The story of Billy Napier’s termination at the University of Florida was not written in his final 13-21 record. It was written in January 2011, in the office of a then-ascendant Dabo Swinney.
Then, Napier was a 31-year-old offensive coordinator at Clemson, the youngest in the nation. His team had just capped a dismal 6-7 season, with an offense ranked 86th in the country. Swinney, with the reluctant pain of a man firing a friend, had told him the reason. “I just feel like we need to be more explosive and more dynamic on the offensive side of the ball,” Swinney told the media. “We were not productive enough.”
That dismissal became Napier’s crucible. It was a professional branding he would spend the next decade trying to outrun. He went to the master of process, Nick Saban at Alabama, and immersed himself in a world of meticulous control. He took that knowledge to Louisiana, building a Sun Belt dynasty with a 40-12 record. He proved he could build a program. He proved his process worked…