Two weeks ago, when Miami waxed Florida Football, we called Billy Napier a snake oil salesman who had yet to produce oil. We were far from alone in our criticism because Gator fans were fed a narrative for nine months by Napier as to why things were supposed to be different in 2024.

Spoiler alert, they weren’t.

And after openly ignoring common sense fixes, it’s clear Napier never had a viable blueprint to build Florida into anything but a laughing stock, and it’s Gator fans who have been left supporting something that was never going to support them back.  

If you go through our archives, we were high on Napier through the 2022 season. Into the 2023 season, we started to note our concerns after losses to Utah and Kentucky, but even as recently as October of last year, we still had faith in the machine Napier was trying to build.

Florida was 5-2 and gained the commitment of LJ McCray during their bye week. Napier had the third-ranked class in the country, and it looked like, if given time, it would eventually come together.

Our mood changed when Florida had no clue how to send their field goal unit on the field against Arkansas. We noted at the time that it didn’t matter how many five-star commits you had, a JV team that is well-coached would know when to run on the field.

Florida has yet to recover from that moment and three games into the 2024 season it is clear that Billy Napier is going to do what Billy Napier wants to do no matter how glaring his flaws may be.

It’s with that in mind, as a wise man once said, that what should be done eventually must be done immediately.

Napier was given every opportunity to hire himself an offensive coordinator in the offseason but has narcissistically convinced himself that he is the chosen one to call plays.

Napier has hired three defensive coordinators in three years, all of whom make Todd Grantham look like a savant.

Napier demoted his special teams coach and strength coach but didn’t have the grit to outright fire them and kept them on staff.

He has no feel for how to handle his roster, and rather than tell guys, “Move back (to the bench), you suck,” he rotates guys with no rhyme or reason.

Napier came to Gainesville with the vision of building a Georgia or Alabama-like machine, but instead, he has built a product that would get returned on Temu.

The conundrum Gator fans find themselves in is wanting to support a team that continues to refuse to support them back. Last week, the University of Florida tried to block off tailgating sections that fans have been using for decades. Despite another sell-out on Saturday, the university is hell-bent on reducing capacity in The Swamp. Florida has the 12th best roster in the country according to 247 Sports, but are told to keep donating money to Florida Victorious for anything to get better.

Make no mistake about it, if Billy Napier isn’t fired by the time you are reading this article, it is because Scott Stricklin gave Napier a buyout clause Florida couldn’t afford if things went south.

The only thing that went right on Saturday was that it rained.

It always rains at a funeral.