Billy Napier reveals unique plans for Florida walk-on program

Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier raised some eyebrows after he announced his unique plan for his walk-on program. The new skipper wants to maximize the walk-on capacity of his squad.

A full team has 125 active players, typically with a maximum of 85 scholarship players. That leaves room for 35 walk-ons in any given year. Billy Napier, however, would like up to 50 walk-ons.

“Relative to the number of student-athletes that we have, the goal is to have a 50-man walk-on roster,” Napier said. “That ratio there, when you really think about the coach-to-player ratio, if you look at other sports, I think that ratio is much smaller.”

Not only would that approach give more non-scholarship athletes a chance to make the team, but it would also allow the coaches to put more focus on fewer scholarship athletes while maintaining depth at each position.

Napier announces plans to retain on-field staffer

When the Florida Gators hired Billy Napier away from Louisana, he immediately began to fill out his staff. Fast forward to late January and Napier is still making quality hires for the program.

Florida announced they would be retaining a name from Dan Mullen’s staff on Friday. Corey Bell, who spent the 2021 season as the director of player personnel for the Gators, will remain in Gainseville with the role of quality control of running backs. It’s now Bell’s second stint with Florida after working in the secondary during the 2017 season.

Bell spent three seasons at UCF as the cornerbacks coach under Josh Heupel before he left for the Tennessee job. Sticking within the Sunshine State, Bell has also served on the Florida Atlantic staff as the secondary coach and director of player personnel and at Miami as the director of football operations.

Florida excelled on the ground last season, rushing for over 200 yards a game. Quarterback Emory Jones was the team’s leading rusher with 758 yards and four touchdowns. Bell will be in charge of helping the running backs be top of the group next season.

On3’s Griffin McVeigh contributed to this report.