Billy Napier on the sideline during his final regular-season game as head coach at Louisiana on Saturday night. (Photo: Scott Clause/USA TODAY Network)
Napier's Passion For Game Started At Home
Sunday, November 28, 2021 | Football, Scott Carter
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By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — They say he is a coach's coach. They say his hobbies are few, his attention to detail great. They say he relishes the process of building a program as much as coaching a big game on a Saturday afternoon.
He worked under Dabo Swinney at Clemson and Nick Saban at Alabama. He had a brief stint on Jimbo Fisher's staff at Florida State. Those are three of the four active college head coaches to win a national championship. The other is Mack Brown.
He knows what winning looks like on the field and behind the scenes. They say he has taken a lot of notes.
Napier was born to coach. He has been around the game his entire life.
"I wanted to do what my dad did," Napier recently told The Athletic.
Napier grew up in Chatsworth, Ga., at the base of Fort Mountain in the northern part of the state. His father, the late Bill Napier, was the head coach at Murray County High. The elder Napier, who died from Lou Gehrig's Disease in 2017, was a local celebrity known as "Coach Bill" around Chatsworth and Murray County.
When the local community rallied around Coach Bill during his final days, the locals showered him with love.
"Coach Bill is a great, great person,'' neighbor Chris Townsend told the local paper. "He is what you want your kid to be when they grow up."
When Coach Bill's son left home, he headed to Furman University, where Napier was a two-time All-Southern Conference quarterback. He led the Paladins to a pair of conference championships. After his playing career was over, Napier followed in his dad's footsteps.
He finally got his own team in 2017 when he was named head coach at Louisiana. In the four seasons since, Napier has garnered headlines as one of the up-and-coming coaches in the college game. Others took notice.
Napier received interest from Southeastern Conference schools Mississippi State, Auburn and South Carolina in recent years but stayed put in Lafayette. He waited patiently for the right opportunity.
Florida called and checked all the boxes for Napier.
"We embrace the expectations and are excited about the challenge ahead,'' Napier said Sunday in a press release. "We will assemble a special group of people and immediately get to work building a great program."
Billy Napier is 39-12 in four seasons at Louisiana. (Photo: Sun Belt Conference)
Napier inherits a Florida program that is 35-15 in its last 50 games, far from a reclamation project. Former UF coach Dan Mullen rejuvenated the Gators and won a lot of games, including a pair of New Year's Six bowl games his first two seasons. However, the momentum stalled at the end of the 2020 season and the Gators never recovered. They went 5-9 in Mullen's final 14 games.
Napier was hired to do what Mullen, Jim McElwain and Will Muschamp were unable to: win a SEC championship and advance to the College Football Playoff for a shot at a national title. That starts with recruiting, an area Napier has excelled over his career. To help in that cause, the Gators will open the $85 million Heavener Football Training Center in 2022.
He has led Louisiana to unprecedented success and a return to the national rankings. Louisiana had been absent from the AP Top 25 for more than 70 years prior to Napier's arrival. On Saturday night, the No. 20-ranked Ragin' Cajuns (11-1) face Appalachian State for the Sun Belt championship. Napier is scheduled to arrive at UF the following day for his introductory press conference.
His first big break as a coach was when Swinney named him the youngest offensive coordinator in program history. When the Tigers sputtered his second season, Napier was replaced and landed at Alabama. While there, he worked with McElwain, at the time the Crimson Tide's offensive coordinator.
When McElwain departed after the 2011 season to become head coach at Colorado State, he brought Napier with him. Napier returned to Alabama after one season at Colorado State and tutored future first-round receivers Amari Cooper and Calvin Ridley.
McElwain gave Napier strong reviews during their time together.
"Billy Napier did a great job for us," McElwain said in 2013. "It was a hard decision for him to leave, but I'm happy for Billy to be able to get his family back to the South, where his wife and young child can be near both sets of grandparents. That support system is so important in our profession."
Back in the South, Napier and his family got to be closer to Coach Bill in his final years. His success at Alabama as receivers coach, and then a season as Arizona State's offensive coordinator, helped land Napier the job at Louisiana.
Four years later, he is on his way to Gainesville.
Coach Bill is probably smiling at how all this has turned out.
"If things go the way he would like them to in the next six to eight years, maybe he can take over a mid-major program like Coach McElwain did," Bill Napier told the Dalton (Ga.) Daily Citizen when his son's career began to take off.
Things definitely broke Napier's way. They're still going his way.
