College Football Misery Index: Florida football program's problems go beyond Billy Napier

As another season of the Misery Index begins, it’s a good time to reflect on the concept of choice. Whether we like it or not, we all land here in this tortured place for no other reason than the convergence of choices – some of them that we have to own, others that are completely out of our control.

Every college football fan has chosen to invest their happiness, their money and their time in following a certain program. Sometimes that choice was merely the byproduct of going to college, or perhaps it was handed down from parents or grandparents. But at some point, everyone who becomes an emotional wreck every Saturday made a conscious decision to care deeply about a sport where 18-to-22-year-olds hit each other and toss around an oblong ball.

There’s one problem, though, that they don’t tell you about until it’s too late: As a college football fan, your well-being is going to be disproportionately dependent on the choices that others make. Even worse, most of those choices are going to look very stupid in retrospect.

Which brings us to the University of Florida, arguably the home of bad choices.

For the last 25 years, no school in the country has taken more wild coaching swings than the Gators. They replaced Steve Spurrier with a completely unprepared Ron Zook, who lasted three mediocre years. They bought the hype on Will Muschamp, who was a great coordinator and terrible head coach. They hired Jim McElwain in a weird way, with a leaked meeting on a private plane intended to pressure him into taking the job, then fired him in a weird way when the university disputed a claim by McElwain that his family had received death threats. Then came Dan Mullen, who won pretty big for three years but got fired at the first sign of trouble.

And now here we are with Billy Napier, a fourth Florida coach in the last 11 seasons who is probably headed for Buyout Life.

Week 1 winners and losers:Georgia dominates Clemson and Florida flops

In the fall of 2021, Florida chose to get rid of a longtime proven SEC winner in Mullen ($12 million buyout) and replace him with a coach who would cost a lot more ($51.8 million over seven years, with 85% of his remaining salary guaranteed if Florida fired him) and had accomplished much less in the Sun Belt.

Of course, schools do this all the time. When it’s time for the old coach to go, they often get replaced with someone less experienced whose newness is often an asset. Coaching changes are more exciting for fans when there’s less of a track record to nitpick. With coaches like Napier, the thinking among administrators is often along the lines of: “If he could go 40-12 with two top-20 finishes at Louisiana, imagine what he could do at a place with vast resources — like we have here at Florida!”

But a little more than two years later, as Napier founders with an 11-15 record following a 41-17 pasting at home against No. 19 Miami in Week 1, that logic was incorrect.

What Florida officials instead should have assessed is whether Napier’s sterling record at Louisiana had any relationship with the job they wanted to give him. At Louisiana, Napier had the best facilities, the biggest budget and the most talented roster in the conference. Yes, he won a lot of games and deserves credit for that, but the job was set up for him to win.

Florida exists in an entirely different context. Yes, the Gators have a national championship history and have a lot of accessible in-state talent, but they don’t have any huge tangible advantages over their competitors in the SEC.  

Florida isn’t, and never has been, a turnkey national championship type of program. The two coaches who have done it – Spurrier and Urban Meyer – are among the greatest ever. Everyone else has struggled with the job. The overall takeaway is that you can win at Florida, but there’s no natural right to it. You’ve got to be exceptional.

Since showing up in Gainesville, Napier hasn’t even shown he’s mediocre. If his third Florida team is as bleak and uncompetitive as it looked Saturday against Miami, he won’t get a fourth year and the university’s administration and boosters will have more choices to make. There’s no guarantee they’ll make the right ones.

That’s why Florida is No. 1 on the first Misery Index of 2024, a weekly measurement of which fan bases are feeling the most angst.

Four more in misery

Virginia Tech: You’re a Hokies fan who has lived through the contentious end of Frank Beamer, the disastrously disappointing Justin Fuente regime and the rock bottom as Brent Pry came in to pick up the pieces. You think that finally – finally! – you’re on the other side of it after a dozen difficult years. After making a bowl game last season and returning the most starters in the ACC, you’ve already got those “We are SO back!” memes ready to send the group text. And then a 34-27 overtime loss to Vanderbilt happened.

Clemson: The big news this week was that Dabo Swinney’s weekly radio show will no longer take live callers, which isn’t a surprise after the “Tyler from Spartanburg” fiasco last fall when a critical call set him off on a four-minute rant of defensiveness and self-pity. But if Swinney thought the fans were being too tough on him back then for a pretty mediocre nine-win, 4-4 ACC season, it’s probably for the best that he won’t have to talk directly to them this year. Half a dozen years ago, the only other program in Clemson’s weight class was Alabama. Now, thanks largely to Swinney’s stagnation as an offensive coach and refusal to adapt to the transfer portal, Clemson can no longer compete with the likes of Georgia. If Saturday’s 34-3 loss to the Bulldogs was indicative, the discomfort between Swinney and Clemson’s fan base will reach critical levels this season.

UConn: So now word is out that Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark wants to add UConn, and UConn is apparently receptive to leaving the Big East. To make this potential marriage happen, the Huskies reportedly wouldn’t join in football for a handful of years so they could ramp up to competitiveness. But let’s be real here: Decades may not even be enough time. Some fans may start to criticize coach Jim Mora for lack of tangible progress after Saturday’s 50-7 loss to Maryland. But unless Mora can move UConn’s campus to, say, Florida, this is how it’s going to go in the Big 12 or any other league.

New Mexico State: The Aggies may seem like an odd inclusion on this list, but the transfer portal has opened up a whole new world of misery for many college teams. And the reality is that New Mexico State’s entire program – at least the best parts of it – portaled to Vanderbilt of all places. After going 10-5 last season, head coach Jerry Kill announced he was stepping down only to resurface at Vandy as a senior offensive advisor and chief consultant to head coach Clark Lea. Then quarterback Diego Pavia, last year’s Conference USA offensive player of the year, followed him to Nashville. Just like that, a Vanderbilt team that went 2-10 last year won its opener over Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, New Mexico State was in a dogfight at home with Southeast Missouri State.  

Miserable, but not miserable enough

Michigan: Maybe it’s not a great sign that heir apparent Alex Orji didn’t actually win the starting quarterback job coming out of camp, and instead former walk-on Davis Warren got the call for Saturday’s opener against Fresno State. Though the final score ended up 30-10, Michigan led just 13-3 going into the fourth quarter and finished with 269 yards of offense. Michigan fans have to fear a major comedown year after the national title and Jim Harbaugh’s departure.  

Houston: Very little was expected of Houston this season, and yet Willie Fritz’s debut managed to even further depress expectations. The Cougars’ stadium emptied out pretty early during a 27-7 loss to UNLV in which they rushed for just 38 yards. After going 2-7 in conference last season under Dana Holgorsen, it seems the Big 12 will once again not be kind to this team.

South Carolina: It sort of slipped under the radar Saturday how poorly the Gamecocks played in a narrow win over Old Dominion, 23-19. South Carolina had just 288 yards of offense and scored its only two touchdowns on a 3-yard drive and 6-yard drive after recovering fumbles. The Gamecocks have one of the toughest schedules in the SEC with dates against LSU, Ole Miss, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas A&M and Missouri plus road games at Kentucky and Vanderbilt. Gulp.

UCLA: At least it wasn’t a loss in DeShaun Foster’s debut as head coach, but the Bruins were flirting with disaster in Hawaii before three field goals in the last 16 minutes lifted them to a 16-13 win. Foster, who played running back at UCLA before a solid NFL career, got this job largely because he was already on staff and nobody of note wanted it. Is he ready for prime time? Saturday’s performance won’t fill fans with confidence, at least in the near-term, but 1-0 is a whole lot better than 0-1.