{"id":14244,"date":"2025-10-21T17:30:05","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T17:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/14244\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T17:30:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T17:30:05","slug":"assessing-the-florida-gators-coaching-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/14244\/","title":{"rendered":"Assessing the Florida Gators coaching job"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Florida fired Billy Napier Sunday, it instantly became the most attractive vacancy in already expanding pool.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Who makes sense to lead the Gators back to glory?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Virtually every conversation the FootballScoop staff has had in recent weeks &#8212; even pre-dating the formal, inevitable <a href=\"https:\/\/www.footballscoop.com\/2025\/10\/19\/florida-fires-billy-napier\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">dismissal Sunday of Napier as first reported by FootballScoop<\/a> &#8212; features college coaches around the country, as well as agents in all corners of these United States, saying this Gator crawl begins and ends with Lane Kiffin.<\/p>\n<p>Now, even the Ol&#8217; Ball Coach himself, Steve Spurrier, is beginning to make the media rounds to weigh in.<\/p>\n<p>And for all of Dan Mullen&#8217;s offensive moxie, Kiffin represents Florida&#8217;s best chance to recreate Spurrier.<\/p>\n<p>Verbally, Kiffin is Spurrier &#8212; if not his superior. As much as Spurrier ridiculed and taunted Peyton Manning, Phillip Fulmer and the Tennessee Vols &#8230; it&#8217;s hard to recall him ever cracking about Fulmer burning calories on the sideline.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s Kiffin, needling Georgia&#8217;s Kirby Smart last week in advance of those two teams&#8217; instant-classic matchup between the hedges won by Smart&#8217;s Bulldogs.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s Kiffin asking in the preseason who&#8217;s going to call plays for Auburn on fourth down, since the Tigers&#8217; coaching staff headed by Hugh Freeze admitted an unorthodox if not wholly nonsensical approach to calling plays on first, second and third downs.<\/p>\n<p>But who makes sense if Kiffin stays put in quaint, little Oxford, Mississippi?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s Drinkwitz who also is an offensive-minded coach who&#8217;s changed narratives, not to mention the entire football program at Missouri and, oh, by the way, worked with the Missouri State Legislature to also usher in user-friendly Name, Image and Likeness legislation.<\/p>\n<p>This stuff matters more than ever in this era of college football.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond Drinkwitz? Team FootballScoop dives into Louisville&#8217;s Jeff Brohm, Notre Dame&#8217;s Marcus Freeman, Minnesota&#8217;s P.J. Fleck and Tulane&#8217;s Jon Sumrall.<\/p>\n<p>Minnesota&#8217;s P.J. Fleck is going to be a major factor in multiple coaching searches in this cycle. Florida? Penn State? UCLA?<\/p>\n<p>Fleck is going to get a look or looks, and he&#8217;s earned them. The dude wins with less, regardless if he&#8217;s viewed as polarizing or gimmicky with his &#8216;Row the Boat&#8217; mantra. Fleck owns six-straight bowl wins, as well as an 11-win season at Minnesota and an 13-win season at Western Michigan.<\/p>\n<p>He makes smart hires, which is why he&#8217;s lost coordinators in recent years to college football&#8217;s so-called blue bloods, including defensive coordinator Corey Heatherman, the architect of the Miami Hurricanes&#8217;s stingy unit.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Another offensive mind to consider? Louisville coach Jeff Brohm. Don&#8217;t assume Brohm want leave the comfort and hero-worship he&#8217;s deservedly garnered in his native Louisville. He&#8217;s an elite ball coach who&#8217;s never had a truly elite platform.<\/p>\n<p>Required podcast disclaimer: If you like the pod please rate and review as this will help us grow. If you think the pod could be improved please\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.footballscoop.com\/2025\/10\/21\/mailto:mail@footballscoop.com\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">email us<\/a> letting us know your thoughts. Thank you.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Florida fired Billy Napier Sunday, it instantly became the most attractive vacancy in already expanding pool.\u00a0 Who&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12312,589,28,10916,30,29,4902,10713,115,12468,12469],"class_list":{"0":"post-14244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-eli-drinkwitz","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-florida-coaching-candidates","12":"tag-florida-headlines","13":"tag-florida-news","14":"tag-jeff-brohm","15":"tag-lane-kiffin","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-p-j-fleck","18":"tag-pj-fleck"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14244","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=14244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}