ORLANDO, Fla. — As Billy Napier addressed a sold-out crowd of Orlando Gator Boosters this past week at Full Sail University, he spoke about how he’s been studying the history of the University of Florida program since he took over as the head football coach in November.
And as Napier continued to speak and urge those hundreds of boosters to donate money to help fund the multimillion-dollar Name, Image and Likeness kitty that will go to UF football players and recruits, it struck me that he was simply hearkening back to another time in UF history.
Billy Napier has become a modern-day, above-board version of Charley Pell.
For the uninformed, Pell was the coach of the Gators in the early 1980s, who is mostly responsible for building Gator Boosters into the massive fundraising network it has become today. He is also known as one of the biggest cheaters in college football history because he was able to convince a lot of UF’s richest boosters to ignore NCAA rules and start paying recruits to play for the Gators.
Turns out ol’ Charley, who passed away in 2001, was just ahead of his time. He was convincing boosters to give players “NIL” deals four decades before it became legal.
Former UF athletics director Bill Carr once said that Pell had the most profound effect on the growth of UF’s football program than anybody in UF history except Steve Spurrier. Why? Because Pell was able to organize boosters, charm them and persuade them into contributing millions.
Said Carr of Pell’s influence on booster contributions: “First, Charley touched their hearts. Then, he touched their wallets.”
And that is essentially what Napier did when speaking to the Orlando Gator Boosters. He formed a bond with the crowd with a simple but effective presentation in which he took fans on a photographic journey through his life, from the time he was a kid until today. On the big screen behind him, he displayed photographs of his parents, his siblings, his wife, daughter and two sons, his favorite former player and each of his career stops. As he clicked through each photograph, he told a little story or shared a memory about each of them in his downhome, fish-and-grits drawl.
At one point, he referred to his wife Ali as his “honey bunny” and playfully lamented as he displayed a photograph of the couple kissing earlier in their marriage: “As you can see, I used to get a lot more sugar than I get now. The boys are growing up so now they’re getting all the sugar.”
After the booster meeting, I heard one woman tell her husband, “I’ve been coming to these meetings for a long time, and this is the first time I felt like I really know who our coach is as a person and a man.”
Touch their hearts.
Then touch their wallets.
Napier definitely had the booster love flowing at the Orlando meeting Wednesday night, but the $20 million question is can he get their NIL money flowing, too? Before the meeting began, Napier spoke to the media and made it clear that his No. 1 priority right now is getting UF up to speed on NIL.
“We have to continue to evolve and compete in a game that doesn’t have a set of rules right now,” Napier said. “We’re really living in a world here where we have free agency with no salary cap.”
And what that means is you better raise as much money as you can as quickly as you can if you want to compete in not only recruiting great players but keeping the great players you already have from entering the transfer portal. According to a recent report in The Athletic, Napier has told boosters that he’s going to need $20 million annually to fund the Gators’ NIL war chest.
It’s no coincidence that the two generals in charge of funding that war chest were there shaking hands and slapping backs at the meeting of Orlando Gators Boosters. Eddie Rojas, the CEO of the Gator Collective — a grassroots NIL effort made up of average fans who are doing what they can to help fund NIL — was there working the crowd. Also very visible was multimillionaire Hugh Hathcock, the organizer of the Gator Guard — a collection of big-money boosters who are willing to write million-dollar checks to keep the Gators competitive.
Hathcock, an automotive technology entrepreneur, has an estimated net worth of $500 million and recently contributed $12.6 million to the Gator athletic department — the single biggest financial gift in UF sports history. That gift is separate from the money he is pouring into Gator Guard.
It’s no wonder Napier made a point at the Orlando booster meeting of recognizing Hathcock, who received a raucous ovation from the crowd. Napier then essentially told the crowd of boosters that they, too, need to get involved in the NIL fundraising effort in any way they can.
“You might want to so sponsor a player from your hometown,” Napier said. “Maybe you know the player’s mom, right? Maybe you want to invest in that kid. And that’s really what NIL is about — creating an experience for the player … and directly having an impact and affecting the quality of life of our players.”
Napier’s message to the boosters was crystal clear: You must help the Gators get and retain players. In fact, because Florida has the biggest, oldest, richest booster network in the state, Napier told the crowd that NIL should be a competitive advantage for the Gators (although the University of Miami’s make-it-rain billionaire booster John Ruiz would certainly beg to differ).
At one point, Napier displayed a giant map of Florida on the big screen behind him and said he wants to dominate recruiting in the state. He then pointed to that map and said, “As you see right here, Orlando is 115 miles from Gainesville. We need to control recruiting in Orlando, Florida. Does everybody understand what I’m saying? Your energy, your contribution, your investment has an effect on everything.”
Translation: Hey, Gator Nation, if you want a great team, you better be willing to pay for it.
It was the same directive another UF coach issued to boosters 40 years ago.
Except back then the message was whispered privately in the back room
With NIL, it’s being publicly shouted loud and clear for everyone to hear.
“Now, you can do it above board,” Napier told the crowd. “You can lay your head down at night and do it with integrity.”
Touch their hearts.
Then touch their wallets.
Rest in peace, Charley Pell.
As it turns out, you were more of a groundbreaker than a rulebreaker.
