{"id":11409,"date":"2025-10-19T21:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T21:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/11409\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T21:15:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T21:15:10","slug":"florida-fires-embattled-coach-billy-napier-in-21m-catastrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/11409\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida fires embattled coach Billy Napier in $21M catastrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"

A narrow victory and a sizable buyout were not enough to save Billy Napier.<\/p>\n

The fourth-year Florida head coach was fired Sunday on the heels of a 23-21 home victory over Mississippi State, during which, and after, he was booed by a home crowd that witnessed a conference victory.<\/p>\n

The university will be on the hook for more than $21 million, according to ESPN<\/a>, with half due in the next 30 days and the rest to be paid in three installments beginning next summer. <\/p>\n

Florida fired coach Billy Napier in October 2025. AP<\/p>\n

Florida, which is still paying former coach Dan Mullen, will be handing out checks to three different head coaches.<\/p>\n

The program decided it had seen enough after a victory \u2014 one that looked like a loss until an interception with 21 seconds left and ensuing field goal saved some face \u2014 that improved the Gators to 3-4 this season.<\/p>\n

Despite the win, Napier heard loud boos as he jogged off the field in what became the final contest of a 22-23 tenure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to enjoy this one tonight,\u201d an emotional Napier told reporters after the game. \u201cTomorrow we\u2019ll wake up and worry about what\u2019s next.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision to fire Billy Napier came after Saturday\u2019s home win over Mississippi State. Getty Images<\/p>\n

The home Florida crowd booed its coach on Oct. 18, 2025. Matt Pendleton-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

The Gainesville crowd already had turned on Napier, who was nearly fired after three games last year, one of which was a blowout at Miami\u2019s hands and another a loss to Texas A&M. But athletic director Scott Stricklin backed Napier, and ending the season with four straight victories offered promise.<\/p>\n

But no momentum was carried over in a disastrous 2025 season that included three consecutive losses to South Florida, LSU and Miami.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s move comes a week after Penn State fired longtime coach James Franklin<\/a> following three straight losses. He had $49 million remaining on his contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A narrow victory and a sizable buyout were not enough to save Billy Napier. The fourth-year Florida head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[143,28,2530,30,29,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-11409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-college-football","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-gators","11":"tag-florida-headlines","12":"tag-florida-news","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}