Sumrall at SEC Media Days: There are no shortcuts

TAMPA – Experience has taught Jon Sumrall that the more things change, the more they really do stay the same.

As Florida’s first year coach, this is the third time since 2022 that Sumrall has taken over a new program and while he is quick to tell you that every situation is different, there are similarities that cannot be discarded as mere chance. New places, new faces, new schools, new leagues, nothing is remotely close to the same and yet each stop along the journey finds the building blocks necessary to win football games.

Start with Troy. That was 2022, Sumrall’s first head coaching job. Small town about 30 miles north of Dothan in the wiregrass region of Alabama, a school probably best known for offering courses that lead to a college degree on practically every United States military base in the world. Sun Belt Conference, not a bottom feeder league by any stretch but still a conference whose member schools are once or twice a year willing to take a beating for a paycheck to help keep the athletic department lights on. There is tradition here although not at the Division I level. Troy was an NAIA and Division II power that has three national championship trophies on display.

Prior to Sumrall’s arrival from Kentucky where he was the co-defensive coordinator for Mark Stoops, Troy had three consecutive losing seasons. Just the kind of place that hires a head coach from a school whose most famous football moment came in the 1950s when Bear Bryant left for a place (Texas A&M) where football actually mattered. If Troy was lemons, then Sumrall was about to make lemonade.

“I went to the first few weeks of workouts and I thought we had a chance to be okay here, like I think we can be decent,” Sumrall said Wednesday morning at SEC Media Days at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Tampa. “I met with my athletic director at the time, Brent Jones, who hired me, and I said, ‘I think we can go to a bowl game, like be decent. Well, we won 12 games.

“The roster was a lot better than I realized or probably anybody realized. There was about six, seven guys off that team that are in NFL training camps right now from five years ago at Troy, and they hadn't been winning.”

Two seasons and two Sun Belt championships later, Tulane came calling. Apples and oranges academics. Troy is a good school that cranks out productive graduates, but Tulane grads have earned the right to feel a bit snooty about their academic achievements. New Orleans, more famous for music, food and decadence than college football, except the one day a year when the Sugar Bowl is played. The American Conference is a step up from the Sun Belt, a step down from the power conferences and light years from the SEC. There was a time, decades ago, that Tulane was an SEC member that actually won three league championships, but that was before divorcing to go independent in 1966.

In the two years prior to Sumrall, Tulane went 23-4 for Willie Fritz, capturing the American title in 2022.

“I walked in and they had been winning for a couple years … and there were still some good players left but most the guys that had won a lot of the games that occurred right before I got there, they weren't there anymore,” Sumrall recalled. “I'm like, hang on, where did that running back go? Well, he's with the Titans now. A lot of the guys were gone.”

Graduation and the portal wiped out most of the offensive productivity from Tulane’s 11-win 2023 team. With a true freshman quarterback (Darian Mensah) who arrived just prior to practice beginning in August, Tulane went to the American Conference championship game in 2024. Mensah left for Duke where he won an ACC title in 2025. He’s now at Miami where supporters of The U believe he could lead the Canes to the promised land. With Mensah and most of the offensive production either graduated or gone in the portal, Sumrall won the 2025 American title and made it to the College Football Playoff, a first for any American Conference team.

What Troy and Tulane taught Sumrall prepped him for leaving the comfort zone of Group of Six football for the Southeastern Conference. He is Florida’s fifth coach since Urban Meyer retired after the 2010 season. The previous four have been pink slipped. Florida has off the chart academics, a national championship pedigree in nearly every one of the 21 sports it sponsors, and it carries the weight and expectations of the Southeastern Conference, from top to bottom the most dominant sports conference in the country.

Four losing seasons in the last five and six losing seasons since 2013 for a school that went from 1980-2012 without dipping below college football’s Mendoza Line. It’s a challenge. It’s pressure. It’s a different situation than either Troy or Tulane, for sure, but the similarities cannot be ignored.

There was tradition at both Troy and Tulane although not like Florida, which boasts eight SEC titles, three national titles, three Heisman Trophy winners and a football alumni association that reads like a who’s who. There was talent at Troy and Tulane when Sumrall arrived. Four straight conference championship game appearances and three conference championships are solid indicators that those perceived lemons became very sweet tasting lemonade.

“Sometimes you walk into situations and think, man, it's going to be really adverse and you're not set up to have immediate success, and you find it because maybe there is more pieces in place to be successful than you realize,” Sumrall said. “Sometimes you walk into a situation and it's been going good, like, man, we got more work to do here than I thought.”

Figure Florida is somewhere in between. There are pieces in place that can restore Florida to life among the elite in the Southeastern Conference. There is also far more work to be done than there should be for a program that doesn’t lack for facilities or money. Facilities lagged way behind for years but that is no longer an excuse. And, while Florida may not have high profile alums with accounts that would make Milburn Drysdale drool, there are enough people with enough money to compete in the high stakes NIL battles.

Winning is the tonic that can cure all ills but it begins with a massive change in perceptions. The feelings of mediocrity and impending doom and gloom left behind by the previous coaching staff have been replaced with a contagious optimism that has swept the Gator Nation off its feet, not to mention raising the eyebrows of the national media. The national media talks openly about Florida doubling last year’s win output.

Sumrall has yet to coach his first game at Florida, but higher expectations are perceived as attainable and not rah-rah, sis-boom-bah sunshine pumping wishful thinking.

There is talent available, maybe not as much as there will be in the future when the name Florida rolls off the tongues of recruits as quickly as Georgia or Alabama, but Sumrall didn’t step into nuclear winter. He has supplemented the 60 holdovers with transfers and freshmen. There may not be a lot of household names in the bunch, but winning football games will cure recognition deficits.

History says Sumrall will do what he’s done before, which is win.

“Every situation you walk into I think you have to evaluate, okay, what needs to be recalibrated and what's been going good,” he said. “There have been some really good things going on at the University of Florida before my arrival. There have. We haven't won enough games. We need to win more games. Like 4-8 last year is not okay at the University of Florida. We got to fix that.”

Jon Sumrall doesn’t consider himself a walk on water or part the Red Sea type nor does he think of himself as Mr. Fix It. Rather he envisions himself as the blue collar guy who shows up every day willing to swing away with a sledgehammer that knocks down the barriers that stand in the way of winning.

This is a far different situation than the one he inherited at Troy and then Tulane, but experience has taught him that while circumstances and locales have changed, the pathway to success remains quite the same.

“There are no shortcuts,” he says. “I don't care if you've been winning or you hadn't been winning.”