Florida coach Billy Napier was fired Sunday despite a win over Mississippi State, seven games and four losses into another lackluster season in which the Gators slipped further behind the SEC’s top programs as his methodical build never turned the corner.
Napier had two losing seasons to start his tenure at Florida, but he appeared to have the Gators pointed in the right direction after a 2024 surge that convinced the school to stick with him for another year. He had three full years remaining on his seven-year contract. According to its terms, he is owed a buyout of about $21 million, with half due within 30 days and no offset clause if he gets another job.
“Billy built a tremendous culture of accountability and growth among the young men he led each day,” athletic director Scott Stricklin said in a statement. “His organized and detailed approach had a meaningful impact across all levels of our program. As Coach Napier has often said, this is a results-driven business, and while his influence was positive, it ultimately did not translate into the level of success we expect on the field.”
Florida’s interim coach is receivers coach Billy Gonzales. He served as an Urban Meyer assistant on the Gators’ national championship teams in 2006 and 2008, was a co-offensive coordinator under Dan Mullen and joined Napier’s staff in 2023.
Florida entered the season ranked 15th in the AP Top 25 with hopes of a possible College Football Playoff run, led by five-star sophomore quarterback DJ Lagway. But a Week 2 home loss to USF immediately put Napier back on the hot seat, and Lagway threw five interceptions the next week in a two-score loss at LSU.
An upset of No. 9 Texas was only a temporary reprieve as one of the nation’s toughest schedules continued. His Gators faded in a 34-17 loss at No. 5 Texas A&M; it was his 16th loss in 21 games away from Gainesville. His final game was Saturday’s ugly 23-21 win over Mississippi State in which he was booed repeatedly at home. This week’s open date gives Florida’s interim coach and the rest of the program time to adjust heading into next week’s rivalry game against Georgia.
Florida hired Napier away from Louisiana, where he built a Sun Belt powerhouse that went 40-12 in four seasons, to replace Dan Mullen.
Mullen was let go 11 games into his fourth season in 2021; he’d gone 34-15 with three New Year’s Six bowl appearances as Florida’s coach, but recruiting had fallen off in Gainesville, and little problems festered. A program with three national titles since 1996 feared it was being lapped by Georgia and Alabama. Napier, a former Nick Saban assistant at Alabama, was hired to close the gap on the field and in recruiting by modernizing a program that looked stale.
Instead he went 22-23. Napier became the fourth Florida coach since two-time national champion Urban Meyer stepped down after the 2010 season who failed to last four full seasons leading the Gators, joining Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Mullen.
Napier’s .489 winning percentage at Florida is the worst of the bunch and the worst of any of the Gators’ non-interim coaches since 1945. Napier also never came close to the big-time bowl/SEC championship game appearances of his predecessors. He was 3-10 against the Gators’ annual rivals: 0-3 against Georgia, 1-2 against Tennessee and Florida State and 1-3 against LSU. Napier was also 0-2 against Miami, including a 26-7 September loss in which Florida totaled only 61 passing yards, its lowest since the 2014 defeat against South Carolina that cost Will Muschamp his job.
Napier’s teams were marred by disarray and the kind of self-inflicted errors he was hired to fix. The Gators had two players wearing the same number on a punt return against Utah in 2023, failed to field 11 special-teams players repeatedly (including this year at Miami), were flagged for spitting on a USF player on Florida’s game-losing drive and had at least four touchdowns nullified by penalties this season, including a 60-yarder Saturday.
Napier’s tenure was also stained by one of the biggest snafus of the name, image and likeness era. Blue-chip quarterback Jaden Rashada signed with Napier’s Gators in December 2022 but was released from his letter of intent after an eight-figure NIL dispute. Rashada later sued Napier in a case that remains ongoing.