Billy Napier’s first appearance echoes the concerns Gator fans repeated for months

In the weeks since Billy Napier was fired as head coach of the Florida Gators, he still hasn't released a public statement thanking the Gators for the opportunity. In many ways, it's almost fitting given that one of the knocks on Napier is that he never felt all in on the Gator logo.

If one thinks that fans were unfair in their critiques of Napier's investment in Florida, his first public appearance since getting fired only confirms what fans felt.

Billy Napier appears at Georgia practice

Anthony Dasher of On3 has reported that Napier was spotted at Georgia's practice this week. It's not clear what he was doing at the practice, but it was noted that he's not the first coach to pop in.

Napier and Georgia coach Kirby Smart previously worked together at Alabama.

While it may not be uncommon for unemployed coaches to show up to random practices, the optics of it only serve as another feather in the cap for Gator fans who never felt Napier fit in in Gainesville.

Napier notoriously seldom wore Gator colors, whether on the sideline or at a press conference. He insisted on wearing black, claiming it was a "Black flag mentality." When Florida planted an actual flag on FSU last season, Napier was apologetic rather than taking a chance to needle a rival.

And so to wind up at a chief rival's practice, to potentially give intel on how to stop Texas (who Georgia plays this week), less than a month after you would have been prepping to beat that same chief rival had you not been fired, isn't great optics.

And then, if one wants to go down a rabbit hole, throw in the backdrop that Napier was passed over for the OC job at Alabama for the current Texas coach, Steve Sarkisian, and Napier's vision at Florida was to prove he could be an elite OC on his own and it all paints a picture that Napier's goal in Gainesville was never to make the Gators great.

It was to make Billy Napier great.