For the Gators to win, and win big, like back to the glory days, did it take a personality shift? By the reviews, and appearance on Wednesday in Atlanta, that appears to be the case.

Billy Napier at SEC Media Days came off as a thoughtful, measured, humble and organized coach who eventually will win at Florida as he builds a program for the long term. Those descriptions are a far cry from the previous coaches at Florida, who may be best remembered for their reaction to a shark photo, and wearing a Darth Vader costume to a post-game press conference.

Napier outlined the plan to find the Gators’ identity, and the humble part of his remarks spoke to the willingness to adapt to the personnel at hand. But as a first-year coach, Napier must do a multi-pronged recruiting effort to gain buy-in from the current players, and sell them on why his message will work when previous regimes have fallen short. Napier, in his low-key and methodical approach, has landed with his players and a sense that he’s sincere, knows how to treat people and the way you treat people matters.

Napier was asked about how he’ll be different than the Florida coaches since Steve Spurrier, and particularly recent examples that flamed out, or other fell short of a championship. Napier has been open with his investment to building the off-the-field staff, and through the hiring process, he sold the Florida leaders on the need to grow the organization. He’s already succeeded there.

“They were committed to our vision and our plan, right? I think we’re 20 percent bigger as an organization. We’ve modernized the approach,” Napier said from the main podium at SEC Media Days. “We have an incredible product. I mean, we have history, we have tradition, we have an elite degree. We have one of the best experiences for scholar athletes in the country. It’s been done before, and they’re passionate about doing it again, right? I think they understand maybe why there’s a struggle. I think they’re working hard to address those things. But I love a challenge, and this is a challenge. I think we can get caught up in all that or we can see an unbelievable opportunity, and that’s exactly what I see.”

While there has been hand-wringing over a slow start to recruiting, the Gators have clearly closed the gap in facilities, and there’s every indication that Napier will land the kind of recruits to get the program rolling again. Napier in interviews on Wednesday repeatedly recalled that there are 275 Division I players in Florida and Georgia, and the Carolinas have about 90 each year, which is about the same for Alabama.

“Ultimately, you have to believe that it can happen, and I think we have a belief that it can happen,” Napier told the SEC Radio Network.

Napier with Paul Finebaum was reflective on the issue that Finebaum vaguely referred to, the Gators losing QB recruit Jadan Rashada to Miami, and he gave a measured response about knowing who you are, sticking with your values and how you want to operate a program.

In this day and age of a rapidly changing news cycle, and social media and message board topics operating at warp speed, Napier offers a refreshing contrast to set a consistent tone.

It’s taken Napier, and his unique vision and organization to build this apparatus and catch Florida up with the rest of college football. It’s one thing to be a top-shelf offensive coordinator, or play-caller, but as we saw last year when the roster under the hood was exposed, there wasn’t much meat on the bone. It’s going to take Napier 3 or 4 years to re-build this into a program that can challenge the likes of Georgia on a consistent basis.

Napier is faced with a tall task of selling this newly rebuilt program to recruits without the benefit of recent success, or being an NFL pipeline as it was in the past.

Napier has a plan, and given his presentation on Wednesday, and explanations in his first 7 months on the job, it appears that the long game will work, and that his process will be the key that redirects Florida back into the national spotlight.

It’s ironic that his main catch phrase, even something that Greg Sankey mentioned on Wednesday, “scared money don’t make money,” is about as opposite as you can get from his deliberate and measured approach, not to mention the genuine feeling he gives off as a people person.

“Every team in the country’s got its own set of issues and problems, right?,” Napier said. “We’re all working through that. That’s exactly where we’re at.”

One of Napier’s mantras is to know where you stand. What Gator fans want to believe is he also knows where to take them.