The Florida Gators are already getting heat from their fan base to part ways with head coach Billy Napier after one game into 2024.
The college football season is underway — and a few coaches entered the season already on the hot seat —with an a bad, or below-average season meaning this will be the last at their respective school.
For each coach, the situation is vastly different.
Ryan Day and the Ohio State Buckeyes have been really good by most team’s standard since he took over during the shortened season in 2020 where they finished (7-1). The last three seasons, Ohio State has
Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day pumps his fast after a touchdown by Ohio State Buckeyes quarterback Devin Brown (33) during the first half of Saturday’s NCAA Division I football game against the Purdue Boilermakers at Ross-Ade Stadium in Lafayette.
finished with an impressive (11-2) record, but the Buckeyes have fallen to their biggest rivals from Michigan in each of those years. ‘
Even though Day sports an impressive record of 56-8 as the head coach at Ohio State which includes getting his squad to the College Football Playoff, the Buckeyes losing to Michigan 3-straight years and not finding a way to get it done for college football’s ultimate prize has fans impatient.
But the situation is vastly different for the Florida Gators.
Day also entered 2024 with one of the most talented rosters in recent college football history. So if Ohio State doesn’t make the new 12-team playoff and win a game at the very least, it’s safe to say the Buckeyes brass would be pressured to make a move.
There’s names like Dabo Swinney, who is a legend at Clemson but refuses to adapt to the new world where the transfer portal is vital, so fans and donors are getting frustrated. Still, it’s tough to see Clemson ever pushing Swinney out, he would have to make the decision himself.
Again, the Florida Gators aren’t in a similar situation as Clemson, but now their rivals could have a situation on their hands.
Mike Norvell has suddenly become a name to watch at Florida State, with the Seminoles falling in their first two games where they were heavily favored — and a team many believed was ascending into national title contention — seemingly moving in the wrong direction.
But no coach entered 2024 with more pressure to win than Billy Napier, who has led the Florida Gators to back-to-back seven-win seasons since taking over in 2022. The former Louisiana head coach was hired to rebuild a program that has struggled to get back to the relevance that Urban Meyer instilled at Florida from 2005-2010, where the Gators finished with 5-straight winning seasons and two national championship trophies.
Instead, Napier has an (11-15) record since arriving in Gainesville — but even more disturbing — is that Florida hasn’t even been competitive in matchups against top-tier talent. In Saturday’s opener against Miami at home in the Swamp, the Hurricanes dominated in every facet of the game, cruising to an embarrassing 41-17 loss for Napier and the Gators in front of their home crowd.
Die-Hard Florida Gators Fans Set Up GoFundMe To Get Billy Napier Fired
The Florida head coach even made a point to call out his fans’ criticism in a press conference earlier this week.
When asked about how his team could improve for the rest of the season, the Florida Gators coach decided to take a direct jab at his fans criticizing him and his team.
“We got to go to work on the football part, we have to become a more consistent team and we have to execute better,” Napier said. “If we can focus on those things and not necessarily on what some guy in his basement in rural Central Florida is saying on social media, then we got a chance to get better.”
Our fanbase has set up a gofundme to help fire Billy Napier 😭 pic.twitter.com/W6sRuZKXAd
— Florida Gators 🐊🔥 (@gatorsszn) September 4, 2024
Per the @gatorsszn account on X, fans have set up a $26 million GoFundMe page to buy Napier out of his deal and send him packing.
It’s highly unlikely they are able to rally college football fans to come up with that amount of money, but it’s worth seeing if it makes an impact of some sort.
