Billy Napier doesn’t have time to style his hair. Not when you take over a college football program that’s rummaged through three head coaches the past decade.
“It takes no time to get ready in the morning,” the Florida coach said of his buzzcut last week at Southeastern Conference football media days. “I got a lot of other things to worry about besides my hair. I can promise you that.”
Brian Kelly has had enough of your jokes about his new mangled accent. He’s just trying to settle into his new job, new home, new part of the country.
“Understand now, I have a Boston, Midwestern, Louisiana accent now,” the new Louisiana State coach said. “It's three dialects into one.”
For the SEC’s two new head coaches in 2022, there is no learning curve, no grace period, no honeymoon. They’ve joined the league at different stages of their careers — Kelly, 60, has already held one of the sport’s most prestigious jobs, while Napier, 43, comes straight from the Sun Belt Conference — but both face as much pressure to win big and win now as any first-year coach in America. That’s what you tackle when you take on jobs at Florida and LSU, programs that have combined to win eight SEC championships and five national championships since 2000.
As preseason camps open across the country, Kelly and Napier are two of 14 first-year coaches at Power Five schools, part of the sport’s wild offseason hiring cycle. There are also new coaches at Notre Dame, Miami, Oklahoma, Oregon, USC and Washington. Those six programs, plus Florida and LSU, have won 16 combined national championships since 1985.
Kelly and Napier absorb as much pressure as any of the new faces in new places.
At Florida, Napier follows Dan Mullen, who won 21 games his first two years and the SEC East in his third but lost his job when momentum stalled last fall. His life has been one big tour through the SEC's footprint. Born in Tennessee, raised in Georgia, went to college in South Carolina. Napier coached receivers at Alabama and earned his head-coaching chops at Louisiana, where he went 33-5 the past three seasons. He's overhauled UF’s staff with a legion of grad assistants, quality control coaches and analytics experts.
“I think we're 20% bigger as an organization,” he said last week in Atlanta. “We've modernized the approach. We have an incredible product. We have history. We have tradition. We have an elite degree. We have one of the best experiences for scholar athletes in the country. It's been done before, and they're passionate about doing it again.”
Napier has inherited a promising core and added some much-needed reinforcements, but he’ll suffer the same fate as predecessors Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain and Mullen if he doesn’t jump-start recruiting. Florida’s 2022 class ranked No. 20 by Rivals.com and 10th in the SEC, while the 2023 class sits at No. 29 with a dozen verbal commitments. That’s good but not great — and Florida is a program that expects great.
“Keeping the best players in the state at home is going to be critical,” he said. “The good thing is there's a lot of them to go around.”
Then there’s Kelly, who already built the foundation of a Hall of Fame career with close to 300 wins scattered at Grand Valley State, Central Michigan, Cincinnati and, most recently, Notre Dame, where he posted double-digit win seasons each of the last five years.
But after falling short twice in the College Football Playoff, Kelly sought a greater challenge. He found one in Baton Rouge — plus an enormous 10-year, $95 million contract. If Florida has high standards, LSU’s are astronomical: The Tigers dumped Ed Orgeron 22 months after the program celebrated an undefeated national championship season.
“I've been asked many times why,” Kelly said. “I can tell you that certainly that shared vision of our administration, the great opportunity to restore championship-level football to LSU, and then the SEC itself, being part of this great conference.”
Kelly, a New Englander who’s coached his entire career in the Midwest, seemed like an unnatural fit for the Deep South when he first took the job. He’s since embraced his new surroundings, albeit after a brief entanglement with a new Southern twang.
“I don't think (fit) needs to be geographical in a sense,” he said. “I've gotten to love where I'm at in Baton Rouge. I love the people. They love football. They love family. They love food. That fits me really well. I guess I should have been in the South all along.”
Four of the Power Five conferences have held their preseason media days, with the Pac-12 getting started Friday. One by one each conference commissioner has delivered his money line to illustrate his league’s focus during these uncertain times of expansion and realignment. Interpret the following at your own risk:
Big 12’s Brett Yormark: “There is no doubt the Big 12 is open for business. We will leave no stone unturned to drive value for the conference."
SEC’s Greg Sankey: “There's no sense of urgency in our league, no panic and reaction to others' decisions. We know who we are. We are confident in our collective strength.”
ACC’s Jim Phillips: “I will continue to do what's in the best interest of the ACC, but will also strongly advocate for college athletics to be a healthy neighborhood, not a two or three gated communities.
And, finally, the Big Ten’s Kevin Warren: “Regarding expansion, I get asked every single day what’s next? It may include future expansion. We will not expand just to expand. It will be strategic. It will add additional value to our conference.”
