Monthly Archives: December 2021
Director of Player Engagement and NIL
Billy Napier has tapped Marcus Castro-Walker to the Florida Gators staff. Castro-Walker will be the Director of Player Engagement and Name, Image, and likeness for the University of Florida.
Castro Walker comes to Florida from Nebraska. He joined Scott Frost’s program in February of 2021 as the Huskers’ director of player development. In that role, Castro-Walker “develops, implements and monitors an effective student mentoring program for Husker football student-athletes,” according to the Nebraska website. Castro-Walker worked closely with Frost to manage and oversaw many off-field responsibilities for Nebraska players.
Prior to Nebraska, Castro-Walker spent four years as the director of college personnel at Arizona State. Previously, he also worked in a similar role at the University of Central Florida, under Frost.
Castro-Walker first joined the Sun Devils in 2008 as a graduate assistant. He worked with the Office of Student-Athlete Development (OSAD) while obtaining his master’s degree in higher and post-secondary education.
After graduating from his master’s program at ASU, he began working with the football program. He assisted student-athletes in academic support and life skills training.
This is a new role for the University of Florida. It adds a person who will directly work with student-athletes and NIL. The University recently partnered with INFLCR, a company dedicated to helping companies, brands, and collectives reach student-athletes.
And to Everyone….
Great News !
Welcome Coach Peagler
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Florida head football coach Billy Napier announced Friday that William Peagler will join his staff as an assistant, coaching the tight ends.
Peagler will head to Gainesville after spending two seasons as Michigan State’s running backs coach, helping the Spartans finish the 2021 regular season with a 10-2 record and reach their third New Year’s Six Bowl. Peagler and MSU will face Pittsburgh in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl on Dec. 30.
Prior to Michigan State, Peagler was the director of quality control for the offense in 2019 at Colorado.
Peagler spent the 2018 season as Louisiana’s director of player personnel and quality control coordinator, helping the Ragin’ Cajuns recruit the No. 1 class in the Sun Belt Conference that year.
Prior to Louisiana, he served as a graduate assistant at Georgia during the Bulldogs’ run to the College Football Playoff National Championship in 2017. Peagler worked with NFL first-rounder Isaiah Wynn, who earned first-team All-SEC honors as an offensive tackle that year.
In Athens, Peagler was also part of the staff that signed the nation’s consensus top recruiting class for 2018.
Peagler spent the 2016 season at Minnesota, where he served as an assistant in quality control for the offense. Prior to that, he was the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach at Olive Branch High School in Mississippi in 2015, and the run game coordinator and recruiting coordinator at Coffeyville Community College in 2014.
Peagler spent the 2011-13 seasons at Louisiana. He initially joined the Ragin’ Cajuns staff as an offensive quality control assistant and then was an offensive graduate assistant coach in his final two years there. UL won the New Orleans Bowl all three seasons he was on the staff.
A 2010 Clemson graduate, Peagler began his coaching career as student assistant for the Tigers from 2006-09 and later as the tight ends coach at Valdosta State for the 2010 season.
Christmas Wish
A Covid Christmas
Twas the night before Christmas, Covid was here,
We all had to stay extra cautious this year.
Our masks were hung by the chimney with care
In case Santa forgot his and needed a spare.
With Covid, we couldn’t leave cookies or cake
So we left Santa hand sanitizer to take.
The children were sleeping, the brave little tots
The ones over 5 had just had their first shots,
And mom in her kerchief and me in my cap
Had just settled in for a long winter’s nap.
But we tossed and we turned all night in our beds
As visions of variants danced in our heads.
Gamma and Delta and now Omicron
These Covid mutations that go on and on
I thought to myself, “If this doesn’t get better,
I’ll soon be familiar with every Greek letter”.
Then just as I started to drift off and doze
A clatter of noise from the front lawn arose.
I leaped from my bed and ran straight down the stair
I opened the door, and an old gent stood there.
His N-95 made him look pretty weird
But I knew who he was by his red suit and beard.
I kept six feet away but blurted out quick
” What are you doing here, jolly Saint Nick?”
“Where’re your presents, your reindeer and sleigh?
Don’t you know that tomorrow is Christmas Day? “.
And Santa stood there looking sad in the snow
As he started to tell me a long tale of woe.
He said he’d been stuck at the North Pole alone
And all his elves had been working from home,
And most of the others said “Santa, don’t hire us!
We can live off the CERB now, thanks to the virus”.
Those left in the toy shop had little to do.
Supply chain disruptions, meant nothing made new.
And as for the reindeer, they’d all gone away.
None of them left to pull on his sleigh.
He said Dasher and Dancer were in quarantine,
Prancer and Vixen refused the vaccine,
Comet and Cupid were in ICU,
So were Donner and Blitzen, they may not pull through
And Rudolph’s career can’t be resurrected.
With his shiny red nose, they all think he’s infected.
Even with his old sleigh, Santa couldn’t go far.
Every border to cross needs a new PCR.
Santa sighed as he told me how nice it would be
If children could once again sit on his knee.
He couldn’t care less if they’re naughty or nice
But they’d have to show proof they’d had their shot twice.
But then the old twinkle returned to his eyes.
He said that he’d brought me a Christmas surprise
When I unwrapped the box and opened it wide,
Starlight and rainbows streamed out from inside.
Some letters whirled round and flew up to the sky
And they spelled out a word that was 40 feet high.
There first was an H, then an O, then a P,
Then I saw it spelled HOPE when it added the E.
“Christmas magic,” said Santa as he smiled through his beard.
Then suddenly all of the reindeer appeared.
He jumped into his sleigh and he waved me goodbye,
Then he soared o’er the rooftops and into the sky.
I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight
“Get your vaccines my friends, Merry Christmas, good-night”.
Then I went back to bed TO a sweet Christmas dream
Of a world when we’d finished with Covid 19.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
🐊 Bowl Game Day 🐊
The Storyline: Florida & Central Florida – On The Mic
Florida and UCF match up for the third time in what will be the first-ever neutral site and postseason meeting between the two programs.
• The all-time series dates back to 1999 with the Gators owning a 2-0 record against UCF.
• Florida has an all-time record of 24-22 in bowl games including a 3-1 record across the team’s last-four appearances.
• The Gators are 8-3 in bowl games since 2009 and 10-4 dating back to 2006.
• This is Florida’s fourth-straight bowl appearance and seventh in the last-eight seasons.
• Florida is 3-0 against Florida-based teams in 2021, having defeated Florida Atlantic, South Florida and Florida State.
• In two previous games vs. UCF, the Gators have outscored the Knights by a combined score of 100-27.
• The Gators totaled 500-plus yards and 350-plus passing yards in each of the previous-two meetings with UCF.
• Across the previous-two meetings, UF has outgained UCF, 1,138 yards to 600 yards (+538, +269 YPG).
• Special teams coordinator/running backs coach Greg Knox will serve as Florida’s interim head coach vs. UCF. As a veteran of 20-plus seasons in the SEC including four at Florida, Knox previously served as interim coach at Mississippi State in 2017, leading the Bulldogs to a 31-27 win over Louisville in the TaxSlayer Bowl.
• Knox is 2-0 in his career as an interim HC after leading UF to a 24-21 win over FSU on Nov. 27 of this season.
• Florida is already 1-0 at Raymond James Stadium in 2021, having defeated USF, 42-20, in Week 2.
• UF totaled 666 yards of offense — the sixth-highest total in school history — in that Week 2 game.
• The Gators rank seventh in the FBS with 5.4 rushing yards per carry.
• Florida is one of five teams in the FBS averaging over 470 YPG and 200 rushing YPG.
• UF ranks 11th in the FBS with 470.1 scrimmage YPG and 21st in the FBS with 209.0 rush YPG. The Gators rank third in the SEC in total scrimmage YPG and fourth in rushing YPG. UF ranks seventh in the Power Five in scrimmage YPG and 13th in the Power Five in rushing YPG.
• Florida’s 5,641 total yards is the team’s second-highest total through 12 games in the last 20 seasons, trailing only the 2020 campaign — while the team’s mark of 470.1 YPG is on pace to rank sixth in program history.
• Florida’s 2,508 rush yards is its second most through 12 games since 2009 and fourth-most since 1990. UF’s 5.4 rush YPC is on pace to rank fourth in school history, while its 209.0 rush YPG is on track to rank 11th all-time.
• UF’s 209.0 rush YPG represents an increase of 77.7 rush YPG from last year’s mark of 131.3 YPG.
• The Florida offensive line has surrendered just 12 sacks all year, which is tied for the fourth fewest in the FBS and second in the SEC — earning the UF OL a spot on the Joe Moore Award Mid-Season Honor Roll for the first time ever.
• Florida has scored in 422-consecutive games dating back to 1988 — an NCAA record and 55 games longer than any than any other college football team in the history of the sport.
New Strength & Conditioning Coach
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Florida head football coach Billy Napier announced Wednesday that Edward Thompson will serve as an assistant on the Gators strength and conditioning staff.
A native of Houston, he joins the Gators after spending the 2021 season as the head assistant strength coach and director of speed development at Louisiana.
Thompson, who was a defensive back with the Ragin’ Cajuns from 2014-16, started his strength coaching career at Louisiana in 2017 as an intern. His resume includes stops at Houston, Georgia Tech, Austin Peay State, LSU and the New York Giants.
Thompson is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), and is a certified coach by USA Weightlifting, the national governing body for weightlifting in the United States. He is also certified as a speed specialist by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA).
Great Insight on Coach Napier
From Gatorcountry, a great Gator Website……
Billy Napier’s overhaul at Florida includes program messaging and communication
Florida officially hired Billy Napier on November 28. Today is December 21.
During the 23 days since the hire, Florida has announced 17 hirings to the football program on top of the retaining of some existing staff like Vernell Brown. The newest came today with staffer Kyle Kazakevicius. If it at times has felt like there is a new staff member announced every day, it’s because there almost has been.
That feeling appears to be something UF is creating on purpose. Some of the announcements have come days after the staffers have reportedly started work.
Napier promised to build an army with the resources Florida agreed to grant him. He is making sure everyone knows he’s building that army with this announcement-a-day strategy. He could announce them in batches, but that’d make them easier to forget. Oh, he hired a couple assistant athletic somethings and directors of player whatever? That’s nice. Here comes a new news cycle about literally anything else.
Instead, there is a message getting out there on a near-daily basis: Florida hired. Florida hired who? I don’t know. It’s hard to keep up with everyone. But that’s the point: Florida is hiring so many people, it’s hard to keep up.
Florida hired. Florida hired. Florida hired.
It’s a marked change in the communications strategy for Gator football. The program is taking control of its own narrative and not merely reacting to things as they happen.
Dan Mullen has never been a good communicator. There are sections in Buddy Martin’s book Urban’s Way, published after the 2007 season, that talk about how awkward and off putting he could be back then. Nearly every account of someone meeting him tells of that person not liking him. Plenty came to like him over time, but it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that he’s something of an acquired taste.
And that was Mullen on a personal level, which is more forgiving than the level of a public persona. He got better over the years in Starkville, but he never got to be good at public relations.
On top of lacking the ability to read the room, he has an uncanny ability to say things in just the wrong way to allow them to get spun into something they don’t mean. The latest example of that was his “recruiting season” statement, which, when taken out of context, could allow someone to erroneously believe that he didn’t recruit during the football season.
There’s a famous quote from The Reagan Diaries by former President Ronald Reagan that gets repeated as gospel across both sides of the political aisle: if you’re explaining, you’re losing. Mullen had to do too much explaining as a result of his misstatements and general lack of effort on messaging.
Again, recruiting season. He had to go clean up that mess a couple of days later. Pulling the camera back, when the pandemic closed off most of the normal avenues of access to the program, Mullen walled off those avenues instead of trying to find alternate routes. He did little to craft a narrative for his team and project it to the world, instead receding into secrecy. With no alternate messaging coming forth from his program one way or the other, Mullen had no ability to try to get on top of the narrative once it started to turn against him this fall.
Napier hasn’t spoken publicly too many times as Florida’s head coach yet, but he’s been measured and precise with his language. Look up clips of him at Louisiana, and aside from his famous “scared money don’t make money” quote said off the cuff in a halftime interview, he comes off that way there too. If there’s one thing that anyone ever said about Napier, it’s that he’s a person who believes in preparation and attention to detail. His messaging has followed that to a T.
It’s for those reasons that the near-daily hiring announcements appear to be a real strategy and not, say, a consequence of the public relations department being short staffed from the coaching transition and the holidays. There hasn’t yet been time to put together attention-grabbing video content or glossy photo-laden profiles of coaches and players, but they’re doing what they can with what they’ve got to put forth a message.
Napier is still in the honeymoon period, especially after a strong finish to early National Signing Day. Gator fans won’t always celebrate hiring people they’ve never heard of to perform a role that’s ill-defined by their job titles. But for now they will, especially since the early hires started coming before that good NSD performance.
Even if you can’t name most anyone hired two days after the press release went out, you still can understand the narrative arc here:
- Napier said he’d hire an army to improve the program on the field and in recruiting.
- He began hiring that army.
- Members of the army helped him deliver an early NSD signing group that was well above expectations.
The through line is clear. No one has to explain anything, and therefore Napier is winning.
There will come a time when Napier puts his foot in his mouth or otherwise has some kind of mess to clean up. He’s human after all, and we all make mistakes.
The early returns suggest, however, that he’ll have a lot fewer messes to clean up than the past several coaching staffs had to. Message discipline and winning communications appear to have returned to Gainesville.
Recruiting News……
Florida really couldn’t have asked for a better early signing day than it had on Wednesday. Despite still building the new staff under coach Billy Napier, who had only been on the job for 10 days, the team didn’t lose any of its current commits and added three more blue-chip prospects, including five-star safety Kamari Wilson, who Georgia was considered the favorite to land until the IMG Academy prospect took an official visit to Gainesville last weekend.
Despite the idea that Billy Napier might punt to start the early signing period, the Gators played offense and pulled in two stunners with top 100 linebacker Shemar James and five-star safety Kamari Wilson, who most pegged for Georgia. The Gators also landed four-star defensive back Devin Moore to start the day. That’s the kind of recruiting effort Florida fans have craved from their coach and a great way for Napier to endear himself to the fanbase.
James, who was initially committed to Florida before decommitting in October and was considered a Georgia lean with Alabama close behind, was a big recruiting win for Napier and defensive coordinator Patrick Toney, who was his primary recruiter. Moore is also a very talented defensive back that eased the pain of losing out on Julian Humphrey, a one-time Gators commit who stuck with his pledge to the Bulldogs.
The signing day haul was especially impressive considering the fact that, by his own admission, Napier didn’t have a relationship with any of the prospects who signed — except for offensive lineman Christian Williams, who was originally committed to Napier at Lousiana — prior to Thanksgiving.
One of Napier’s main selling points as a coach was his recruiting prowess, and that’s already been made clear even as he’s less than two weeks into the job. Florida had never signed a five-star from IMG Academy before Wilson, and it will be interesting to see what other surprises this staff has in store over the next couple of months.