Blake ToppmeyerUSA TODAY NETWORK
Billy’s brew must have tasted bitter for Florida fans last season. The Gators’ bowl game whipping at the hands of Oregon State was particularly skunky.
Now, entering Billy Napier’s second season, four major sportsbooks tracked by Vegas Insider list the Gators with an over/under win total of 5½.
Where’s Urban Meyer when Florida needs him? (Lying in wait for the Texas job.)
If, as the sportsbooks suggest, UF misses a bowl game for the first time since the 2017 season, Napier will need to sell Gators fans on the promise of patience. And one of the best arguments for patience resides 150 miles to the northwest.
Florida State will enter the season as a College Football Playoff dark horse after closing last year on a six-game winning streak. Few coaches worked the transfer portal better this offseason than Mike Novell, the former Memphis coach entering his fourth season at FSU. His latest plunder came this week in securing a commitment from Keon Coleman, who had been Michigan State’s best wide receiver. Coleman is one of several transfers with starter potential.
Optimism for FSU hasn’t been this high since Jimbo Fisher had it humming before he became a turncoat. But it didn’t always look so rosy for Norvell.
FSU’s turnaround is both a blessing and a curse for Napier. On one hand, it’s an argument for the potential payoff of patience rather than sprinting toward another cycle of: coach fired, buyout paid, mass player exodus, new coach hired. On the other hand, another rival flourishing amps up the pressure on Napier.
It’s one thing for Kirby Smart’s Georgia juggernaut to dunk on Florida. It’s another thing for Georgia, FSU, LSU and Tennessee to feast on fried gator nuggets. The Gators never had lost to all four rivals in the same season until last year. I wouldn’t suggest duplicating that feat, but Florida likely will be an underdog against all four. Getting beat up by rivals is a good way to fast-track a firing. Ron Zook knows all about that.
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Mark Stoops has long been the poster child for patience. Kentucky didn’t make a bowl game in any of his first three seasons. Stoops has since become UK’s best coach since Bear Bryant. But Stoops benefitted from working in the shadow of Kentucky basketball. Big Blue Nation’s football ire melts into basketball mania by the time the leaves begin to fall.
Napier can’t count on hoops protection, making Norvell a better testament for the upside of patience.
One year ago, Norvell appeared on preseason hot-seat lists, after he totaled just eight victories in his first two seasons.
A hefty buyout afforded Norvell some cover. Also, FSU had fired Will Taggart, Norvell's predecessor, after just 21 games. So, FSU extended Norvell’s runway, but honeymoons don’t last forever in football hotbeds like Tallahassee.
Here’s what USA TODAY’s Scooby Axson wrote about Norvell last spring: “Norvell is fighting an uphill battle with recruits to stay amid a culture of undisciplined and erratic play on the field and not much buzz around the program.”
Axson’s hot-seat list proved more prescient than not: Seven of the 10 coaches on that list are no longer at those schools, but Norvell proved the exception. FSU rolled to 10 wins, and now Norvell is singing of the virtue of continuity.
Napier needs for that tune to resonate at UF.
He hasn’t enjoyed the same level of success plundering transfers as Norvell. The portal opened to new entries during the last two weeks of April, but the flurry of activity largely excluded the Gators. Florida's outlook is a bit better on the recruiting trail, helped by a winter commitment from five-star quarterback DJ Lagway. The reinforcements can’t arrive soon enough. Napier inherited a program without an accruement of riches, and UF's quarterback depth chart looks particularly bleak.
Napier trusts his blueprint, but the SEC’s boiler room does not allow for slow builds, and if Florida limps along this season, he’ll continue to take heat for his tepid approach to transfers.
Norvell rewarded FSU for its patience, but patience can become drowned out in a din of dissent, spurred by continued losses to rivals – particularly an instate rival that celebrates with war chants.
Blake Toppmeyeris anSEC Columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him atBToppmeyer@gannett.comand follow him on Twitter@btoppmeyer.
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