By all accounts, Florida Head Coach Billy Napier is an affable, salt-of-the-Earth kind of guy, but after doing his damndest to prove it himself in his first year as the Gators’ head coach, the absolutely murderous 2024 SEC schedule that the SEC just saddled him with proves once and for all that nice guys really do finish last.
An inaugural campaign in which the Gators went 6-7 overall and 3-5 in the SEC including a loss to perennial SEC bottom-dweller Vanderbilt, a three-touchdown loss to rival Georgia, and a 30-3 drubbing at the hands of Oregon State in the Las Vegas Bowl, already added a dash of mild hot sauce to Napier’s seat entering his second year on the job, but with a 2023 schedule that features road games at defending Pac-12 champion Utah and defending SEC West champion LSU, not to mention an annual neutral site game against two-time defending national champion Georgia and home games against ACC favorite Florida State and a surging Tennessee program, poor Sunbelt Billy might be lucky to even make it to 2024 as Florida’s head coach. But if someway, somehow he does find a way to survive for another year, it’s all over for good ole Billy in 2024.
Take a moment and soak in this 2024 Florida football schedule:
May God have mercy on his soul.
When combined with an unnecessarily brutal non-conference slate, Florida’s 2024 conference schedule arguably makes their overall 2024 schedule the single most difficult schedule in college football history. This is a hate crime of epic proportions and the SEC should be ashamed of itself for taking advantage of one of the good guys in college football.
It would be easier to swallow if this schedule was bestowed on the ultimate crybaby Ryan Day, the increasingly cringy Dabo Swinney, or hell even Jimbo Fisher with his raging inferiority complex. But not Sunbelt Billy. Who has this gentle soul ever offended?
As a self-anointed “nice guy” myself, I demand answers. I demand accountability for this injustice of all injustices.
Sure, the Florida athletic administration did Napier no favors scheduling three non-conference power 5 games, but what the SEC has done to him with the 2024 conference schedule it burdened him with is borderline barbaric. This is Atilla the Hun level cruelty we’re talking about. By allowing Napier to be stuck with than schedule, when Sunbelt Billy is inevitably fired at or before the end of Florida’s 2024 season, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey should be charged with first-degree murder because he just straight-up signed this man’s death warrant.
LOCK. HIM. UP.
Not buying it? Well, let’s do the math here.
I don’t have to explain that Georgia is a loss. We know this already. The Dawgs have won five of six in the series and once again the Florida side of TIAA Bank Stadium will be maybe half-full after halftime. So 0-1 off the bat.
Tennessee is in a far better place right now from a roster and coaching standpoint that Florida is and the Gators have to travel to Knoxville, so there’s another loss.
0-2
While anything can happen in a rivalry game, Florida State has cycled up and is currently on a much higher trajectory than Florida, so it’s extremely unlikely the Gators will win in Tallahassee.
0-3
At Texas? No chance.
0-4
While the Gators have the luxury of hosting LSU, Brian Kelly is on the verge of blowing the lid off of that program after making a run to the SEC Championship Game in his first year in Baton Rouge. Could the Gators find a way to win that game? Maybe. Possibly. But the far more likely outcome is another loss for Sunbelt Billy and company.
0-5
The only sure-fire win on the Gators 2024 schedule is Samford, but let’s also not forget that the fighting Chris Hatcher’s hung 51 on Florida the last time they visited the Swamp in 2021.
1-5
The remainder of the games – Miami, UCF, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Kentucky at home and Mississippi State on the road – are toss-up games; games the Gators could win, but also just as easily could lose. Even giving the Gators the benefit of the doubt in those 50-50 games, it’s difficult to imagine that they go better than 3-3 in those games when you consider the rosters that each of those teams projects to have next season.
So, add all of that up and what do you get? 4-8 AT BEST. And that’s coming off a losing season in year one and a 2023 season that the Gators will enter with a win-total of 5.5. He very well might not even make it to 2024, but make no mistake about it, if he does, Sunbelt Billy isn’t making it out of year three alive.
DEAD. MAN. WALKING.