Billy Napier and the danger of self-deception

In the 12 years I’ve been writing in this space, I don’t think I’ve ever written about sports.  But sometimes sports can provide metaphors for us to learn about much larger issues in life, and I think such is the case with my alma mater’s head football coach, the University of Florida’s Billy Napier.

Terribly long story short for those who don’t follow college football: since the 1990s, UF has won three national titles and eight conference titles to establish itself as a highly-competitive team that expects to regularly compete for championships.

Unfortunately for fans and to the delight of rivals, UF has struggled to meet these expectations for many years now, having last won a significant title in 2008.  There have been a series of head coaches over that time who have had some solid years but just haven’t been able to get the program consistently back in the title conversation.

So it is that four years ago an up-and-coming coach from a smaller school, Billy Napier, was hired because of his experience coaching under some fantastic head coaches and in building a successful program at that smaller school.  The expectation was that he would rebuild UF’s program in a fashion that was similar to those of some of the game’s current most successful teams and get it back to competing for championships.

In some ways, Napier has been successful in improving the state of the football program, overall recruiting better players than his immediate predecessor and creating an environment where few players get in trouble with their academics or the law (a problem in the past).  But at the end of the day, coaches are judged on how many games they win and lose.

Here are the records of each of Florida’s full-time head coaches since 1990 (wins-losses-ties):

Steve Spurrier: 122-27-1

Ron Zook: 23-14

Urban Meyer: 65-15

Will Muschamp: 28-21

Jim McElwain: 22-12

Dan Mullen: 34-15

Billy Napier: 21-23

Napier is the first Florida coach since Raymond Wolf in the 1940s to have a losing record, and in four years he’s closing in on the same total number of losses Steve Spurrier had in 12. 

Just looking on the surface, Napier isn’t succeeding.  This is especially obvious when compared to two of his coaching peers:

• Mike Elko was hired at Duke the same year Napier was hired at Florida, and he immediately improved their record from 3-9 in 2021 to 9-4 in 2022.  After another year at Duke, he took the job at Texas A&M and currently has them 6-0 and ranked within the top 5 teams in the nation (and they just dominated Napier’s Florida team last night with a coaching staff that includes two defensive coaches previously on Napier’s staff).
• Curt Cignetti inherited an Indiana team that went 3-9 in 2023 and went 11-2 in 2024 and currently has them at 6-0 after an upset defeat of number 3-ranked Oregon.

But the reason I’m writing about Billy Napier isn’t to demonstrate how unfit he is for the Florida job (that may be a cathartic side effect, though).  It’s to show him as a case study for a topic I’ve written about a good deal that is terribly dangerous: self-deception.

Napier is a prime example of the dangers of self-delusion because the exact same issues that were a problem in his first year are still problems in his fourth year: in-game coaching, time management, and the productivity of the offense.  Again without going into excessive detail, these issues have been abundantly obvious to even casual fans, and yet Napier has not publicly acknowledged that they are issues or done anything to address them (he serves as the play caller on offense, so any deficiencies on it fall directly on him).

Let’s delve into the psychology of why this – likely – is the case, which requires some level of speculation. 

Napier has said himself that his experience being fired as the offensive coordinator at Clemson in 2009 was difficult for him and essentially served as a type of rock bottom moment.  He slowly worked his way back up the assistant coaching ladder and was wide receiver coach for four seasons at Alabama before being passed over when the offensive coordinator position opened, so he left to be coordinator at Arizona State in 2017, which he then left after one season to become head coach at Louisiana.

He continued to call his own plays while head coach at Louisiana and things seemed to go well as his teams finished with records of 7-7, then 11-3, 10-1, and 12-1.  Indeed, Napier said very recently that he has no intention of giving up play-calling duties at Florida because “it’s year eight for me [as a head coach] and it’s the way I’ve done it, and it’s what got us here.”

But here’s where the self-denial comes into play – it is not what got him to Florida.

Here is the reality of what happened at Louisiana under Napier: each of his recruiting classes was the best in Louisiana’s conference each year, which meant his teams were more talented than the teams they played against. 

Contrast that with how Louisiana’s total offense was ranked at the end of each season: 44^th in 2018, 8^th in 2019, 43^rd in 2020, and 62^nd in 2021.

In other words: meh (except for 2019).  Nothing special.

Then look at how Louisiana’s defenses fared: 97^th in 2018, 47^th in 2019, 33^rd in 2020, and 11^th in 2021.

In other words: steady improvement each year.

All of that taken together, what is the big picture for Louisiana’s success under Napier?  First and foremost, a more talented team coupled with an increasingly-improved defense.  The offense, by rankings alone, had one great season and three mediocre seasons.  Ergo, the offense wasn’t crucial to Louisiana’s success.

Now look at the same variables during Napier’s time at Florida.

Recruiting rankings in Florida’s conference (out of 16 teams): 8^th in 2022, 5^th in 2023, 7^th in 2024, 4^th in 2025.

Napier is not “out-talenting” his immediate competition.

Total offense rankings: 38^th in 2022, 47^th in 2023, 43^rd in 2024, and 104^th so far in 2025.

That’s a solid “meh,” at best, until completely falling off the rails this year.

Total defense rankings: 97^th in 2022, 70^th in 2023, 87^th in 2024, and 45^th so far in 2025.

That’s a dumpster fire until improving to mediocre this year.

So looking strictly at raw metrics, the performance of Napier’s teams has never been impressive from a production output, but what he had been able to do at Louisiana was be more talented than his competition.

That no longer being the case at Florida, his weaknesses are on broad display.  And yet his refusal to admit his own weaknesses is dumbfounding, even in the face of almost certainly losing his job.

This is where the human tendency to delude ourselves can become so powerful and where we can sabotage ourselves.  It’s painful to own up to our insufficiencies, so we generally prefer to make excuses, avoid taking responsibility, and deny the reality of our situation.

Especially in the world of super-competitive college football, it takes a large amount of humility to come face to face with the fact that we might not be good enough in a certain role.  For Napier, who seems to have been so wounded by his firing at Clemson and being passed over at Alabama, it seems to be deeply personal that he prove he belongs as a play caller.

And that’s why our jobs can never become part of our identity – if we tie our sense of self-worth into our performance at our jobs, then we can lead ourselves and the people we work with into catastrophe.  We can delude ourselves to how effective we are at what we do, and if we happen to be in charge, that can take a whole host of people along for a destructive ride (and an entire fanbase of millions).

It was painful for me to admit that my attempt at planting a church wasn’t working.  But while painful, I also thought it was clearly quite obvious by the results: only a handful of people were showing up to worship.  But some people’s sense of self denial can be so strong, I suppose, that even what we think should be obvious isn’t.

It was hard to admit all the effort I put forward in starting a church didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped it would, but admitting that is how I hope to grow from the experience.  It doesn’t mean I was a “bad pastor,” per se, but it does mean I made mistakes and I have room to become better in several areas if I want to do it again.

Coming face to face with our failures and limitations and not hiding from their reality is requisite if we want to be people of integrity who do as much good as we can and harm as few people as we can.

For Billy Napier, I pray he’s able to truly understand in his heart and not just his head that being a football coach or a genius offensive play caller doesn’t define who he is. 

And to grow, we have to come face to face with the realities of our situations, as uncomfortable as those can be.