Sources — Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns coach Billy Napier expected to become Florida Gators’ new coach

Florida officials are in contract negotiations to hire Louisiana’s Billy Napier as the Gators’ next football coach, and, barring a collapse in the talks, a deal could be announced as early as Sunday, sources confirmed to ESPN.

ESPN reported last week that Napier was the Gators’ top target to replace Dan Mullen after he was fired on Nov. 21.

Napier plans to coach the Ragin’ Cajuns in Saturday’s game (3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN and ESPN App) against Appalachian State in the Sun Belt Conference championship game.

Napier, 42, has been at Louisiana the past four seasons and led the Ragin’ Cajuns to 10 or more wins in each of the past three seasons. Before his arrival, Louisiana had never won 10 games in a season in program history. Napier turned down multiple SEC head coaching opportunities in recent years, and again emerged as a target for several high-profile positions this season.

Florida wasn’t the only school interested in Napier during this hiring cycle. LSU and Virginia Tech also had interest.

Napier, a former Furman quarterback, coached under both Dabo Swinney at Clemson and Nick Saban at Alabama. He was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Arizona State for one season before landing the Louisiana head coaching job in 2018. A tenacious recruiter, Napier’s offenses at Louisiana have averaged 31.9 points or more per game all four of his seasons in Lafayette.

If a deal is reached, he would replace Mullen, who was 34-15 in four seasons at Florida and took the Gators to the SEC championship game a year ago. But Mullen lost four straight games to Power 5 teams this season and was just 2-9 against Power 5 foes dating back to the final three games of the 2020 season.

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