Billy Napier's new swamp
The new Florida coach may have found the perfect place to kick his career into high gear.
LSU is one of many college football programs I would deem to have made a poor choice in their mascot. There are several programs in the South who chose the Tiger, which as you probably know isn’t native to the Western Hemisphere. LSU at least has some clever alliterations such as “the bayou bengals” which plays off the local geography of the state, but they don’t really stand out for this choice.
Clemson, Auburn, Memphis, and Missouri also all chose the Tiger as their mascot. I guess North America just doesn’t have enough apex predators to go around for all the different sports teams.
It’s always seemed to me like LSU should have chosen something more swampy for their mascot, but the other swamp-adjacent program in the SEC got it right. Florida is all in with the Gator mascot, “the swamp” nickname for their stadium, and the “Gator Chomp” that serves as their hand signal. Florida is unquestionably a more hoity-toity school than LSU, yet they have embraced what comes from the swamp when it helps them win.
There was such a moment this offseason when both LSU and Florida had head coaching vacancies and there was a man near the Louisiana swamps named Billy Napier who was available for hire. Florida chose him and right now probably feel pretty solid about it after a nice home win against Utah.
The fear in Baton Rouge right now has to be that they could have had the swamp king enthroned as their football coach and instead he became a Gator because they were too good for a head coach from Louisiana-Lafayette. Athletic director Scott Woodward was committed to big game hunting and brought in big time Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly, who lost his own opener to Florida State on a blocked point after attempt.
After a somewhat shaky offseason, Billy Napier had a great opening to his tenure and his program has a fascinating look to it for this season. He’s probably feeling like he made a pretty nice choice for himself in choosing his new swamp.