After an optimistic spring, Billy Napier faces his latest PR nightmare with the Jaden Rashada lawsuit
Just 24 hours ago, I tweeted that Florida was among the teams I was higher on in my post-spring, post-portal SEC Power Rankings.
The Gators had a solid spring, with 5-star freshman quarterback DJ Lagway turning heads with a couple ‘Wow’ plays in the Orange & Blue Game and both lines of scrimmage looking much improved.
Transfer linebacker Grayson ‘Pup’ Howard popped and Trikweze Bridges and Asa Turner represented portal upgrades for a bad secondary. Then, UF smartly took a flyer on former 5-star corner Cormani McClain and added productive Arizona State wideout Elijah Badger.
But as has been the case for the entire Billy Napier tenure at Florida, another PR nightmare is just a day away.
On Tuesday, On3’s Pete Nakos reported that former Gators signee quarterback Jaden Rashada — yes, him again — had sued Napier, former UF director of NIL Marcus Castro-Walker and Hugh Hathcock, the program’s top booster, over an NIL dispute dating back to December/January 2023.
The 37-page complaint is filled with juicy complaints — with the parties allegedly making “false and fraudulent promises” — around the famed $13 million deal gone wrong.
In a previous world, Napier might be cooked with the purported text messages from Castro-Walker allegedly promising a $1 million payment for Rashada’s signature during the 2023 Early Signing Period in December, but alas, those rules no longer apply.
A lot has yet to be sorted out here, but to sum up what we do know: Florida’s head coach is getting sued by a now-backup quarterback at Georgia, but the program is probably not in danger of NCAA penalties thanks to a Tennessee victory in court earlier this year.
Still, it’s another optical ‘L’ for Napier, who has already suffered far too many actual defeats on the field in his first two years in Gainesville. The Gators finished under .500 in 2022, and then went 5-7 last season. They aren’t projected to make a bowl game this fall, per oddsmakers, and any goodwill Napier thought he bought himself this spring has gone kaput.
The Jaden Rashada fiasco is a story Napier has been unable to run away from, and unlike Jon Snow in Battle of the Bastards, I’m not sure he can continue to battle storms at fronts (be it bad headlines or worse) because reinforcements aren’t coming to his aid. Napier is likely to respond with a vigorous denial. He has that right, and since his name isn’t on any of the reported text messages, it’s a classic he-said, he-said deal.
But this was all avoidable, and it’s still so strange that Napier (and Florida’s program) positioned themselves to be so desperate in the first place.
The crux of Jaden Rashada’s lawsuit against Billy Napier
Let’s go back to that famed Wednesday afternoon on Dec. 21, 2022. Napier was an hour late for his National Signing Day press conference. Rashada had still not sent in his LOI, when suddenly, Napier appeared at the podium and talked about landing the 4-star quarterback. Three weeks later, Rashada doesn’t report to Gainesville on move-in day and then is given his release from his NLI.
The crux of the lawsuit seems to stem on what might’ve (or might not have) happened within that December afternoon hour, and yet no matter where the truth lies, it’s the latest example of Florida’s program (and by extension, Napier) being publicly flamed.
There was the call from inside the house back in March, when Steve Spurrier went on the record openly questioning Napier’s ability to do the job. Later that month, UF’s top pass rusher in 2023 and current Ole Miss transfer Princely Umanmielen criticized Florida’s strength and conditioning staff and on-field coaching.
Now this latest Rashada mess.
Another PR nightmare. Another scathing headline.
It’s too early to know what this means for Napier’s ultimate future, but suffice to say, we’ve officially reached DEFCON 1 status for Florida’s embattled head coach. Billy Napier is a good dude, who since Day 1 of taking over the Gators has said he’s the man with a plan to fix Florida’s program.
But he was hired on the premise he could fix the issues he inherited … not a bunch of ones he created.