Steve Spurrier predicts winning season, bowl win for Florida in 2024

As the playoff field expands to 12 teams for the first time in 2024, several prominent college football powerhouses will be viewing it as an increased chance to make the field for the first time ever. Florida is included among those programs.

High-level success for the Gators has been fleeting in the playoff era, and current coach Billy Napier hasn’t experienced much of it so far.

But that could change in 2024.

“That’s what I’m predicting,” said former Florida coach Steve Spurrier in a recent interview on WDAE radio in Tampa. “Winning season, win a bowl game and start heading in the right direction.”

That came in response to a question about Spurrier’s confidence level in Napier following his first two seasons at the helm. And lest you think Spurrier is unaware of those results at Florida, he assured otherwise.

“Well we’ve not had a winning season in two years, so that’s not a good start,” Spurrier said. “But he feels like, and everybody feels like we’ve got a little bit better team this year. We picked up some guys. Of course we lost some guys.”

One of the biggest challenges for Napier will be overcoming one of the nation’s most difficult schedules. There’s really only one easy non-conference game against Samford before three pretty tricky ones: against Miami, UCF and then at Florida State.

That’s not quite a murderer’s row in the non-conference, but it’s tougher than most. Then you get to the SEC schedule…

Florida will play a four-game stretch to close the season that goes like this: vs. Georgia in Jacksonville, at Texas, then against LSU and Ole Miss at home.

That scheduling is why Spurrier sees one thing as an imperative.

“If we can get off to a really good start, we’ve got to open up with Miami I think at 3:30 on August 31 there,” Spurrier said. “So if we get off to a good start, build some confidence, Graham Mertz is ready to go. And (DJ) Lagway, the backup kid, he’s a talented player. So we’re in good shape at quarterback.”

There is one other big question mark for Florida, too.

“Hopefully our defense will be much improved and we can get off to a good start, have a winning season and win a bowl game,” Spurrier said.