Gators Focusing on Themselves Amidst Kiffin Noise, Bowl Eligibility Concerns

GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- There is no more room for error for the Florida Gators in 2025.

Entering the season as a playoff dark horse, Florida now finds itself one loss away from being ineligible for a bowl with three games still to go in the season. This week's matchup at No. 7 Ole Miss presents the toughest challenge in the stretch, which includes home games against Tennessee and Florida State to close out the season.

Interim head coach Billy Gonzales said that the team's primary focus is to take things one day at a time.

"From my standpoint, don't look back. Don't look back at the past, and really, for me, don't even look into the future," he said. "We're day by day right now, and that's the biggest thing for us, we're day by day. Put our feet in the ground, put our cleats in the dirt, and let's go play football, and again, concentrate on the day that we have in front of us."

Florida Gators interim head coach Billy Gonzales enters his third game leading the program since Billy Napier's firing. | Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images

Florida is 0-2 since former head coach Billy Napier's firing, with a close loss to Georgia and last week's blowout defeat at Kentucky. Despite the results, the Gators have had a knack for playing their best ball with their backs against the wall.

Last year's turnaround came with the team turning a 4-5 record into an 8-5 finish. There's also this year's upset win over Texas while sitting at 1-3.

Those results are the past, though, and the significance of Saturday's game is much more important with the 2025 Gators in danger of being the fourth UF team since 1990 and second in the last three years to miss a bowl.

The last time Florida missed a bowl in at least two out of three years was from 1984-86, when the Gators were ineligible for postseason play due to NCAA violations in 1984 and 1985 and missed a bowl in 1986.

None of that matters, though, in Florida's eyes.

"I feel like it's the same goal. We always had the same urgency," safety Bryce Thornton said. "Everybody wants a bowl game, especially me.  It's always fun playing in one. But I just feel like as a team, you just come together and just sticking together's the biggest thing."

Part of handling the noise of needing to win out, at least this week, is also staying focused and ignoring the outside talk of Florida's coaching search. Adding to the chaos is the fact that the person whom many believe to be the Gators' top candidate will be on the other sideline this week in Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin.

While Gonzales and multiple players this week admitted they've seen the reports, rumors and discussion regarding Kiffin and a possible decision to either stay at Ole Miss or come to Florida, they've emphasized that it's something that's out of their control and something they cannot afford to focus on.

"I mean, nothing is final yet, so we don’t know who is going to be our coach. So regardless, we’ve got to go out there try to win," receiver TJ Abrams said.

Ole Miss Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin will be on the opposite sideline, while also being rumored to be Florida's top candidate for head coach. | Petre Thomas-Imagn Images

They are also finding it easy to ignore thanks to Gonzales' leadership.

"My coach right now is Billy (Gonzales), and I feel like he's done a great job just keeping everybody together and keeping the team together," Thornton said. "So I don't really try to think about it too much, I just follow what Billy says."

Ole Miss is not one of Florida's traditional rivals. There are not many games between the two that have shaped the landscape of college football. Yet, Saturday's game comes with as much noise and as chaotic a storyline as any in recent memory.

So, while everyone else around the country is focused on the storyline of Kiffin and others closer to the program focus on bowl eligibility, the Gators are focused on themselves.

"Everybody wants to win," Gonzales said. "I think as coaching staff, we want to win, we're going to continue to keep pushing. We're not quitting. We're still fighting, pushing our players, we're coaching our players extremely hard. But at the same time, yeah, obviously, do we want to win? 100%? It's not been good enough right now for us to get the W. But the message is still going to be the same: We're going to continue to keep fighting, we're going to continue to keep preparing."

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