By Bob Redman
We are hearing more and more from the Florida Gators‘ new head football coach Billy Napier’s players about building team chemistry. Usually, coaches talk about it in terms of the play on the field. But Napier wants it to go well beyond that and off the field as well. That closeness will not only make his players want more to play for each other, but years down the road he knows these players are going to cherish the moments that come with being a closer team.
Napier splits up the calendar year into eight sections. And it seems each section has some form of a family-type component to it. Even the discipline phase, which was labeled Regimen to keep everyone in line, was about accountability to your teammates. In this case, it was accountable to a 10-member team that each player was voted on to. The players were asked to do things like dress alike during workouts. They were asked to be on time everywhere and then the members of each group would look after each other to make sure they were in line with the program.
It brought people closer. They had to know one another and learn the good and bad of the people on their respective teams. But it goes beyond just the 10 players on these small teams. They work to get to know everyone in a uniform and everyone that works around the program.
Napier makes them work for it. He was asked about them knowing everybody’s hometown and then if he knew all of their hometowns and was quick with a response.
“That would be a challenge probably, but I would be pretty good at it,” he said. “I don’t want to take a quiz, by the way.
“I think that a couple of times a year we’re going to rearrange the locker room if that makes sense. We did it in the beginning here. I just think interaction — there’s a term called propinquity. I challenge you in the next press conference we have, you can give me the definition of that. I’ll work on my hometowns. You work on propinquity.
“I just believe in that part of the game. It’s one of the things that you really — when the game is over and you are sitting around here down the road, that’s what you are going to remember. You are going to remember your teammates. You are going to remember the things that the game taught you.”
Propinquity means closeness. He’s aiming for that for his squad, the closeness of a family. The closeness so that you are willing to fight for the person next to you and do everything the right way and expect them to do the same.
“It’s a team sport,” Napier said. “I think as much as we can do to create that culture, the better.”
And it is all-inclusive. Special teams’ players (specs) have oftentimes been somewhat outcasts on teams. They usually practice separately from the rest of the squad. They don’t show up in the middle of the team practices until late in some sessions or maybe just at the very end of practices. But Napier has changed the thinking when it comes to special teams.
“Billy Napier has come in and done a very good job of bringing us all together since last year,” Florida punter Jeremy Crawshaw said. “We’ve all bought in, become a bigger family, and he definitely emphasized that point, everyone buying in and becoming whole.
“That also involves the specs, the game changers. We changed the name to give us more emphasis. But yeah, that was one of the big points of Billy Napier coming in here. He wanted everyone to buy in, become a bigger family, so he’s done a very good job with that, and he’s involved the specialists, as well, so we definitely like that.”
The result of the closeness is rubbing off on all aspects of the program, not just the separate position groups. The discipline piece is clear to many what Napier was aiming for.
“Discipline, a huge, huge discipline difference,” sophomore defensive tackle Gervon Dexter said. “Just you’ll see a family out there. It won’t be an individual this or that. It’ll be, like I said, all the guys going the same way. That will be the biggest thing you’ll see out there.”
At this point, even eight months into building the program, the expectation is for everyone to put the effort into getting closer. It’s working. The players see it and it is making an impact like Napier says will last forever.
“For me, I can go to either one of my coaches and talk to them about anything, even family troubles or even if it’s something on the field that I’m not getting,” junior guard O’Cyrus Torrence said. “I feel like I can do that with them. It’s just the relationships they build, and then from seeing from what I have seen with Coach Napier and the other coaches how they interact with the players and talking with the players how they say it’s different from how they’re used to, it’s just eye-opening to where that actually matters and how the coaching staff actually interacts with the players and stuff like that. It’s more than just football, more than just about football, it’s kind of like a family ordeal.”