Things have not been good, and turning that around immediately might not be realistic, no matter how many posts are fired off on Twitter about “Coach Prime.”



*includes interim coaches

** Florida’s 1984 SEC Championship was stripped by the SEC after Florida won the league. The 1985 and 1990 teams were also ineligible due to NCAA infractions under the Pell and Hall regimes.

Does Florida’s recent downturn matter to recruits?

The former SEC head coach who spoke to SDS thinks it does.

“The main thing is the kids don’t remember a time when Florida was elite. They know Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, LSU or Clemson. They don’t know that Florida beat the pants off Georgia for 25 years. They were in diapers when Tebow won all those games. You have to sell kids on now. Fans remember the other stuff.”

Selling kids on Florida may make a slow build even harder, but so does the quick fix age of the transfer portal. But even the portal doesn’t guarantee overnight success.

Take Mike Norvell for example, who has used the portal beautifully to address his roster deficiencies at FSU. Norvell started 7-11 at FSU, two wins worse than Napier’s 9-9 at Florida. He was 0-4 with a loss to Jacksonville State in his second season. But given time to build his program from the ground up, he now has FSU positioned for a second College Football Playoff berth in program history. Florida, of course, has never been to the College Football Playoff.

Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned about patience in Norvell. Perhaps comparing a slow build at Florida State, a program in the ACC, is not a good data point for a program like Florida, which plays in what is traditionally the best conference in the sport.

SEC passion, and the age of social media, where a loud minority’s anger can quickly snowball into a dull roar of anger and marching pitchforks, is also a factor.

“In the age of SEC football being king and the influence of social media, attempting a slow build in the SEC landscape is a challenging task,” Dave Waters, the host of the hugely successful college football podcast Gators Breakdown told SDS via email this week. Waters cited the reliance on young players, who often make mistakes, as one issue with a slow rebuild, and aptly pointed out that to rely on young players successfully, you better recruit at an elite level, which Napier has not done until this season, when he is expected to land his first top-5 class.

“The transfer portal introduces another concern when trying to execute the slow build strategy,” Water wrote. “A slow rebuild typically entails early losses. You have to maintain the investment of current players and as a program you have to effectively sell recruits on the future potential and the opportunity to make a difference. That is easier in the early stages of a tenure, but sustaining the recruitment process becomes more challenging as losses continue to accumulate.”


Does Florida have the patience for that in a world of quick take hot take media and mob mentality social media?

“You have to consider it,” Waters wrote of social media. “Major programs with championship expectations like Florida cannot afford to accept mounting losses. The constant exposure on social media is a blessing and a curse, but at Florida, where a huge rival is winning championships and another (FSU) is competing for them now and is consistently ranked, that creates restlessness.”

The restlessness gets loud. Does the restlessness and constant turnover create fatigue in fundraising, too?

The big dollar boosters who spoke with SDS pushed back against that idea, but with one big caveat: They think stability at Florida has been missing and has merit.

“There’s this one quote from (former UF Athletic Director Jeremy Foley) that gets misused so much it makes me ill,” the man with the 2008 title ring tells me as we walk together toward The Swamp entrance ahead of the Charlotte game.

“Jeremy said what must be done eventually should be done immediately, and Florida fans use it to fire every coach who loses a tough game. The truth is Jeremy believed in stability, too. That’s how he built the best athletic program in the SEC at Florida. Hire good people, live with growing pains, let them flourish. Mary Wise. Billy Donovan, Bryan Shelton, Becky Burleigh. None of them won immediately. It takes time. If you run a business and you change leadership over and over, you can succeed in spurts, I guess. My business model was always about culture and stability. Jeremy’s was too. Mine worked. Jeremy’s worked.”


‘Winning is a habit’
None of that means Florida should accept another decade of losing, or Napier shouldn’t make changes.

Vince Lombardi used to say, “winning is a habit,” and it was a favorite phrase of Florida’s favorite son, Steve Spurrier.

The ball coach reflected on the phrase during the summer, when SDS asked him about Napier.

“When I left Florida in 2001, at least they weren’t calling us losers anymore. They called us other names— cocky, brash, whatever, instead. But losing is a habit, too. Obviously, 6-7 isn’t what we’re looking for at Florida. But Napier has done a good job cleaning up things and he improved his staff after Year 1, I think.”

The staff improvements referenced, including young defensive coordinator Austin Armstrong, appear to be paying dividends in 2023.


Will Napier continue to be reflexive and make changes again after Year 2?

One former SEC coordinator thinks he needs to, starting with who calls plays.

“Napier calling his own plays is lunacy, OK? If you are a genius, maybe you do that. But his offensive scheme is just OK. They were good on offense last year with a great offensive line and a stud at quarterback. But that scheme isn’t brutally hard to prepare for and every second Napier spends game planning, he can’t do something else. That tradeoff isn’t worth it for that scheme.”

On a radio show with Steve Russell of WRUF this week, Spurrier seemed to agree. When Russell mentioned Missouri’s prolific passing game, Spurrier went right to the heart of the matter — who was calling plays.

“Eli Drinkwitz, he gave up play-calling and hired him an offensive coordinator and they’re 5-0,” Spurrier said. “Jimbo Fisher gave it up and brought in (Bobby) Petrino, who’s an excellent play-caller.”

Multiple sources told SDS this week that Napier will make a change in the offseason and bring in his own coordinator. Time will tell if that is impactful, but first and foremost, Napier the CEO has to get the hire for who replaces Napier the coordinator right.

While they wait for that, Florida has 7 games to play, chasing the program’s first winning season since 2020.

Where does that leave the Gators?

“Beat Vanderbilt,” one of the boosters tells me. “I know where I’ll be Saturday afternoon. It would be nice if Coach Napier and the Gators made that trip fun, like it has been so many Saturdays before.”

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orange kool-aid one week, blue kool-aid the next!

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