The pressure to win is there. It is always there at Florida, where first Steve Spurrier and then Urban Meyer set a standard of excellence that is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to maintain. Winning is hard anywhere, but it is especially hard in the SEC.
You get some idea of the expectations at Florida when you remember that the Gators dumped Dan Mullen, who won a lot of games but no championships, for a relative unknown named Billy Napier. Napier was highly successful at Louisiana Lafayette, but Louisiana Lafayette is not Florida and the Sun Belt Conference is not the SEC.
And so it was that Napier came into 2024 on the back of two losing seasons, far below what Mullen had accomplished and no where near the championship teams he was supposed to mold.
And Gator Nation was edgy. This wasn’t what they had signed up for. So, despite what many felt was probably the toughest schedule in the nation, Napier needed to deliver.
Napier knew that, the players knew that, everybody knew that. But playing teams like Georgia, Texas and Tennessee is one thing, beating them is another. And the Gators didn’t beat them, and Gator Nation became more restless.
Then, just when Napier appeared to be halfway out the door, nationally ranked LSU came to town and suddenly, Florida rose up and knocked them down. Then came nationally ranked Ole Miss, and the same thing happened. And so it is that a season that had a disastrous start and a disastrous middle may now have a season saving finish.
Now, a team that had been written off by everybody as the year went along, is suddenly being given a second look, even getting votes in the AP top 25 poll.
“So obviously when you’re going through a struggle and you’ve had some setbacks keeping your enthusiasm is really important,” Napier said at his press conference following the Ole Miss game according to Florida’s website. “Okay, you’ve experienced some success. Can you handle that? Can you ignore the hype? Can you have the right mix of humility with that? I think that’s the key,” Napier commented.
“What are the buttons you push that motivate the players?” Napier asked.
“You’ve got to have good leadership at the player level,” he continued. “That’s where there’s collaboration. I always ask some of our guys where we’re at. They know more than I know or our staff knows.”
For Florida, what’s important now is that the team has no letdown. The Gators should beat the Seminoles easily this Saturday, but this is a bitter rivalry. “This is going to be a challenge,” Napier said. “You’ve got to go play at their place and we’ve been there before and they’ve beaten us the last two years and we know the records will be thrown out.
“So you put the ball down at 7 o’clock up there and we’ve got to be ready to go.”
For the Gators, this season has been one long climb. But they have endured and are almost to the top of the mountain. And there sits Florida State, just waiting to knock them off.