One Billy Napier Era surprise greeted Jon Sumrall before he even unpacked at Florida

When Billy Napier took the job at Florida, one of the initial things he did that drew a ton of attention was the creation of “Billy’s Army.” Napier convinced Florida to employ a ton of staffers on top of his allotment of assistant coaches. All told, Florida’s official website listed 64 support staff members on top of 12 total coaches for Napier’s initial 2022 campaign.

Billy’s Army became emblematic of Napier having a massive system built around him, only to still make decisions a fan in a central Florida basement wouldn’t have made.

Napier is gone, and Jon Sumrall is in charge now. This week, Sumrall highlighted his shock at being greeted by Billy’s Army when he arrived in Gainesville.

Jon Sumrall suprised by Billy’s Army at Florida

Appearing on Gators Breakdown with David Waters, Sumrall touched on a number of topics from roster building to how he plans to win over Gator Nation.

Sumrall was asked about the differences between Troy, Tulane, and Florida, and whether or not he would need to adapt at Florida and change what made him successful at his previous two stops. Sumrall claimed he wouldn’t be changing personality-wise, but he did highlight one of the things that immediately felt different once he took the job at Florida:

“I kidded around with our staff yesterday in our staff meeting that when I took the Troy job, there were 18 people in the room, and everybody directly reported to me. 

Then I went to Tulane, and there are 35 people in the room, and everyone reports to me. I still kind of felt like it was me, even though I maybe had to delegate a little bit more. 

And then here I walked in, and I'm like, okay, there's a million people in this building. Like, what is going on? Like, we're trying to score touchdowns and tackle the guy with the ball. What do all these people do? 

And so there are a lot of great people here. But creating organizational synergy and alignment has probably been one of the tasks I've been most focused on because that's probably the most unique difference here.”

Too much on the plate

Billy’s Army wasn’t the worst idea in the world, as teams like Alabama and Georgia also have massive staffs of analysts and other support members. The problem is that it never felt clear what half those people did, and despite an armada of people, Napier just did what he wanted to do, no matter what.

Sumrall seems open to having a larger support staff, but the struggle for him is going to be having people in the building who don’t directly report to him. And to his latter point of ”creating organizational synergy” is something Napier never seemed interested in because Napier was more focused on being a sub-par offensive coordinator than being a full-blown head coach.

Whether or not the fat in Gainesville gets trimmed remains to be seen as Sumrall adjusts to life as a Gator.