You know the Butterfly Effect theory, right? It’s the idea that little causes lead to great effects, like a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world eventually causing a hurricane on the other.
The Butterfly Effect exists everywhere, if you know where to look for it — history, politics, romance. And it’s present in college football too, but in an appropriately distorted form. Instead of the delicate flapping of a butterfly’s wings leading to chaos, we have thrown shoes, reenactments of dog urination and, now, a hocked glob of spit.
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College football. Greatest sport on earth.
Our latest Butterfly Effect scenario: Saturday night in Gainesville, just over two minutes remaining in Florida’s unexpectedly difficult game against South Florida. The Gators were leading 16-15, but the Bulls were starting their final drive deep in their own territory.
But then defensive lineman Brendan Bett decided it would be a good idea to spit on Bulls offensive lineman Cole Skinner. The refs immediately ejected Bett and tagged Florida with a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, bringing South Florida all the way out to its own 39. On the very next play, Bulls quarterback Byrum Brown found Alvon Isaac for a 29-yard completion, all the way to the Florida 32. Inevitably, the game-winning field goal followed shortly thereafter.
Coming into the season, Florida head coach Billy Napier was already on the hot seat, having endured calls for his job last year only to stave them off with four wins to end the season. But after Saturday’s loss, calls for Napier’s ouster have once again been turned up to 11. Napier is now 20-20 as a head coach at Florida, and 10-14 in the SEC, with a brutal in-conference schedule awaiting. This was not a game that he could afford to lose, but lose he did, in the most ridiculous and booster-enraging way possible.
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“The kid is remorseful. You know, I think he feels as if he let the team down,” Napier said Monday of Bett’s hock. “It was out of character for him and he made a mistake and he compromised the team. He made a selfish decision. He misrepresented our fans and our alumni, the university.”
Bull Spit, as it’s now called, didn’t cost Florida the game. But — Butterfly-Effect-style — it could end up costing Billy Napier his job. His buyout is currently around $20 million — not nothing, certainly, but also not, say, the $70 million Alabama would need to pay to make Kalen DeBoer go away. And once the coach has cleared out his office, who knows what happens next?
Billy Napier reacts during the fourth quarter of a game against the South Florida. (James Gilbert/Getty Images)
(James Gilbert via Getty Images)
The most immediate effect of a coaching change is the sudden destabilization of whatever program loses its head coach to Florida. You’ve seen it a hundred times, maybe even lived through it a few — coach departs for a sparkly new gig, takes his staff and many of his stars with him, and his former employer is in shambles. Well … until that school hires a new coach, which rolls the employment crisis downhill, again and again.
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Now, if Florida decides to fire Napier, where would the Gators turn? Of course, there are the wish-list hires — Dan Lanning! Kirby Smart! Lane Kiffin! — but that’s just message-board chum. The real issue is if Florida derails another university’s trajectory by snagging their coach out of their building. (Along those lines, the Gators could do worse than looking across the field at the guy who just beat them, South Florida’s Alex Golesh.)
All this harkens back to two of the great Butterfly Effect moments of the last few years. Back in 2020, Florida was ranked No. 6 and battling a feisty LSU. Late in the game, the Gators apparently stopped LSU on third-and-long … only a Florida defender inexplicably hurled an LSU receiver’s shoe downfield, drawing an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that — stop us if this sounds familiar — led to a walkoff game-winning field goal. The shoe toss led directly to the firing of then-head coach Dan Mullen and the hiring of Napier.
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Still, at least Florida can take heart in the fact that Bull Spit probably won’t match the 2019 Egg Bowl for sheer Butterfly Effect madness. In that game, Ole Miss receiver Elijah Moore scored what should have been the game-tying touchdown late, but decided to lift his leg in a dog-pee-style celebration and drew a 15-yard excessive celebration penalty — to be enforced on the extra point. Ole Miss missed that kick, Mississippi State won the game … and chaos ensued. An Athletic investigation found that as a result of that game, 52 FBS schools either brought on board a new coach or lost one (or both), and staffs reaching from high school to the NFL saw movement on their sidelines. All from one lifted leg.
Florida’s spitting incident might not reverberate to that degree … but then, that’s the thing about Butterfly Effects. You never quite know when they’re done resonating.
