Florida Football: Tonight is a test if Gators learned lesson during the week

They say that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat. So here is a history lesson Florida football fans would rather not remember: last season, the Gators had a dramatic win over Utah only to lose to Kentucky. They later beat Texas A&M and South Carolina in back-to-back weeks, only to lose to Vanderbilt the following week.

All this week, Billy Napier has been reflecting on those moments that derailed Florida last season. Tonight will tell us if the rest of the team has been listening.

Florida Football: Rat poison

For a coach who won the biggest game of his career last Saturday, you would think that Napier would be on cloud nine this week.

Then one remembers Napier spent five seasons in Alabama, where no one is allowed to be happy. For five seasons, Napier was part of a system that could beat a team 49-3 and would be unsatisfied that they gave up three.

Hell, Napier was brought up in a system that won a national title and still mused that the “Damn game cost me a week of recruiting.”

With that in mind, Napier has been harping all week that Florida’s effort in practice hasn’t been to the standard that he would like to see following a big win.

Napier knows that at the end of the day, Tennessee is not the bar the Florida football is trying to achieve. Beating UNC Charlotte tonight isn’t the bar. Beating Kentucky, USC, or Vanderbilt isn’t the bar.

The bar Florida is trying to achieve in the long run is next month in Jacksonville.

It is one thing, though, for Napier to understand this. It is another thing for the players to understand that.

Winning tonight 42-3 doesn’t guarantee success in the coming month. But it will showcase that Florida has taken Napier’s messaging to heart for at least one night, hoping to carry that urgency over for the rest of the season.