The Fig Newtons Wonder car is the Florida Gators football program. Billy Napier is Ricky Bobby. I can only hope he returns and comes back from this. But my goodness, to say this hurts is an understatement.
From an outsiders perspective, it always seemed he was the linchpin and glue of Napier's recruiting. Losing him is like Zook losing Chris Leak or Meyer losing Tebow.
I wonder if we have not structured out NIL contracts correctly...Like the player has the ability to declare himself a free agent simply by entering the portal, with no penalty under the NIL contract. If a player is able to essentially declare himself a free agent by just entering his name in the portal, ALL of the market forces incentivize him to do just that. He can now hear offers from anyone else, and, if he does not hear one that he likes, or it is matched by a new NIL offer from Florida, he just takes his name out of the portal, or just waits until the transfer window ends.
Same shit going on at Ohio State. All players are testing free agency. I’m about done with college football. They have no ties to the actual university anymore, it’s just who has the most money. Shut down the recruiting budget, no more visits, no more photo shoots, fancy dinners. Just put all that money to buying a starting line up.
Hate it because he is a great player and because the reason you stated. We do have talent behind him (and more coming). So it honestly hurts less to lose him than to lose two of our best DL players.
Many rumors it's not a money thing for him. He gave two years, doesn't want to share the load with Johnson and he wants to be behind a better OL and win.
Nothing will change unless/until the UF administration gets on board with the reality that football is a big business, just like any other big business UF caters to with business/engineering/etc. schools. We wouldn't limit the ability for any of these other areas to compete , but we do for football.
Wow. The perception ALONE is awful. He was our biggest star and while you may be able to replace 12-80 on Saturdays, you cannot replace the value of having ETN stay. The perception among stars and kids coming here is that Billy is not the guy… the Is an ALL TIME bad loss. The is a HUGE indicator that either 1. We are not the program we think we can be and we are firmly planted in Nebraska land or 2. Billy is not the guy I’m glad for him and hope is a star somewhere else and gets the touches he deserves but WOW. I don’t think ever been less hopeful as a Gator. His brother just tweeted “he wanted to play for a winning program” The perception and the narrative now is strongly that this program is not heading in the right direction under CBN
I wonder what these players hope to gain by moving around all the time from team to team? If he gets a few extra dollars to move around, good luck to him. Maybe he should talk to Mertz first.
