Billy Napier buyout: Florida coach's status 'in flux' with Gators, per Pete Thamel

Coming into the 2024 season, Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier was already on the proverbial hot seat. Now, after leading the Gators to a 4-3 record, there are still questions about his future.

ESPN insider Peter Thamel explained that Napier’s status is still in flux with the team on the College GameDay Podcast. He also shared some insight into why that might be and the buyout that Napier has with Florida.

“I would still think Billy Napier’s future is in flux,” Pete Thamel said. “He could’ve really helped himself by beating Tennessee. I give Billy Napier a lot of credit. There has been signs, and DJ Lagway is at least hope, and they appear to be aligned. It was interesting, Lagway’s father, who I follow on Twitter, posted a picture of DJ and Billy standing on the field during the Kentucky game. Florida hasn’t won an SEC game like that in a long time where they’ve kind of run someone out of the building.”

Now in his third season at Florida, Napier has led the Gators to a 15-17 record. There have been signs of improvement in 2024, though, including in the form of freshman quarterback DJ Lagway. At the same time, losing to Tennessee meant that Napier missed out on a potentially major win and the schedule gets much tougher from this point forward.

“I am a believer that there is a collectively, reasonably talented roster at Florida. Now, look, that final stretch is that final stretch. There’s no other way to say it. It was a five-game final stretch. The game in Tallahassee doesn’t look as intimidating now…there’s a path for Billy Napier. I believe the buyout number is something like $26 million. So, that is not insignificant.”

Another major concern for Florida as it relates to Billy Napier is the financial cost of firing him. His buyout is well over $20 million. That’s before accounting for buying out the assistants and likely buying out the team’s next head coach. On top of that, this comes as it looks like revenue sharing will soon be a challenge for athletic departments to navigate.

“One other macro point here is that all these schools making decisions, whether it’s SEC, AAC, Conference USA, it’s ‘I have to pay X as a buyout number and I also have to figure out how to pay, in the SEC, a $20 million budget of revenue sharing.’ There’s just not an unlimited pool of money for these schools and finding a line item for $20 extra million is — again, the money is there and nobody is playing the violin, but it’s still like $20 more million,” Thamel said.

“Florida is gonna figure out the money and it’s going to be fine. There is sort of a thought exercise of, ‘Okay, do we take $26 million and spend it on good players as opposed to spending it on dead weight coaches,’ because you’ve got some assistants on that staff. Sometimes staff buyouts are an additional $10 million. Florida, the way the contracts are written…it’s not a total poison pill on the staff. End of the day, these are still millions of dollars, they’re just not conjured with the snap of a finger.”

For the time being, Billy Napier and Florida are going to the Georgia Bulldogs, who they’ll play after a bye week.