Best Memes, Tweets of Rival SEC Fans Celebrating Florida’s Loyalty to Billy Napier

At the beginning of 2024 college football seasonBilly Napier looked like a dead man walking around Florida, only hanging on to his job because the Gators weren’t ready to swallow his huge acquisition. After a 1-2 start that included big home losses to archrival Miami and apparent conference rival Texas A&M, it felt like just a matter of time before the coaching carousel would begin.

But then slowly but surely the tide began to turn. Florida posted three wins in four games, the only loss a near overtime disappointment on the road against a top-10 Tennessee team. Five-star freshman quarterback DJ Lagway, Napier’s biggest recruiting win to date, was seeing the field more and more and looking like he belonged. Suddenly the whispers started: could Napier actually be saving his job? Was sacking him worth the risk of losing a bevy of young talent in the transfer portal?

Now, just days after his injury-plagued Gators found themselves in second place Georgia well into the fourth quarter, we have our answer: Florida AD Scott Stricklin issued a press release Thursday afternoon announcing that Napier would return as the team’s head coach in 2025 – an outcome that was barely conceivable just a few months ago.

As unlikely as this may seem, it’s not impossible to understand the logic behind keeping Napier. Lagway seems like a quarterback worth building around, and his fate with the program is almost certainly tied to the coach who recruited him there. We’ve seen real improvement in recent weeks, even if some of Napier’s late-game decisions remain baffling. With the NIL commitment renewed this winter and a lack of obvious replacement candidates, why not roll the dice and see if this upward trajectory can continue as freshmen and sophomores become upperclassmen?

That’s all well and good. However, Florida’s SEC rivals don’t care about any of that. All they care about is a coach with a combined record of 15-18 over two-plus seasons sticking around in Gainesville a little longer, and they immediately took to social media to dance on the graves of Gators fans.

Tennessee fans. Georgia fans. Texas A&M fans. Miami fans. You name it: they all came together, ready to celebrate another year of seeing Napier run the clock in the most confusing of ways. Just minutes after Stricklin’s statement was released, there was celebration in the responses.