Draining the Swamp: The journey of the Florida Gators from blue blood to basement dweller

On Thursday, Nov. 7, Florida Gators Athletic Director Scott Stricklin released a statement stating that “Billy Napier will continue to serve as head football coach of the Florida Gators.”

This comes as a shock to many as Napier has essentially been marked for firing since the preseason by media pundits and fans alike. What they didn’t consider was the most important factor in this saga, we are dealing with the Florida Gators.

The Gators are long removed from their days as the kingpins of college football under Urban Meyer and even further from their golden age in the 1990s under Steve Spurrier. They are so far removed from those glory days that the names Tim Tebow, Maurkice Pouncey and Danny Wuerffel sound like heroes in some before-time fairy tale. But how did this come to be? How did one of college football’s premier brands turn into a laughing stock? It all started back in 2010 and runs much deeper than appears at the surface.

The big problem for the Gators has been constant turnover both within and outside of the football program. Starting with Meyer, he left the team for four months after the 2009 season due to health concerns.

He returned to the program in March coaching the 2010 season, which turned out to be his worst with the program, and then he resigned following a bowl win over Penn State.

It was a rather tumultuous ending for Meyer, who was the leader of the Gators during their two national title-winning seasons in 2006 and 2008. Since that 2010 season, the Gators have had four coaches, including Napier, and three interim coaches.

None of those coaches made it to year five, and considering Napier and the program’s current trajectory, that streak will more than likely extend. First was Will Muschamp, who lasted three full seasons then got canned at the tail end of year four. Then came Jim McElwain who only lasted two full seasons before getting fired in the middle of a disastrous season in 2017.

Then came Dan Mullen. Mullen had the most success of the three and was undeniably the best coach since Meyer left Gainesville half a decade earlier.

However, Florida was not satisfied. It didn’t matter that Mullen was pulling in top 15 recruiting classes annually, it didn’t matter the team went to three New Year’s Six Bowls and won two of them during Mullen’s three full seasons. The team had apparently quit on Mullen and a move needed to be made.

Never mind the fact the Gators went to the SEC Championship Game not even 12 months prior. It was all on Mullen. It was akin to Nebraska firing Bo Pelini in 2014 after he went 9-3 and the team finished inside the Top 25. A move that set the program back in the name of a shakeup.

Speaking of shakeups, Florida’s athletic department has been no stranger to them over this extended run of failure. In 2016, longtime athletic director Jeremy Foley retired after over two decades in the position.

His replacement ended up being Strickland. Strickland both the Mullen and Napier eras, so one has to wonder if the university will let him make a third head coaching hire, early reports indicate they will, which makes the decision to retain Napier all the more surprising.

Then we get to Billy Napier, the supposed savior of the Gators. He came from Louisiana where he won four straight Sun Belt West titles and even a conference championship in his final season. The hire has been a disaster.

The team has finished Napier’s first two seasons under .500 and seems poised to do it again this year. The recruiting class for 2025 is ranked at 45 according to 247 Sports. If Gators fans were unhappy with Mullen, and they were, they must be fuming with Napier, and they most certainly are.

The Gators have also seen a lot of changes in the most important position in their entire university, the president. Kent Fuchs was the president from 2015 up until 2023 when he retired.

He was replaced by Ben Sasse in February 2023, and Sasse stepped down in July after his wife was diagnosed with epilepsy. Fuchs stepped in as the interim president and the university has yet to name a replacement.

All in all, the Gators are a disaster. They have a lame-duck head coach, a program with question marks from top to bottom, and no university president. Outside of that, everything is great in Gainesville.

The program needs a hard reset and it will get worse before it gets better. The longer Florida denies reality and tries to avoid the inevitable, the longer it will be before the Gators rise again.

Nate Johns is a first-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email jzn575@psu.edu.