He still hasn't coached a game, but Jon Sumrall seems to be the perfect fit at Florida

Jon Sumrall seems to have what it takes to lead the Gators back to national prominence (Photo by Chris Spears)

The lights are flashing yellow, reminding me that Jon Sumrall still hasn’t coached his first game at the University of Florida. I want to be cautious. I should be cautious. Yet everything about Sumrall indicates that after four straight misfires, the Gators might have finally found a coach who is truly capable of leading them back into national prominence.

He is confident, not cocky. He doesn’t think he knows everything, therefore he has hired excellent assistant coaches, whom he allows to coach. He recruits well. He understands that football is a violent game whose champions and contenders are just the right blend of boy scouts and borderline psychopaths.

Jon Sumrall has me willing to believe again even though I’ve been burned four times since Urban Meyer retired after the 2010 season. The Gator in me had me believing the previous four coaches had what it takes to win championships. I admit it. I drank the Kool-Aid, believing Will Muschamp, Jim McElwain, Dan Mullen and Billy Napier were made of the right stuff.

Well, I was wrong.

In the immortal words of Harvard professor turned parody song writer Tom Lehrer: “Get into that long processional, step into that small confessional; There the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if you’re sin’s original.”

My sin? It’s not original, but years of being a Gator have seen too many times when optimism overwhelmed my sense of logic. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Muschamp, McElwain, Mullen and Napier all had their quirks that made them unique, but in reality they were the same coach over and over again. The fact that Sumrall is now Florida’s fifth football coach since 2011 is all the proof you need that we have endured 15 straight years of total insanity.

My heart and emotions tell me that Sumrall can and will do it. Of course, there were times during the tenures of the previous four guys that my heart and emotions were telling me the exact same thing. Now it’s time to confess reason and accountability were blanketed by heart and emotions. I should have, but didn’t speak out in all four cases until it was too late. There were warning signs for Muschamp, McElwain, Mullen and Napier that I ignored. I think most Gator fans did the same thing, ignoring the speed bumps that constantly prevented anything but a smooth ride.

So, Father forgive me. I thought I knew what I was doing. Turned out I didn’t and now I must confess: I was wrong. Big time.  

Self-assessment is good for the soul, so here goes.

1. Will Muschamp: Urban Meyer was 65-15 with two national championships the previous six years. Why replace a coach who put up legendary numbers with a coach with absolutely zero head coaching experience. Didn’t Jeremy Foley learn his lesson years before when he hired Ron Zook to succeed the retiring Steve Spurrier?

I was convinced that Muschamp was going to get it done when he went 11-2 in 2012, losing only to Georgia and then in the Sugar Bowl to Louisville. Then came 2013 with all the quarterback injuries and the loss to Georgia Southern followed by 2014 with three critical losses (LSU, South Carolina, Florida State) by a combined 11 points. The Gators were so close to 10-2, but 7-5 got Muschamp fired.

What went wrong? Three years of bad offensive coordinators – Charlie Weis year one, Brent Pease years two and three. Great defenses but terrible offenses for four straight years.

2. Jim McElwain: I thought he would be a good coach since he had been Nick Saban’s offensive coordinator for two national championship team. In retrospect, I should have waved red flags at his opening press conference when he said he could “win with his dog Clarabelle playing quarterback.” He actually said that. Come to think of it, I’m not sure Clarabelle wouldn’t have been better than Treon Harris, Luke Del Rio and Austin Appleby. Mac won 19 games his first two seasons, both times making it to the SEC Championship Game, largely because Muschamp left behind what amounted to an NFL defense. When Muschamp’s players graduated and moved on to the pros, the wins ran out for Big Mac. The losses and the lies caught up to him in 2017 and he got fired.

During his tenure at UF, McElwain couldn’t give a straight answer which should have been another ginormous red flag. He gave the impression that he was trying to emulate the cool kid from high school who drove a Mustang convertible and never wore socks with his loafers. Unlike Muschamp, McElwain did have some head coaching experience, but in no way was he prepared for a job as complex and demanding as Florida.

What went wrong? No backup plan for when the Muschamp recruits departed and three years of terrible offense. The Gators never averaged 30 points a game and this guy was supposed to be an offensive genius. Hardly.

3. Dan Mullen: Mullen was Plan B. Chip Kelly was Plan A but he played Scott Stricklin for a contract offer that was used to leverage into the UCLA job. He won 21 games (lost five) in his first two years and had the Gators on the verge of the College Football Playoff in the COVID year of 2020 when Marco Wilson’s shoe began a losing cycle that was never broken.

Mullen gave us four years of scoring at least 30 points a game and three straight New Year’s Eve Six bowl games. What he didn’t do right was hang on to defensive coordinator Todd Grantham who turned third downs into predictable disasters. He also didn’t replace lazy recruiters with hungry assistants who understand you can’t win at Florida with players best suited for Mississippi State. Sub-standard recruiting on the lines of scrimmage turned what could have been into the disaster it was.

What went wrong? Not encouraging Grantham to take a pro job when offered after 2019. A lack of team discipline in 2020 and 2021. Too much reliance on his belief that he could dial up an offense that could outscore anyone the Gators played.

4. Billy Napier: The Gators could have hired Lane Kiffin to replace Mullen. Lane wanted the job but Scott Stricklin zeroed in on Billy Napier and never considered anyone else. File that one under it seemed like a good idea at the moment.

It took three years for Napier to produce a winner. Eight wins in 2024 had a lot to do with the impact Graham Mertz had on freshman QB DJ Lagway. When Mertz – no relation to Fred and Ethel – went to the pros, there was no one left to mentor DJ, who reverted back to his bad habits. A bad, predictable offense prone to interceptions and a defense that had too many no show games, not to mention way too many boy scouts and not enough borderline psychopaths. Disaster again.

What went wrong? Napier was fantastic from Sunday through Friday, but never seemed to grasp that good citizens during the weekdays don’t necessarily translate to wins on Saturday and you get paid to win on Saturday. Napier also believed he was immensely qualified to call the offensive plays. Maybe it would have worked if Clarabelle had been his QB.

Now consider this: Since Will Muschamp’s first year in 2011 until Billy Napier’s last season in 2025, the Gators are 118-84. That’s the 43^rd best record in the country. In the SEC, the Gators have the seventh best record. Middle of the pack. From 1990-2025 Florida had the best record in all of college football – 210-57-1, which is eight more wins than second place Nebraska, 17 more than Ohio State and 34 more than Georgia.

In the last 15 years Florida has become what Florida was during the Bob Woodruff years, which is to say dull, predictable and treading water while Alabama, Georgia and LSU have won national championships. Should you elect to point fingers at the responsible culprits for Florida’s demise, look beyond Muschamp, McElwain, Mullen and Napier. They were offered multi-year, multi-million contracts and they did the smart thing by taking the job even though they weren’t nearly ready for it.

The people responsible are Jeremy Foley and Scott Stricklin, neither of whom was willing to pay the big bucks to bring in a coach capable of carrying the Florida torch while making the Gators relevant nationally once again. Florida went cheap and now it’s up to Jon Sumrall to not only elevate the Gators back into the national limelight but to save Stricklin’s job. Yes, if Jon Sumrall is overwhelmed by the job and goes belly up, you can bet the ranch Stricklin won’t survive either. Something about Sumrall tells me that this time – finally – Stricklin got the right football coach.

In the eyes of the Gator Nation, Jon Sumrall is either another Moses leading UF to the promised land or Jonah getting swallowed up by a whale. He comes across like Moses but he still hasn't coached a game and it will be months before we see what he's accomplished in the months leading up to the season opener. There is a lot of pressure on Sumrall, but something about his demeanor indicates that he’s more than ready to take on a task this monumental and able to deliver the goods.

If not, then it’s another glass filled with Kool-Aid