Despite winning its homecoming game last weekend, the Florida Gators parted ways with former head coach Billy Napier this past weekend. Napier ended his career as UF’s head coach with a 22-23 record, and the team now sitting at 3-4 in the 2025 season Napier avoided a dismissal last year after the team started poorly by ending the year 8-5, which included a four-game winning streak to end the season. As the Gators got off to another poor start this season, the walls closed in too much for Napier, and led to UF making a change.
The news wasn’t a shock to Steve Spurrier
College atheltics is a results-based business. When you aren’t winning games, the program and university feel the pressure, and hands are forced. While Napier’s dismissal came after a win, it was a victory that the Gators narrowly avoided letting slip away. Former Florida Gators head coach Steve Spurrier made his weekly appearance on ‘Another Dooley Noted Podcast‘ and discussed the recent firing.
“It was sad to hear, but it wasn’t a shock,” Steve Spurrier said. “Coaches are as good as their record. Unfortunately, Billy’s record wasn’t all that good in four years, not just this year. Our management, our AD, president, whoever, thought it was time to go ahead and make a change. We did beat Mississippi State, although we made some errors in the game. It almost cost us. Fortunetly, Trey Smack, our field goal guy made three in a row, and we won by two points. Fortuntely they threw the ball to our defensive tackle to end the game. That was a heck of a play by him. He dropped. Good call by our D-coordiantor.”
We saw some of the same head scratching problems rear their head in the win over the Bulldogs, including having too many players on the field during special teams. Another consistent hang up, that Spurrier noticed once again, was questionable calls on pivotal downs on offense.
“Jaden Baugh, 150 yards, and we don’t give it to him on third and one. Some kind of play, not necessarily up the middle, but around the ends or whatever. I would have hoped he could have made some first downs there to eat the clock up.”
Steve Spurrier also noticed during Napier’s press conference after the game that it seemed like the writing was on the wall.
“The post game press conference, you could sort of sense that maybe the pressure was on. You know, [saying], ‘I’m going to enjoy this one, worry about next week when it comes’ or something like that. Billy’s a good guy. Everybody loves him. Just organization on the sidelines was questionable a lot.”
Spurrier is hopeful that UF’s interim coach can rally the troops
Following Napier’s firing, Florida atheltic director Scott Stricklin named wide recevier’s coach Billy Gonzales as the interim head coach for the remainder of the season. Gonzales has three different stints as a UF coach throughout his career. Those longstanding ties to the program has Steve Spurrier rooting for him to succeed in motivating this team to finish the season to the best of their abilities.
“I’m glad he got the nod,” Spurrier said. “He’s a guy that’s been here for a long time with several different coaches. Who knows? He’s deserving. Maybe he can get some fire in these guys and get us organized a little bit better and see what happens. You look at these interim coaches around the country, I guess especially UCLA. They’re beating everybody. Then you got a new coach at Alabama Birmingham, and they beat Memphis when they were undefeated. Sometimes just a different guy over there adds a little juice to the team. We’ll see if Billy Gonzalez can do that for the Gators.”
Florida is one of 11 jobs open as the college schedule heads into week 9 of the season. Despite contract buyouts growing numbers, decision makers are wasting less time than ever to decide on a coaches future. Given the changes to transfer rules, which now have only one portal window, and now give players a 15 day window to enter, but 5 days after the next coach is hired. Those changes are what Steve Spurrier believes has caused these schools to move quicker.
“That’s one reason I think when you fire a coach now, if you can do it mid-season, you’re not at the end where maybe everybody’s players are coming and going. The players, we’ll see how Billy Gonzales is as a head coach. Who knows, heck, if he wins a bunch of games he may get the nod. Soemtimes things like that happen. Wait and see.”
Steve Spurrier serves as an ambassador his alma mater, and wants to see the program have success. If necessary, he’d also be willing to lend a hand in any capacity for this coaching search.
“If they asked to help out a little bit, certanly I would try, but I don’t have any one particular guy I’d say go hire. There’s a lot of good ones out there. Some of these guys might say ‘I got it made right here’ or ‘I’ll take a chance and go to Florida, all the rest of them are 4-year jobs’. I don’t know, but if asked to help out or make a suggestion to our AD, I would certainly do that.”
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