Former ULL Analyst: Gators Billy Napier's Process ‘Gets Better With Time'

The University of Florida is just four days removed from introducing the new captain of the Gators' football ship in head coach Billy Napier.

Arriving on the scene in Gainesville after a successful four-year stint at Louisiana-Lafayette, Napier brings an impressive résumé in the Group of Five to the SEC. Both parties hope his meticulous attention to detail can elevate the Gators to a championship level in the coming years.

However, Napier is currently an enigma in Gainesville. Coming from a small school with no previous ties to the program, the unknown can create doubt pertaining to his fit as head coach.

That marks the questions: Who is Billy Napier, and what does he offer Florida?

AllGators reached out to former Louisiana quality control analyst under Napier and current Lake Gibson (Fla.) head coach Keith Barefield for a first-hand account of what it's like to work with the new Gators head coach, the lessons he learned from him and the defining characteristics that have Napier destined for success at Florida.

Serving as an offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach at the NAIA and Division-II level throughout his coaching career, Barefield's valuable experience on the field made him a hot commodity when Lake Gibson began searching for a new play-caller in the 2020 offseason.

Quickly making the jump from coordinator to head coach with the Braves in May 2021, Barefield believes he was prepared for by his time in Lafayette under Napier, calling his role as an analyst the best learning opportunity's of his career.

"I got a doctorate in the type of coach I want to be," he said. "I used to check out like a library of his old notebooks from when he was at Bama or wherever. I'd read through them like they were entertainment. I tried to take as detailed notes as he would take, and I got four full notebooks in 14 months of just as close to word for word notes on how he did things in every little situation."

However, Napier's most significant impact on him as a coach was the ability to expand Barefield's knowledge beyond his longstanding offensive way of thinking.

Napier, a former assistant of legendary Alabama head coach Nick Saban – who spoke highly of his former assistant, giving Napier what Barefield calls the "blue checkmark of life" – applied a plethora of head coaching tactics from Saban at ULL with his own spin.

One of the biggest takeaways was how he operates with analysts.

"One of the first things that I kind of noticed about Napier was, when he was an analyst at Alabama, Saban put him on the defensive side of the ball, even though he'd been an offensive coordinator," Barefield said. "That's kind of what he likes to do with analysts if he's able to. He'll move you to the other side of the ball, especially if you've had coordinator experience in that kind of experience in your career already."

As a result, Barefield transitioned from offense to defense about a month after landing at UL, challenging him to think differently than he had throughout the longevity of his coaching career.

From that experience, he altered his perspective of the game and became a more well-rounded football mind in the process. "It was shocking, but it was probably some of the best learning I've had in my entire career being on that side of the ball at that level," he said.

However, Napier's business model for how he operates a program spans beyond the winning schematically on the field.

Instead, the driving factor of his coaching style is the individual relationships he creates with the members that make up the program. From the star player to the first defensive analyst, Napier "makes relationships of utmost importance within his culture, within his program."

"You can have the right business model, but if you don't have people who love each other and are working with and for each other, it's not going to be as successful," Barefield said. "He gets everybody in the building involved, and that becomes a family atmosphere. That's exactly the type of head coach that I want to build my program."

He went on to say he tries to mimic that at the high school level. Thus far, it seems to have worked with Barefield leading a talented Lake Gibson squad to a 9-4 record and a Florida High School Athletic Association semifinals appearance despite a rocky start to the season.

"It was more than just, what can I do for him business-wise, you know. It's true for everybody in the building. He cared about everybody personally."

His desire to go above and beyond to build lasting connections while simultaneously understanding the business aspects of the job has him in a firm position to lead Gators into the future as an all-hands-on-deck CEO.

He showed he could do that at the Group of Five level and continued to improve his way of operation each year.

"His system and his process of doing things only gets better with time," Barefield said of Napier. "It's not something that starts fast and ends fast. It's something that, however it starts, it's only going to keep getting better year after year.

That process will take time, and Napier is willing to endure the growing pains that come along with implementing a healthy culture and well-functioning team at the collegiate level. It's a reason he waited out the early offers to jump to a Power Five school until the right school came calling.

Florida was that school in his eyes.

Barefield is confident that will pay dividends in the long run, as it has for him at Lake Gibson, as he followed a similar blueprint of patience.

"He's built to last," he said. "At whatever point in the future that Napier leaves Florida, it'll be on good terms, either for a higher job in the NFL, or he's retiring there. So, I expect nothing but really, really good things coming."

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