I think Napier is doing well with recruiting, but some high school kids are looking at the short term and want to see wins. Others are motivated by playing time. Some are motivated by the culture Napier is building. Some love the Gators. Some like the NIL cash. Some recruits will decommit regardless of the current win-loss record.
The above was seemingly the overall (albeit SURFACE) "TRUTH" up until the last day or two--but something else, some "creeping rot ftom below" appears to be taking hold--an "invisible tide of consequences", if you will, an unstppable trend that has long since been written into our collective eventual cultural DNA with the changes wrought by NIL, transfer portal, general societal selfishness and all the rest.
We've all begun to sense it. "Billy Napier NOW" might well have BEEN "the right Gator hire" 10 years ago, but given the very shifts and changes noted above, that may well no longer be the case.
Now, y'all know I'm not usually one to make strident, bold predictions, and I hope uou'll forgive me choosing to do it here, but I will go this far...
If we lose anything CLOSE to half this once-"encouragingly solid Nation-Leading" 2024 recruiting class (which, believe it or not, is now more and more gatheringly possible, some say LIKELY, with already several other long-time "enthusiastic early commits" supposedly now bending close to flipping elsewhere, under enormous pressure from other suitors, coupled with public and private groups around them urging them to do so), I cannot help but tell you:
BILLY NAPIER WILL BE GONE...
...If not between the coming seasons, but with a PREDICTABLY POOR showing (in record and continued onfield, ingame confusion) in the even TOUGHER schedule we face NEXT year, then by 2025 at the latest--and "HANG THE EXPENSE OF BUYOUT!" will be the cry.
And we will be in a deeper hole than EVER, oh my brothers.
I am no longer a young man (at least in objective years--though for good or ill you'd probably get a different picture and debate from friends and ex-lovers alike), and I absolutely HATE having to now face the morbidly depressing thought that I may NEVER personally see my Gators fighting for (CLAIMING!) Championships once again.
But that is ALL our current danger, exactly the fate we are now most certainly flirting with.
Frankly, I don't KNOW exactly WHAT we can or SHOULD do now to somehow turn this all around. This big '24 class was our LAST CHANCE to even START us on the road back.
I suppose Billy and his people must somehow pull out all the stops; whatever skills and machinations played their part in assembling it, we can only hope and PRAY that it can somehow again be put successfully in play NOW.
Notice that I DIDN'T say we had to "SEE" any of it:
Only results matter now...Where just days, even HOURS ago it was the results ON THE FIELD that we thought this program still needed, it has NOW come down to THIS:
SAVE THIS CLASS OR WATCH YOUR DREAMS SLIP THROUGH YOUR FINGERS, GATORS.
ALL our fingers, boys.
