Imagine Beat me to it. Posted the same in another thread. Here lies the major sticking point for me going forward. And not that it matters but I was impressed with Elko at Duke. Wish he'd gone somewhere else
Persoanlly, I never understood any type of Stoops fandom. However, I’m still intrigued what Kiffin can do with a talent like DJ and only needing to walk out the door to find recruits / transfers. Ole Miss is a great campus experience but you’re still in Mississippi.
What I've noticed is that a measured approach towards the situation that accounts for the required buyout, risk of another 3-4 year reset, and evaluation of progress is viewed by some as sunshine pumping. It hasn't been a great 2.5 years, but I went into this thinking it was a 4 year experiment, and however it looked in between that time, we were just going to have to give it time, because the turnaround can happen at any point between start to finish. We had folks ready to fire Billy after one season. Yes, other programs have turned around more quickly, but if you use that as your measuring stick you will be constantly chasing your tail. I see improvement with the team and I am curious if that improvement is lasting and how it looks against the upcoming schedule.
The people wanting Billy gone after year one are outliers. Why discard the overwhelming moderate thought between the ends of the spectrum? We were told repeatedly that this team had significantly improved "competitive depth" and that there was significant improvement on the defensive and offensive lines...by the coach...prior to laying eggs in 2 of the first 3 games. That contributed to fan discontent and concern that the coach was in over his head. Stating such fervent and public endorsements of the teams improvement yet getting blown out at home twice against newer coaches absolutely contributes to the doubt going forward. Many people including myself gave every benefit of doubt in the first two years because of several factors. All we wanted was to see competent football starting year 3 with a veteran QB, RB, and widely accepted talent improvement to receiver, linebacker and secondary.
Well said, @murphree_hall I can see the point in the Foley quote: "What should be done eventually, must be done immediately." I also believe in "First do no harm." Hiring > firing. Maybe Billy has no more upside. But also maybe there isn't a better hire out there and, as @murphree_hall says, we are chasing our tail...expensively.
They’re very good, if not great, teams. Since when is it ok for Florida to get blown out by anyone, much less 3 good or great team in once season (and potentially counting)? I just don’t accept the mediocrity of where we are and where we head with Napier.
In the new era you can win immediately. But even still I’d rather have a 3 year reset than stink for 3 more years then need a 3 year reset. If he finishes 4-1 the rest of the way I’ll be totally on board. I just need to see it
I mean, this thread is basically about “who’s next.” And, let’s be clear—I am really impressed by what looks to be a turnaround by our defense. However, in terms of returning Florida to Florida, how do you think Napier can turn it around, when his recruiting is at the bottom of the SEC for next year? And I appreciate the truthfulness of how difficult it is for a hot-seat coach to recruit, but that doesn’t change the reality of subpar talent coming in next year to play at a school in a league that is just brutal.
And to add on, we wanted to see a coach that learned from his two years of gameday coaching catastrophes. But we saw the same bad coaching, and we saw play calling that was bad, again. There has been nothing that has given comfort that it’ll get better next year and beyond. To the contrary, with our awful recruiting,we look to be worse in 2026 and behind because of the inferior talent.
As for the cost. There’s a significant cost in nit acting. Another year of mediocrity will cost the school multiple losses of fan support and donations. Mediocrity breeds apathy, and we have had apathetic settings for over three years. I’d argue the school cannot afford another year like this one with no tangible signs of real optimism. And at the expense of repetition, using your 4 year argument of rebuild, look at our recruiting. It is abysmal! There is in recovery of that with Napier, at least this year. And I agree that he has been handicapped by fan noise (not to mention on-field evidence), but the reality is the reality—his recruiting class is horrible.
Kiffin could probably get DJ a Heisman and probably be more successful than BN but I’m not sure it would be championship competing success. I think it would be a short marriage that ends ugly and would cost a lot.
That’s fair. But the posts are there. And the opposite is also true—in a bye week, the arguments to retain Billy are as superfluous as those wanting him fired. But, this entire thread is over the subject of replacing (and by extension, retaining) Billy. It’s probably equally fair to say if someone doesn’t want to read about it, don’t read this thread.
The scary part, is our schedule next year is the same, outside of miami, i expect every team to be improved. our wins are against teams without winning records: 3-4 Samford 3-5 UCF 1-7 Miss State 3-5 Kentucky Not sure how the schedule Gods gave us the most difficult schedule in sports. The reality this year: we needed to show up against miami and we didn't, we looked awful after an entire off season to prepare for one team a&m is better than we thought, but still, when we played them, there starter got hurt and we should have been better than them and Tenn game was the must win game on our schedule, and the dude blew it. We really weren't competitive in Miami and don't forget went down 20-0 to a&m! Then like i said, coach coaches out of the win against tenn. The signs are there......
