Brandon Marcello - went to University of Arkansas, covered Auburn for a while.
1. FLORIDA: A+
Billy Napier built the best Group of 5 staff in the country at Louisiana, so it’s no surprise he used the same blueprint to hire the top names in the sport and tweak a few responsibilities at Florida. He brought four assistants from the Ragin’ Cajuns to Gainesville, including defensive coordinator Patrick Toney, pilfered a pair of coaches from SEC rivals (including recruiting extraordinaire Corey Raymond), raided the Big Ten for a running backs coach, dipped into the NFL for two more assistants and also hired two coaches to handle the offensive line.
Why two offensive line coaches? Why not? Most programs have two coaches leading the five-man secondary, so why do teams trust one coach to lead all five positions along the offensive line? That’s Napier’s thinking.
Florida gets the honor of the best-built new staff of the offseason with a wide variety of coaches and experience, a new hiring philosophy along the offensive line and the greatest tagline for a special teams coach in the country: gamechanger coordinator. For the health of the program, Napier power-washed the facility and rid it of Dan Mullen’s entire staff, and that might be the best development.
Head coach: Billy Napier (Louisiana)
New staff: Jabbar Juluke, running backs (Louisiana, running backs); Patrick Toney, co-defensive coordinator/safeties (Louisiana, defensive coordinator); Corey Raymond, assistant head coach/cornerbacks (LSU, cornerbacks); Keary Colbert, receivers (USC, receivers); William Peagler, tight ends (Michigan State, running backs); Rob Sale, offensive coordinator/offensive line (New York Giants, offensive line); Sean Spencer, co-defensive coordinator/defensive line (New York Giants, defensive line); Jay Bateman, inside linebackers (North Carolina, defensive coordinator); Chris Couch, special teams/gamechanger coordinator (Louisiana, special teams coordinator); Darnell Stapleton, offensive line (Louisiana, offensive line); Mike Peterson, outside linebackers (South Carolina, outside linebackers/defensive ends).
Now, compare some of those highlighted points to what Brandon said about Mario Cristobal.
12. MIAMI: B-
Mario Cristobal is back home at Miami and with boosters promising to flood the program with more money and better facilities, the Hurricanes are in as good of a position to return to prominence than it has at any point in the last 20 years.
The problem as we sit h ere today, however, is that Cristobal’s staff has yet to be set and those who have been brought on board are mostly his confidants at Oregon. This grade will likely change in the coming weeks but the first moves made by Cristobal haven’t made many waves in the industry.
Head coach: Mario Cristobal (Oregon, head coach)
New staff: Bryan McClendon, receivers/co-offensive coordinator (Oregon, receivers); Alex Mirabal, assistant head coach/offensive line (Oregon, offensive line); Joe Salave’a, defensive line/associate head coach (Oregon, defensive line); Kevin Smith, running backs (Ole Miss, running backs)
At least he acknowledges that Mario's grade will need to be revised, but look at how Billy Napier gets CREDIT for hiring a bunch of his G5 cronies, while Mario hiring guys from POWER FIVE CONFERENCE CHAMPION Oregon are dismissed as "confidants".
And look at the focus on "making waves in the industry", as if that matters. Compare that to how he raves about Gaypier "pilfering" Raymond from LSU and Peterson from South Carolina (LSU fired its head coach and Raymond wasn't retained, while Gaytor alum Peterson was Shane Beamer's ONLY holdover coach in 2021 and just didn't fit in), "raiding" the Big 10 for a RB coach (Peagler used to work for Billy at Louisiana and Clemson, and his Big 10 job was his FIRST EVER ON-FIELD JOB), and "dipping into" the NFL for two coaches (besides the fact that the NY Giants were one of the worst teams in the NFL, Sale was a 1-year NFL coach who was formerly a Louisiana employee of Billy's, and Spencer was with the Giants for TWO years).
Oh, but tell us more about "two OL coaches" (technically Miami has two as well) and that funky-fresh job title "gamechanger coordinator".
Good lord, what a joke. Hyped up names and job descriptions, overblown resumes based on 1-year and 2-year job tenures, a massive overreliance on G5 hirees...
And Billy got an "A+". Look, whether Mario's "B-" was incomplete, there's no way in **** that Billy deserved an "A+".