Let me take you to the bizarre intersection of blind hope and empirical evidence, where failure is rewarded with patience and persistence in the face of overwhelming reality.
The Florida Gators officially doubled down on hope early Thursday morning. And if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times.
Hope is not a plan.
But here we are, staring at the fourth consecutive losing season at Florida for the first time since the World War II era, and Gators athletic director Scott Stricklin announced embattled coach Billy Napier is staying.
Now, next year, beyond.
“I am confident that Billy will meet the challenges and opportunities ahead,” Stricklin said. “As college athletics evolves, (Florida) is committed to embracing innovation and strategy.”
Because nothing screams innovation and strategy quite like Billy Napier.
Before we get into the hows and whys of this strange decision, let me take you back all of three weeks to the Tennessee game. The Gators, desperate for a signature win under Napier, were setting up for a field goal in the final seconds of the first half at Knoxville.
Trey Smack hit the 42-yard kick, but Florida was penalized for a substitution infraction with too many players on the field. The points were taken off the board, and Florida eventually lost in overtime — a game it should’ve won in regulation with those three critical points.
This was less than two weeks after Napier — three years into his tenure at Florida — began using the special teams mat that nearly every program uses. It’s a sideline mat with 11 dots, numbered 1-11 to make sure there is no confusion in the heat of the moment.
Innovation and strategy, baby.
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In the Friday walkthrough before the Tennessee game, there were (in theory) 11 players standing on the special teams mat. In preseason warmups, 11.
When there absolutely, positively needed to be 11 during the game, there were 12 players on the field.
That’s not just a mistake, that’s a game-changing mistake in the most competitive conference in college football, where one play can be the difference between winning and losing.
Early in last week’s rivalry game with Georgia, before the loss of freshman quarterback DJ Lagway to a hamstring injury, and before a gutty Gators team nearly pulled off an upset, I stared at the Florida sideline and was struck by the sight.
There were nearly as many blue polo shirts and black khakis on the sideline as there were players in uniform. Three seasons of paralysis by over-analysis, of asking for (and getting) 40-plus staff members to cover every possible contingency, and Florida still can’t get the correct number of players on the field.
Three seasons of confounding and unthinkable gaffes, and poor game day decisions with no solid answers. How many times does Florida need to see special teams mistakes that cost games before enough is enough?
Was last year’s absurd moment of trying to on run the field goal team while the offense was trying to spike the ball to set up a game-winning field goal against Arkansas not a red flag? Was quarterback Graham Mertz screaming, ‘What are we doing?’ during the Keystone Kops moment not enough?
The Gators lost that game, too — because the gaffe cost five yards, which made the kick longer, which impacted the angle of the missed kick.
“This is a results business,” Napier says over and over.
And maybe we’re looking at this thing the wrong way. Maybe Florida, with every possible advantage to win big, is just an average program.
The results, for the majority of the program’s history, have looked a whole lot like what Napier has delivered. He’s 1-10 in rivalry games (Georgia, Florida State, Tennessee), and a 2-13 against ranked teams.
In the 100-plus years of football at Florida, there have been two pockets of legitimate success — and both were because the Gators hired rare, unique coaches.
Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer were sharks. Elite motivators, and schematically advanced far beyond the rest of the game.
The best high school players wanted to spend three or four years in Gainesville, wanted to win big with arrogance and attitude. The national and SEC titles, the elite players and rollicking Saturdays in the Swamp, are all with Spurrier and Meyer.
The rest of Florida football consists of an average of 6.8 wins per season, save for a unique season by Spurrier the player, when he won the Heisman Trophy in 1966.
So maybe the empirical evidence isn’t the mounting losses, and the historically bad string of losing seasons. Maybe it’s just a typically average program hoping a potentially rare freshman talent at quarterback will save everything.
Maybe it’s hope that Stricklin giving Napier a vote of confidence will magically improve recruiting, which is currently ranked No. 51 by the 247Sports composite.
Maybe it’s hope that players from the transfer portal will want to play with Lagway, and that will be the draw to Gainesville more than the coach who can’t seem to get out of his own way.
Hope, everyone, is not a plan.
Hiring a shark for a coach is the only plan.
