Florida Football: No, Deion Sanders isn’t the answer for the Gators

Opening night wasn’t a great one for Florida football. It was a frustrating litany of errors as the Gators lost a game that, in retrospect, it absolutely could have won.

With Saturday freed up to watch other teams, most Gator fans watched Colorado upset TCU a season after the Buffaloes went 1-11. It led to further dialogue online that Florida needs to dump Billy Napier and go after Deion Sanders to be the head coach of Florida.

Much like we said about Dan Mullen, save your breath if you think Sanders is the answer.

Florida Football: Prime Time

Napier isn’t immune from critique, but there is a vast difference between pointing out areas that need to get better and writing the article that he needs to be fired.

So, while we still have faith in Napier, that didn’t stop AL.Com from already writing the fire Napier piece.

In a piece musing whether Auburn should have hired Sanders rather than Hugh Freeze, the piece opted to end with this nugget:

"Think about this scenario and what it would do to the SEC. Imagine Sanders at the University of Florida.If Florida’s Board of Trustees had any sense, it would fire athletics director Scott Stricklin and Gators football coach Billy Napier as soon as possible and start recruiting Sanders to Gainesville. The amount of juice the Gators would have with Sanders on the sidelines would flood the entire state of Florida. FSU would self-destruct. Miami would lose every last recruit. Bobby Bowden would shout dadgum from high up in heaven and Tim Tebow would get a Coach Prime tattoo."

Now we know Mr. Sanders likes to read things written about himself, and perhaps you are reading this piece right now. If you are welcome, make yourself at home.

But let’s make one thing perfectly clear: one victory over a team that only had three returning starters doesn’t mean we have to make the leap from skeptical to saying we should have hired this guy instead.

Plus, Napier had a pretty good debut game himself and look where we are today.

Sanders built Colorado from the ground up with the transfer portal, but his actual recruiting right now is non-existent. The Buffaloes are currently 66th nationally in the 247 Composite. USF has a better recruiting ranking than Colorado.

In case you haven’t heard, Florida football has a pretty good recruiting class brewing.

And the guy Florida ran out of town before Napier tried to build predominately with the transfer portal. It worked until the lack of a foundation crumbled, putting Florida in this mess to begin with.

Beyond the fact that putting the “Prime” brand over the “Gator” brand would not fly well in Gainesville, it is asinine to even have these conversations after a 13-point loss to a top 15 opponent on the road.

Napier has things that need to be cleaned up.

That doesn’t mean we have to go and chase the shiny new object.