SI: How Desperate Are the Florida Gators for a Quick Turnaround?
Photo: Billy Napier and the Florida Gators; Credit: Alex Shepherd
How desperate are times in Gainesville?
In the words of Pat Forde, senior writer for Sports Illustrated, the Florida Gators are a borderline-desperate program when it comes to vying for a return to prominence.
Their over-a-decade-long absence from the National Championship game isn't as dry a drought as other bluebloods have endured. But ever since then, the Gators have... well, we'll let Pat explain the post-Urban Meyer era of Florida football.
The Gators have been close—they were in the CFP mix until the Infamous Thrown Cleat Game against LSU in 2020. They played for the SEC championship that year, and played well. They’ve won the division multiple times in the past decade, but they’ve also shuffled through coaches and seem to be closer to third or fourth in the SEC East than first.
- Last national championship: 2008.
- Last conference championship: 2008.
- Last appearance in a conference championship game: 2020.
Comeback moves: Fired Dan Mullen and hired Billy Napier, the Gators’ fourth full-time head coach in nine seasons. Produced a team picture with 144 staff members (which was explained as an all-inclusive picture). Opened a palatial new facility that cost $85 million. Currently has the No. 8 recruiting class in the country for 2023.
- Winning percentage in the 1980s: .668
- Winning percentage in the 1990s: .820
- Winning percentage in the 2000s: .769
- Winning percentage in the 2010s: .638
- Winning percentage in the 2020s: .560
This is where All Gators comes in.
Forde asked for our help in gauging the Gators fanbase's expectations for Napier's first season in charge at UF, and how desperate Florida's faithful is to re-ascend to the top of the college football landscape.
The questions weren't exactly the easiest to answer — requiring a balancing act of objectively creating expectations for a rebuilding Gators program while understanding that Florida fans have tended to lack patience from their football coaches as of late.
Can the Gators find a happy medium in 2022, perhaps not contending to win the SEC East immediately yet providing fans with enough hope for the future to not call for Napier's job when the next offseason begins? Below are our thoughts.
How hungry are the fans? Zach Goodall, publisher of AllGators.com, answers: “Napier has tried his hardest to temper fans’ appetites. Since his introductory press conference, Napier has emphasized the need to restructure every aspect of Florida football, and athletic director Scott Stricklin has given him the resources—a largely-expanded budget and what feels like a 500-member support staff—to make it happen…
"Post-Urban Meyer, every Gators’ coach has overachieved to begin their tenure only to uniquely crash and burn by the end, providing the fanbase with false hope right out of the gate before the coaches ran out of water bottles in attempts to put out their house fires. It may be in the best interest of fans to endure a true rebuilding year before reaping the benefits of a drastic change in approach, and that very well could be the case in 2022.”
Expectations for the season: “From my perspective, winning eight or more games considering the shape of this roster and the schedule ahead of the Gators would be a success,” Goodall says. “With success on the recruiting trail providing hope for the future, fans would probably accept an 8-4-ish, third-place-or-better finish in the SEC East.
"But that begs several questions: Will prospects remain committed to the vision of the program if Florida doesn't play up to its standards in Napier's first campaign? What would maintaining those commitments require? Are close losses to the likes of Utah, LSU, Georgia and Texas A&M acceptable from a recruit's perspective? How about losing to both Kentucky and Tennessee, which can't be considered outside the realm of possibility? Of course, perhaps Florida could overachieve and, unlike Mullen, Jim McElwain and Will Muschamp, Napier can continue to elevate as a result of that momentum.”
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