There were no complaints about having to move a Saturday game to Sunday. As a matter of fact playing on a different day of the week was commonplace for Billy Napier when he was at Louisiana-Lafayette as the head coach. The fact is millions of lives were changed dramatically over the course of last week when Hurricane Ian ravaged Southwest Florida taking dozens of lives and changing the lives of likely millions in the state. As Florida’s head coach, Napier spent the first few minutes postgame on Sunday thanking everyone that made the game happen and talking about what his program will try and accomplish to help those in need in southwest Florida.
Napier first started off talking about the thousands of people that showed up Sunday in order to be able to pull the game off. Many likely came from the affected region. Many others likely had family members that were dealing with the mess left by Ian.
“I think it’s important that we all … very thankful for all the people that worked the game and that made the game happen today,” Napier started his postgame press conference. “It’s been a tough week for a lot of people in our state. We appreciate all the workers who showed up today and were able to work through some logistics there to make it happen.”
Napier also wants to make sure that the players on his squad have some sense of the scope of what happened in the state even if they weren’t directly affected. Someday, they very well may be. The plan is to get them directly involved somehow in order to show them what others are going through and allow them the chance to help.
“I think for our team, there’s some opportunity to learn here relative to perspective and being thankful for what we do have,” he said. “And I think as an organization, for our players over the next couple of months, we are going to have an opportunity to help a lot of people and certainly we’re going to do that.”
Lastly, the Florida skipper made sure to pitch the organizations that the program will push that are in the business of helping in times of crisis like this one.
“Today, we emphasized investing and contributing to a couple of key funds,” he said. “The Red Cross, Volunteer Florida, and Aid-a-Gator, those are the three websites particular that we encouraged people to contribute to, the funds going directly to all the people that are maybe in a tough spot. Our thoughts and prayers are with those people.”
By Bob Redman.