Billy Napier and Florida Football could learn a thing or two from Alex Golesh

It's Thursday, and Billy Napier is still the head coach for Florida Football. One of the primary reasons Gator fans are over Napier and keep hitting refresh to see when it will all be over is the perceived passiveness Napier has following a loss.

One of the more longshot names being floated is currently residing just down the road. And if nothing else, no one can dispute the intensity oozing from Tampa, which could do the program in Gainesville some good.

Florida Football: Champions Of Life

Alex Golesh is the head coach for USF, and the Bulls will take on Miami this Saturday in Tampa. Golesh worked his way up the ladder and was the OC at Tennessee in 2021 and 2022 before taking his first-ever head coaching job at USF in 2023.

Golesh's record of 9-7 isn't elite, though it should be noted that his predecessor, Jeff Scott, was 4-26 during his time in Tampa. What has people excited is his demeanor and belief that he has the perfect mindset needed for the SEC.

Let's play a little game. The following are two quotes. One is from Napier after getting waxed by Miami and one is from Golesh after taking Alabama down to the wire.

See if you can guess which coach said which quote.

Quote 1:

"Defensively there's a lot of good things on the tape. Although they did score a bunch of points and move the ball, I do think that the players played extremely hard. I felt that they played tough. I thought that they played with good fundamentals. But we've got some things that we need to clean up. We just have to be a little more consistent. We'll have a player make a mistake that keeps a drive alive."

Quote 2:

"But when you talk about the actual game and what happened and how it happened, if you try to rationalize failure, you are going to accept failure your whole life. And that is my biggest fear is to fail. So the truth of it is we didn't win, and there are a lot of reasons we didn't win, and I'm not taking back, or taking away the fact that maybe we played hard or we schematically were really good."

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Napier is the author of the first quote, while Golesh said the second quote this week when he appeared on the Jim Rome Show.

Inspirational quotes don't make one a good coach, but it does highlight one of the very real perception problems Napier has with Gator fans.

The mentality of the 2024 Gators isn't one that looks like they are willing to run through a brick wall. From the opening snap against Miami, they have been consistently pushed back, and several former players raised the alarm that it didn't feel like there was a competitive fire on Florida's sideline.

Golesh is far from a finished product and if/when Napier is invited to leave the reality is that he is still too much of an unknown to take a chance on in Gainesville.

But one time, just one time, Gator fans would love to see Napier have an ounce of the intensity that Golesh has. Parents on the sidelines of a U-9 soccer game have more intensity than anything we have seen from Napier.

Meanwhile, as the seat in Gainesville is engulfed in flames, all fans see is Napier looking around and saying, "This is fine."