Florida began the 2025 campaign ranked No. 15 in the country, with hopes of making a push into the playoffs. After their week one win over LIU, the Gators were moved up two spots in the AP Top 25 and were ranked No. 13, the second-highest Florida has been ranked in the Billy Napier Era (Florida was No. 12 in week two of 2022 before losing to Kentucky).
So, perhaps uncomfortable with being ranked so high, the Gators went out, lost to USF, and are now back to a familiar territory in the Billy Napier Era.
Florida Gators unranked in week three AP Top 25
After losing to USF, the Gators were left unranked in the week three AP Top 25 poll. They did receive votes and are unofficially 28th in the country.
For what it's worth, USF was moved up to 18th in the country.
Since Florida hired Billy Napier, there have been 54 AP Top 25 polls conducted.
The Gators have been ranked for a grand total of seven of those.
That's 12% for those trying to do math.
This encapsulates the problem with the Billy Napier Era in Gainesville.
We spent all night last night and all day this morning highlighting the vast array of flaws that have left the Gators sitting at 20-20 since Napier arrived. And we can run around and argue the semantics of play calling, game day management, recruiting, overall intensity, and anything else one wants to do a deep dive into.
But forget the conversations about building a national championship-level program, Napier can't even build a program that can stay ranked.
In his first three seasons in Gainesville, Dan Mullen never finished worse than 13th, and he was still run out of town.
Jim McEwlain was as high as 8th in 2015 and finished 14th in 2016, and he got run out of town.
Will Muschamp finished 2012 9th, and he got run out of town.
And yet the guy who can't even be ranked 88% of the time gets to stay because he's a nice guy.
Strange times indeed in Gainesville.