This figures to be an exciting yet challenging week for newly hired Florida head coach Billy Napier. He will coach his Louisiana team all week as they prepare to play Appalachian State on Saturday in hopes of winning their second straight Sun Belt Championship.
He also has to start assembling his Florida staff, as the best available candidates don’t figure to be on the market for long. With early signing day coming up on Dec. 15, he needs to figure out a way to salvage a UF recruiting class that is currently ranked 31st in the country.
Oh, and he has to start figuring out the logistics of his move to the Sunshine State, such as where he’s going to live, when his family is going to make the move, etc.
All of that can be pretty overwhelming for anyone but especially for a younger coach.
Napier, though, said that managing his time this week will be simple. His current team will take priority over his new one, and he’ll spend just as much time with them in meetings and practices as he normally would. He’ll spend some time late at night and early in the morning working on building his Gators program but not at the expense of his current players. They’ve worked too hard to earn their championship opportunity for Napier to abandon them now.
“There was no question regarding coaching in the conference championship game,” Napier said. “That was non-negotiable, and I think that it’s also important for everyone to realize the commitment that we’ve made to the players here and the staff here to really kind of take a singular focus on trying to do the best job we can do for this team in our preparation this week.
“I think what we’ve done here is we’ve tried to make a decision that we’re going to focus on the task at hand. I think, from a loyalty standpoint, anything less than that, that’s not who we are and not what we’re about. We’re in the middle of preparing as we speak here, and we’ve allocated some time early in the morning and late at night to work on some of the future challenges that we have. My schedule won’t change this week, and I think we owe that to the players, and, certainly, that’s the approach that we’ll take.”
Napier added that whether he’ll coach Louisiana in their bowl game is still “to be determined” and that he made it clear to Florida’s administration during the hiring process that he would be all-in on the Ragin’ Cajuns this week. This isn’t a surprise to anybody.
Once he finally arrives in Gainesville on Sunday, Gators fans will have plenty to look forward to. Napier has only lost one game to a non-Power Five opponent since the start of 2020, and his teams have won four consecutive division titles.
Recruiting is commonly mentioned as Napier’s biggest strength, as he helped Alabama land several elite prospects and his last three classes at Louisiana have ranked first in the Sun Belt.
While having talented players is part of the equation, Napier said that the success his staff has enjoyed over the past four years goes beyond that. It might sound cliché, but establishing a winning culture really is important to him.
“I think you need complementary talent, but you have to have a shared vision, if that makes sense,” he said. “I also think that you’ve got to build trust over time by being really consistent and being fair, and I do think that communication’s a big part of that. You’ve got to build strong communication within the building, coach to player, player to player and player to coach. We’ve been fortunate here to hire some exceptional people, not only people that have great integrity and character, but also who are very competent, some of the best in the country at what they do.
“I think assembling a staff and then, certainly, evaluating and recruiting and building a roster that not only has talent but also is made of the right intangibles. It’s one thing to collect talent. I think it’s another thing to build a team, and I think that’s what we’ve focused on here is building a team.”
In less than a week, he’ll have a new team to build. Until then, he’s all Louisiana’s.