Nick Saban Showed Mercy To Billy Napier With His Scathing Takedown Of Florida’s Football Program

Billy Napier is likely going to be fired by Florida in the coming weeks, even as soon as Monday, but Nick Saban does not place all of the blame on the head coach. He sees a much bigger issue in Gainesville.

Whomever is tapped to lead the program is doomed to fail!

Napier was hired to replace Dan Mullen in 2022 after a lengthy run at Louisiana-Lafayette. The Gators lost a bowl game to UCF and finished at 6-7 during his first season. They went 5-7 last year.

2024 is off to an equally as rough start. Florida got smacked by Miami at home and lost to Texas A&M by 13 in a game that looked a lot closer on the scoreboard than it was in real life.

At 1-2, Napier is firmly on the hot seat. The remaining schedule does not bode well for him:

• at Mississippi State (Saturday)
• vs. UCF
• at No. 6 Tennessee
• vs. Kentucky
• at No. 2 Georgia
• at No. 1 Texas
• vs. No. 16 LSU
• vs. No. 5 Ole Miss
• at Florida State

There is a high probability that Napier will be fired before he travels to Austin unless the Gators can really come into their own over the next four weeks. That seems unlikely.

Billy Napier is a lame duck at Florida.

A group of high-profile boosters associated with the program have already gathered enough funds to pay a roughly $26 million buyout. The university is prepared to remove Billy Napier as soon as necessary even though it refuses to talk to him about the future of his employment.

Saban doesn’t think that Florida will suddenly return to relevance if/when it fires its coach. He sees much deeper roots under the surface that created the program’s problems over time.

I think maybe the problem isn’t the coaches! You know, they’ve been through four coaches since Spurrier and Urban Meyer, who both created a tremendous culture of winning there.

And sometimes the fanbase can just think, “well we can show up and expect to win,” and not make the commitment to the program that you need to make to be able to continue to make the changes and investments you need to make to keep up with changing times.

— Nick Saban on College Gameday

The greatest college football coach of all-time raised questions about the Gators’ foundation. Saban wonders how anyone could be successful without proper support on multiple fronts.

Things change!

They should’ve taken advantage of building better facilities when Urban Meyer was there. What’s there collective been like? How have they adapted to this new model of college football?

So it’s not just the coaches. When you’ve been through four coaches that haven’t had success, there’s something else that people should be looking at.

— Nick Saban on College Gameday

Saban broke it down to its simplest form. A team cannot win without talented players on its roster. Talented players are not going to commit to a program that does not provide value. Florida is not providing enough value.