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Billy Napier says there will be ‘consequences’ for Florida players involved in post-game scuffle at FSU
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Billy Napier got another big win on Saturday night, with Florida hammering Florida State in Tallahassee to finish the regular season with 3 straight wins and give Napier his first 7-win season as Gators head coach.
But Napier also got more than he ever bargained for after Saturday’s win, as chaos ensued on the field at Doak Campbell Stadium. Some of Florida’s players planted a UF flag at midfield to celebrate the 31-11 victory, and as you can imagine it didn’t go over well with FSU’s players or Seminoles head coach Mike Norvell.
Norvell was so angry that he disposed of the flag and let Napier know that what happened wasn’t OK.
Florida plants the flag after beating FSU, fight ensues, then Mike Norvell grabs flag and throws it pic.twitter.com/UughpNSceD
— Trey Wallace (@TreyWallace_) December 1, 2024
Mike Norvell giving Billy Napier the business for the flag planting after the FSU UF game pic.twitter.com/iEriZRktXD
— Garrett Savage (@GarrettWSavage) December 1, 2024
And guess what? Napier wanted his own players to know that there will be a price to pay for any of his guys who behaved poorly in the aftermath of such a great victory.
“It’s not who we want to be as a program, it’s embarrassing to me and it’s a distraction to a really well-played football game,” said Napier in the postgame press conference. “We shouldn’t have done that, and we won’t do that going forward, and there will be consequences for all involved.”
Billy Napier on the postgame scuffle and flag-planting: “It’s not who we want to be as a program, it’s embarrassing to me and it’s a distraction to a really well-played football game…We shouldn’t have done that, and we won’t do that going forward, and there will be consequences…
— Graham Hall (@GrahamHall) December 1, 2024
The suddenly surging Gators finished the regular season at 7-5 and sent the Seminoles to their 10th loss of a season that ended in fittingly horrific fashion on their home field.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
