Alabama football coach, Nick Saban, and Louisiana coach, Billy Napier have bonds deeper than just their Crimson Tide experiences.
The two men, Alabama football coach, Nick Saban and Louisiana coach, Billy Napier, are more than a generation apart in age. They share a work bond from Napier’s five seasons as an assistant to Saban. Napier is also the newest member of the ‘Nick assistants, turned head coaches’ club.
Perhaps even deeper, Nick and Billy share powerful life experiences. Both men played football for their fathers at some point of their playing careers. Both men also lost their fathers too soon to untimely deaths.
What Saban and Napier share beyond all else, is the immeasurable impact the fathers had on the sons. When Billy Napier returns to Tuscaloosa and Bryant-Denny on Saturday, he will remember his Crimson Tide years. He has said repeatedly his plan for the Ragin’ Cajuns program is to model it after Saban’s Tide.
After a Friday afternoon walk-through, Napier may have a few moments to reflect on his path from being a son to, and player for, Bill Napier. Billy may think back to when, as a child, he and high school coach, Bill Napier would rise early on Saturday mornings and ride together to weekly exchanges of game films with other coaches.
When Bill Napier died at the age of 60 from ALS, one of the tributes to him stated,
"He loved coaching and mentoring the youth in our community, not just because he loved the game of football, but because he loved the people."
For those who know the story of Nick Sr. and his years coaching youth football, you know the above quote sounds like what people in West Virginia said about Nick Saban’s father.
Billy Napier has suffered setbacks. The loss of his dad was the worst. Being fired by Dabo Swinney at Clemson was another. Napier spent seven years on the Clemson staff after ending his playing career at Furman. He started as a graduate assistant under Tommy Bowden and left after one year to be the quarterback coach at South Carolina State. He quickly returned to Clemson after one season, and when Dabo became head coach, Billy was promoted to offensive coordinator.
One year as Clemson OC was a big success, followed by a second year when the offense and the team struggled. There were rumors Dabo would regularly override Billy’s play calls in games. At the end of the 2010 season, Dabo fired him.
A few weeks later, Nick Saban reached out to Billy and offered him an analyst position. After his first year in Tuscaloosa, Billy followed Jim McElwain to Colorado State as quarterback coach. He returned to Alabama football the next season and stayed four seasons until Arizona State hired him to be offensive coordinator in the 2017 season. Among others, Dabo recommended Billy for the ASU job.
If Billy Napier had not learned it before, he got a lesson in resiliency when his dad was diagnosed with ALS. Bill Napier kept,
"coaching as long as he could, as long as his voice held out even as his body started to succumb. For a while, he used a golf cart to get around. Later he coached out of a wheelchair … (as) offensive coordinator and quarterback coach."
Billy Napier uses a different offensive system than the one he learned from his dad. But when he talks about the Ragin’ Cajuns emulating Alabama football, he also wants them to embody the football foundations of his father.
"when you get a chance to have your own team, you know, you do what maybe he was able to do for a long time … you want your team to play a certain way relative to the intangibles that maybe his teams were known for."
Only three games into his head coaching career, Billy Napier’s coaching story is far from written. Whatever happens, it will someday make a great book. A book with characters Tommy Bowden, Dabo Swinney, Nick Saban, Todd Graham and William “Bill” Napier.
Si.com has a good read about Billy Napier, his dad and what Napier uses of the Nick Saban Process. He uses a lot, but instead of The Process, Napier calls it The Journey.