Napier: "The first year you’re almost giving a year of your life away"
Billy Napier has been on the job for six months. Half a year as the Florida Gators head coach has gone by quickly and he’s still more than three months away from coaching in his first game. The offseason is anything but for a first-year head coach.
Napier had just weeks to assemble a shell of a staff big enough to attempt to recruit before the early signing period.
“It’s year one,” Napier said in Destin at the SEC Spring Meetings. “I tell people all the time I think the first year you’re almost giving a year of your life away.”
That’s the level of dedication that Napier has prescribed himself to. It means less time with his wife and children and more time on the phone with other people’s children, trying to convince young men to join his program.
“I do think that the transition has been different because of the (transfer) portal, NIL, and playing in the (Sun Belt) Championship Game — the decision to do that,” Napier said. “The combination of December signing day, the brief time before the winter portal period, signing a staff, then the February (signing period). The combination of all that is maybe different than in the past.”
Napier has hired more than 50 staffers. They signed a top-20 recruiting class according to the On3 Consensus Class Calculator. The On3 Consensus is a proprietary algorithm that compiles ratings and rankings from all four major recruiting media services. Created by the authors of the Composite, the On3 Consensus is the most advanced, complete, and unbiased rating and ranking measurement in the industry.
Then, there was the transfer portal, of which there are truly two different periods to acquire additional talent.
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Napier thinks NIL and the portal have changed the off-season
This is where Napier believes the offseason has changed the most.
“I think roster management is a big piece of the puzzle. This is another avenue, you’re talking about two more times of the recruiting calendar where players become available. You can add a player in December, you can add a player in February. Now, there’s a winter transfer portal and there’s a spring portal period. That creates work to do. The more stability that you can create on a roster the better leverage you got. The less business you have to do at those times of the year.”
Name, image, and likeness has changed college sports. For better or worse — for the record, Napier is wholly behind players being paid. It has created more work, uncertainty, and a space where every player on a roster who hasn’t transferred yet, is essentially a free agent.
To Napier’s credit, the Gators had fantastic roster retention in his first six months. Florida had several players hit the portal, most notably quarterbacks Emory Jones and Carlos Del Rio-Wilson, receiver Jacob Copeland, and linebacker Mohamoud Diabate. They added five players in the first transfer portal window, several of which will be starters and major contributors. They also added a big piece in receiver Ricky Persall.
In his first year, Napier has added more than he’s seen attrition. It’s due in part to his and his staff’s dedication on and off the field. Building a program from scratch isn’t easy. Giving up a year of your life may be the only way to do it.
