**The end is not near, for Billy Napier at Florida**

This has been posted earlier, I'm sure. Don't have time to go through 60 pages. CBN stays if it is Stricklin's call. If SS fires him, he will be admitting he is a failure as an AD and will have to follow CBN out the door.

 

I think he may be onto something.

 

And having an AD that I would guess is allowed to watch practice and not knowing what the hell he is looking at. I promise if you if Spurrier was watching practice, he would know this was a load of shit.

 

That's true. And even assuming that it is not improved, that doesn't change the facilities issue and NIL. Those have been fixed.

My ire is directed at Sabans unjustified and ill informed criticism as well as the fact that Gator fans are eating it up like sound bites of a politician. Saban and others have been crapping on the program.

And my response is which of our last 4 coaches failed for those reasons? None. So it isn't all these things that are holding us back. Napier hasn't been hamstrung by facilities. Yes we had a hiccup with NIL but that was newly implemented across football. We only know it is an issue because of Rashada.

The product on the field has been the problem.

 

Spurrier on the 2024 Gators in an interview with Pat Dooley.

"I'm pick the Gators to finish somewhere around fifth or sixth [in the SEC], win between eight and 10 games. Maybe nine," Spurrier said. "Something like that. I think we have a lot of good players. If we can beat Miami in the first game and develop some confidence that we are good enough to win, and now let's go do it, maybe that will sustain us throughout the course of the season."

 

I'm sure he is just as surprised as anyone how bad the defense is once again.

 

Not very difficult to see we've had a run of head coaches who are not able to hire a top ten staff capable of excelling on the field in all 3 phases.

 

I prefer this way of thinking...

 

I could not agree more.

 

It comes back to the AD. Scott Stricklin needs to go! He certainly should not be anywhere near the next hire!

 

Excellent points. They spent a goodly amount of money improving and expanding the concourses on the west side, and south end zone , but the concessions are still limited and expensive. (Our bathrooms aren’t luxurious but I can tell you they are reasonably clean and not nearly as crowded as other places… I’m talking to you Jacksonville, Miami, and UTk )
The outer concourses themselves are nice and wide (West side), but they haven’t been put to any practical use. They do help traffic flow I suppose, but they seriously need to study Atlanta (pro’s) and Texas (collegiate) concessions before they have a large outlay to improve the eastern concourses.
The stadium does need some upgrades badly, but they have to be well thought out, and the improvements on the west side brought very little in the way of improved fan experience for the amount they spent, and it wasn’t anywhere near the amount being discussed now.
Bottom line for this 50 year season ticket holder, fix the program 1st, spend a reasonable amount on the most important improvements (and listen to your fans, all of them) that actually make the game day experience (for all fans) better, and the the rest will follow.

 

I hope that is completely wrong and that it’s not up to Stricklin.

 

You know it’s ultimately the money that makes this call, and they’ll move whatever obstructions are in their way when they’re ready to move.

 

I’d say he either doesn’t spend a lot of time watching their practices or he’s just being nice because if Spurrier spent the entire fall camp there, he would know what he’s working with

 

To be fair, the administration and Billy have made it easy for them to “crap” on us.

 

It’s almost a statistical improbability to be this inept for this long. Looking forward to moving towards the mean!

 

So one of the issues is, what does Stricklin do well in his AD role? Hiring coaches is important- very important. But there must be more to the job. What you, we, us, would not want is a great football hire but other aspects of the AD degrade. If Stricklin is considered great at the other parts of the job, raising money, dealing with boosters, etc, I could see the higher ups retaining him but installing a process that largely limits Stricklin's capacity to strike out.

 

You miss my point. The coaches we have had failed for reasons not associated with any of the stuff that has been inaccurately identified.

They are taking pot shots that are not well taken. I particularly dislike the characterized of our entire program as shit because it becomes the narrative when not only fans of other teams but also Gators fans parrot it.

We've had the problems identified. They are largely fixed. Most importantly, a quick look at each coachs tenure shows it was their failings that led to their dismissal.

Sure, I think SS has done a pour job selecting coaches and I have been particularly annoyed at the way he went about hiring Napier. That was bush league.

But this program is not at all screwed, does not have the impediments identified and isn't a barrier to success.

People need to stop parroting Sabans nonsense like he's a god. He's a great coach, one of the best ever. Yet, you don't see that same kind of passion from the guy on our side. You don't see that kind of discipline. It's the guy not the program.

He doesn't know what he's talking about when he cites facilities, NIL etc as if those are the problems.

These are misrepresentations by a very influential person and are extremely embarrassing and destructive. So, I'm on a bit of a tirade about it.

 

I get your point and share your frustration. I just think that the administration shares in some of the blame. They were slow to respond to player facilities. They were slow to embrace an indoor practice facility. Our first attempt at NIL didn’t go well. Slow to increase support staff, etc. It all starts with vision. “Without vision the people perish.” I don’t believe that our leaders in the AD have any vision when it comes to the football program and rely on the vision of the coaches instead of creating one for the university. It’s this lack of vision that has caused us to be constantly reactive instead of proactive.

 

Fire Stricklin, flush out his cronies in the UAA (almost all of whom aren’t Gators) then get your coach. Don’t let Stricklin hang around this ain’t Mississippi state. Put football first second and third.