Florida Gators have been positioned to take advantage of new NCAA ruling for 2 years
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — On Tuesday, the NCAA Division I Council voted to expand college football coaching staffs, allowing an unlimited number of assistants to instruct athletes. It’s a move that has been anticipated one that Billy Napier has prepared for and a rule that the Florida Gators are immediately ready to take advantage of.
The new rule allows all staff members to provide technical and tactical instruction to athletes during practice and games. For years, analysts and quality control coaches have been limited to assisting off the field through watching film and providing expertise in creating gameday strategy. Previously, analysts and quality control assistants could provide, “encouragement” on the sidelines and during practice but nothing more, something we can be 100 percent sure that the NCAA was on top of at every single practice and game and nothing more than encouragement came from any analyst across the country.
Billy’s Army
At his introductory press conference, Billy Napier touched on the University of Florida Athletic Association giving Napier everything he wanted in terms of money to create the infrastructure, including staff that he thought would be necessary to win at Florida.
“I think that the administration’s willingness to invest in our vision and this organization that we’re going to create, if you combine that with the resources that they’re providing to hire an exceptional staff, I think that the new facility is going to give us an advantage that maybe we haven’t had before here,” he said.
Off to the side with local media, Napier was asked just how big his staff would be, he offered a one-word answer: “Unprecedented.”
You remember the nearly constant posts and articles in late 2021 and early 2022 after Billy Napier was hired. Florida was constantly in the news cycle for a new hire, and some interesting titles. What was a GameChanger coordinator? Florida has a Chief of Staff, a General Manager, a Senior Director of Recruiting Innovation, and a Director of Logistics. On its official coaches and staff page, there are 74 people listed — not all of them are coaches but it is a massive staff, an army of people dedicated to making the football infrastructure successful.
For the spring game in 2024, Florida announced rosters, which included the staff for each team and those rosters would have enough people to run their own spring game.
Why Billy Napier assembled his staff this way
The vote on Tuesday was long coming. Most Division I coaches expected it to be voted on and passed prior to the 2023 football season, but the NCAA moves as fast as the US Government when passing new legislation.
Even before the NCAA new legislation came down on Tuesday, the Gators had already had their infrastructure ready to go and hit the ground running. One of Napier’s first hires was Ryan O’Hara as an offensive analyst for the quarterbacks. Now, again, the NCAA
“I think that in my time last year, learning this offense, I can’t say enough good things about him,” Florida starting quarterback Graham Mertz said of O’Hara prior to spring practice. “I mean, the amount of time, effort, energy he’s put into developing me, I think is one thing that kind of goes unnoticed because no one really talks about him.”
There are others like Frank Ogas who works with the tight end, CJ Wilford, who works with the safeties, Ross Barres, Cannon Gibbs, Kaleb Johnson, Eric Kiesau, Troy Krutchen, the list of analysts and quality control assistants is exhaustive.
It’s all surrounding one goal, a goal stated in Napier’s introductory press conference.
“We’re going to build the best football team in the SEC conference. We’re going to build the best football program in the SEC conference,” Napier said in December of 2021. “We must have a championship approach in everything that we do to accomplish this goal.”
Dividing the workload
Speaking with media prior to an event in Ponte Vedra, Florida, Napier was asked about the, then pending, vote on allowing analysts to coach on the field.
“We have a lot of people in our building that will immediately be able to impact our team. And look I think the reality is depending on what campus you visit and what day it is some of those people are already coaching, you know, I think, it depends on who runs your compliance and how often they are around,” he quipped.
“I think it will be healthy. I think it will allow a little bit better pace to do the job, you know, these guys not only coach their position, they evaluate their position, they recruit their position, and then they have to develop great relationships and those relationships are tested more than they used to be tested because of the transfer portal, so there’s more on the plate and with more attrition, there’s more evaluation and more recruitment, so I think the workload of the assistant coach has been probably three to four times as much work as in the past and I think having quality second-tier people at each position, distributing that workload from an evaluation, recruitment relationship, teaching development, that’s going to benefit the quality of life of the staff members.”
Napier saw this coming even before he interviewed for the head coaching job at Florida. He made it a point during his talks with Scott Stricklin before he accepted the job. Napier would need Florida’s administration to provide him with the latitude to hire an unprecedented staff, which meant additional resources from the UAA. He’s been given more than any other football coach has at Florida. Tuesday’s ruling by the NCAA Division I Council just showed that Napier was right to ask for what he asked for and Florida should benefit immediately from Tuesday’s vote.
The post Florida Gators have been positioned to take advantage of new NCAA ruling for 2 years appeared first on On3.
