By hiring Billy Napier, Florida Gators ramp up pressure on LSU football search | Toppmeyer

The coach who seemed like an obvious option for LSU's football vacancy resided 55 miles to the west.

SEC programs with coaching vacancies in past offseasons had expressed interest in Louisiana coach Billy Napier. He stayed patient, waiting for the right fit, while leading the Ragin’ Cajuns to a string of unprecedented success. It became clear it was going to take something big to uproot Napier.

Then the LSU job opened in October. That qualified as something big – if only the Tigers would swallow their pride and hire the coach from the school located within LSU’s shadow.

LSU athletics director Scott Woodward is a big-game hunter, though, and despite Napier’s success and well-rounded résumé, one could question whether a coach from the Sun Belt Conference qualifies as big game.

We’re going to find out.

Florida didn’t view Napier as a fallback plan. The Gators targeted him quickly and announced the hire Sunday – one week after firing Dan Mullen.

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Combine Florida hiring Napier with Southern Cal’s eye-catching announcement Sunday that it had plundered Lincoln Riley from Oklahoma, and the pressure is on LSU as its coaching search lingers in its seventh week.

Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher, who figured to be on Woodward’s radar from the onset, has consistently rebuffed the notion that he’s leaving the Aggies, where he enjoys a sweet contract, recruiting momentum and as much job security as he can reasonably expect in a high-profile job.

Rumblings of Riley becoming a candidate for LSU persisted the past couple weeks, and it must be a blow to LSU’s ego that Riley is headed to a storied Pac-12 program that had fallen off its perch in recent years.

If LSU had counted on Napier being the failsafe, that backfired.

I’m not saying LSU made a mistake in firing Ed Orgeron, and I'm not ready to dub this coaching search a failure. We can’t know that yet. USC showed that hiring quickly is not a prerequisite to hiring well. The Trojans' coaching search lasted 2½ months before they secured one of college football’s most impressive hires in several years.

Not often does a coach leave one high-profile Power Five job for another.

Fisher did it. Woodward, while Texas A&M’s AD, hired the national championship-winning coach away from Florida State.

Given Woodward’s hiring history and LSU's standing among the nation’s best programs during the past 20 years, I think it remains possible that LSU will produce a rabbit from the hat.

Woodward hired Chris Petersen from Boise State while he was Washington’s AD, and he lifted Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey out of Baylor for LSU earlier this year. But the trouble with making one good hire after another is that you risk raising the bar too high and failing to live up to expectations.

Whomever Woodward hires will be compared to Napier.

College football hires come with few guarantees. Consider a few hires from four years ago. UCLA hired Chip Kelly. Nebraska hired Scott Frost. Florida hired Dan Mullen. All were widely praised as quality hires. Now, Mullen is out of a job, while Kelly and Frost have combined for one winning season.

While Napier is no sure bet, he checks several boxes. He’s familiar with bigtime football, having worked as an offensive coordinator at Clemson and Arizona State and as an assistant at Alabama. He has the distinction of working under Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney. More importantly, he’s proven he can run his own program. The Ragin’ Cajuns have reached the Sun Belt Championship in four straight years. They signed the Sun Belt’s top-ranked recruiting class in each of the past three years, an important note considering Florida’s recruiting woes this year.

UL is not a program with a rich pedigree. Before Napier’s arrival, the Ragin’ Cajuns never had a double-digit-win season. Today, they’re 11-1 – their third straight campaign with at least 10 wins.

Woodward’s challenge is to hire someone better than the coach Florida nabbed from under LSU’s nose. The Gators positioned themselves as the clubhouse leader in this hiring competition of SEC rivals, and that’s a comfortable place to be.

Blake Toppmeyer is an SEC Columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer. If you enjoy Blake’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that will allow you access to all of it.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: LSU football: Florida hiring Billy Napier ramps up pressure on Tigers