Florida spent 20 years searching for answers. Jon Sumrall says the solution is obvious
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GAINESVILLE, FL – Forget everything you’ve been told or sold. It’s all useless noise. The concept that players are different, the game has changed and it’s harder than ever to just find a way to win.
“That’s a bunch of bullshit,” Jon Sumrall says.
And the coach who has spent the past nine months in front of every camera, and behind every mic of every podcast while spreading his vision for once mighty Florida, wants to make something very clear from the jump.
He’s done trying to make this rebuild sound or look good. You don’t like that he’s brutally honest to a fault, or uses colorful language?
Too bad, football is toughest man wins.
Physical toughness, mental toughness. The now undeniable and unavoidable guts of his Florida renovation, the like-it-or-not reality for a program that for two decades desperately tried to reinvent itself over and over with different coaches and fresh ideas. And failed miserably.
You can scheme temporary success, you can confuse teams formationally. But at some point, every single play is a five-second gut check of want and will.
Tough teams fight. Tough teams persevere. Tough teams survive.
And tough teams win.
“This is about winning games,” Sumrall said. “If we don’t win, they’ll run my ass out of here, too.”
Sumrall didn’t dive into the deep end when he arrived at Florida, didn’t spend months trying to figure out why the four coaches before him couldn’t awaken the sleeping blue-blood. Why Florida fell off the map, and hasn't won an SEC championship since 2008 and hasn't been a factor in November football but maybe three times in 17 seasons.
That’s a wasted time sink of mental gymnastics when the obvious is staring back at you.
Indiana? Toughest team in the country last season. Ohio State? Same in 2024, as was Michigan in 2023. And don’t even get him started with Georgia in 2021-22.
“Those teams, they walk on the field, and yeah, immediately you know they’re a problem,” Sumrall said. "Players, mentality, toughness."
Those teams didn't run the kick team on the field while the offense was trying to spike the ball to stop the clock, and didn't run plays with two players wearing the same jersey number.
They didn't have something called a special teams “Game Changer” coach who couldn't consistently get 11 players on the field at the same time, and the head coach never dressed as Darth Vader at a post-game news conference — after nearly starting a brawl on the field at the end of the first half.
They never lost a game the only way they could — by allowing a blocked punt while trying to salt away a home victory over a middling conference opponent — and never threw a pass into the stands on a Hail Mary, last play of the game.
More than anything, they’re not losing to USF and beating Texas. They’re not taking SEC champion Georgia deep into the fourth quarter, then losing by 31 to Kentucky.
That's what made that first team meeting in December, his first eyes on the players moment, so revealing.
“I didn’t get here and deal with a whole lot of assholes. There were good character guys on this team,” Sumrall said. “The previous staff valued bringing in good people. But when I told them they had to get tougher, they looked at me like I had three heads.”
'Creating a mindset'
A few years ago, Sumrall was visiting picturesque Coronado Island, the resort city across the bay from San Diego. The powdery, white-sand beaches, the historic old town charm, the beautiful people.
And ground zero for the toughest, tightest team on the planet: the Navy SEALs.
Sumrall was standing on the blacktop while a platoon jogged by, a symphonic symmetry of every step from the man in back replacing the previous step from the man in front.
There was a SEAL who was 6-5 and looked like Michael Phelps. Another who was 5-7, and looked like a college wrestler. Still another who was barely 6 feet, and could've played defensive line.
Sumrall turned to a platoon leader and asked what’s the common thread, what makes a Navy SEAL?
“He says some are great swimmers, great runners. Some are great at this thing or that thing,” Sumrall said. “But they’re all tough as hell. They’re going to find a way. It’s creating a mindset that they will not tap out.”
Want to know how you go from winning two national titles in three seasons in the late 2000s, to a middling has-been two decades later? You accept what’s given, and don’t fight for what’s needed.
You fumble the ball on the road at Texas A&M with the game in hand, and it leads to a late, game-winning Aggies field goal. You lose the last two games late in the fourth quarter to bitter rival Georgia.
You lose five of the past eight games to SEC afterthought Kentucky, after winning 31 in a row. You have to kick a late field goal to prevent a 30-point shutout to Oregon State in a bowl game, and preserve an NCAA-record scoring streak.
You routinely lose to Vanderbilt, Missouri and South Carolina, to then-FCS Georgia Southern and, wait, do we really need to continue this charade? Yes, we do.
You lose because a player throws his shoe in frustration after a third-down stop, which leads to a 15-yard penalty and a game-winning LSU field goal. And those are just some of the lowlights of nearly two lost decades.
All of it, physical and mental weakness.
“I’ll promise you this right now,” Sumrall says, and he’s all lathered up now, a 44-year-old version of that tough, overachieving linebacker at Kentucky, who as a player had to deal with multiple beatdowns from blue-blood Florida of the past. “There’s no adversity that’s going to shame me or rattle me to where we’re going to break.”
He turns his chair in the palatial football facility on the oak-shrouded campus, and points to the iconic Swamp. It’s there, no more than a handful of Rex Grossman deep balls away, begging for electric and glorious Saturdays of the past.
“There’s going to be adversity there,” he says. “Like, we might lose a game. Might. I mean, It could happen.”
It is here where I look at him like he’s a few cards shy of 52, and he looks back at me like he’s not fooling around, like he could still shed a block and fill the A gap and blast whatever running back dare show up.
You better believe he meant to say might.
“So when things go wrong, are you broken, do you quit?” he says, tapping his fingers on his desk and glaring into the unwavering belief still unfolding with this team. “Or do you suck it up and respond?”
Humans over hardware
All of this newness matters. The general manager with the NFL pedigree, the renovated weight room, and all the way down to refusing to allow players to wear Gators apparel until they’ve earned it.
All important to the grand scheme, but nothing more important than the shirt Sumrall has worn out during the offseason.
It simply reads, humans over hardware.
“The people and how they’re growing, how they‘re trained to think and react, their wiring, that matters more,” Sumrall said. “If you can’t reach them, you're screwed.”
Which leads us to Sumrall’s next non-negotiable: Mental toughness always precedes physical toughness.
So it should come as no surprise when he took the Florida job, he didn’t wade into the abyss of empty calories within the how and why.
He went straight to what works, and how to make it even better. Or in this case, how to keep it.
Less than a month after he was named coach, after Florida lost out on the Lane Kiffin sweeps — a curse or blessing, depending on the latest Kiffin drama — Sumrall hopped on a plane and headed to Decatur, Ga. On Christmas Day.
Florida star tailback Jadan Baugh was wavering about his future, and considering a move to the transfer portal. That is, until Sumrall showed up.
“I was shocked,” Baugh said. “But he's committed to the grind. Committed to doing everything it takes to win. Doesn’t matter when or how. He shows up at my house on Christmas Day, man. Christmas Day. My family is like, woah, this dude is different.”
Again, it’s humans over hardware.
When Sumrall got his first head coaching job at Troy, he walked into a locker room that struggled to win 15 games over the previous three seasons despite the talent (six players would eventually make NFL rosters).
They won 23 games in two seasons before Sumrall left for Tulane, where he inherited the exact opposite: a team that had won big but the roster was depleted.
Tulane won 20 games in two seasons with Sumrall, including 11 last season and a spot in the College Football Playoff. That’s four seasons as a head coach, and 43 wins spread over two distinctly different circumstances.
This isn’t just another young coach in over his head in the big, bad SEC. It’s not a first-time head coach (Will Muschamp), or an assistant from the Nick Saban tree (Jim McElwain), or a coach the athletic director knew (Dan Mullen), or one that crushed the interview (Billy Napier).
“I’ve never been around a coach who could get players, staff, everyone, on board and aligned so quickly,” said former Troy athletic director Brent Jones. “He’s not selling a dream, he’s showing you the road map and promising it will work. Then it does.”
Sustained success
He laughs at the absurdity of it all. From the guy who wasn’t Florida’s first choice, who pleaded with fans to stick with him and the team during his opening news conference — to the guy his rabid fanbase now compares to Urban Meyer.
The coach who won two national titles in six seasons at Florida.
“I love Jon Sumrall,” Meyer said. ‘Love everything about him.”
Meyer redefined what it took to win it all, and then went out and did it. You can argue how it all unfolded on and off the field — and it has taken Florida nearly two decades to finally honor Meyer in its Ring of Honor this season — but you can’t argue with the results.
You want mentally and physically tough? How about throwing three third-down touchdown passes to beat unbeaten Alabama in the SEC Championship?
Or giving up a touchdown on the opening kick of the national championship game against Ohio State, and scoring 41 of the next 48 points?
Or holding the Oklahoma offense to 14 points in the national championship game — after the Sooners averaged more than 50 a game during the season.
But even Meyer’s final season at Florida in 2010 was an indicator of things to come. The post-Tim Tebow era began with poor quarterback play, and it became a recurring theme no matter the coach.
Muschamp chose the wrong quarterback (Jeff Driskel over Jacoby Brissett). McElwain ran off the best quarterback on the roster (Will Grier) because he was a holdover from the previous staff.
Mullen went to three straight New Year’s Six bowl games, but even he couldn’t figure out the quarterback until an injury to Feleipe Franks forced him to play longtime backup Kyle Trask — who eventually set single season records.
Then came Napier, who had two elite blue-chip quarterback recruits (Anthony Richardson, DJ Lagway), and failed to develop both.
“We didn’t get that right, and that’s on me,” Napier said. “Look, Florida is a big job. You can’t struggle at that (quarterback) position and expect to win in that league.”
That brings us all the way to Sumrall, who knew what he wanted before he even took the job. Florida wasn’t the only program pursuing Sumrall, who admits he spoke to others but refused to get into specifics.
Multiple people close to the situation told USA TODAY Sports Auburn had Sumrall all but signed before Florida finally backed off chasing Kiffin and turned to Sumrall. Before that move, Sumrall and then-Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner — one of the game’s rising offensive minds — had spoken about working together, no matter where Sumrall landed.
Sumrall got the Florida job, Faulkner took the OC job, and the Gators signed Georgia Tech quarterback Aaron Philo to complete the move.
They’ve played 19 quarterbacks at Florida since Tebow’s last game in 2009, and only Trask has had any semblance of sustained success.
“I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I know we can’t win without playing well at that position,” Sumrall said.
Turning point
In late February, with Sumrall still in the infant stages of his rebuild, a handful of college football’s coaching dignitaries were invited to Steve Spurrier’s restaurant in Gainesville to celebrate the First-Year Coach of the Year award.
It eventually turned into a roast, and it turned on Sumrall.
Mario Cristobal, who just led Miami to the national title game, was there. So was Georgia coach Kirby Smart, he of the two national titles and back-to-back SEC championships.
Smart and Cristobal got into a friendly back-and-forth about player procurement and NIL money, and the conversation-turned-roast had the crowd howling. Smart then recognized Spurrier’s daughter, Lisa, a real estate agent in Gainesville.
Smart pointed at Sumrall while the crowd was laughing about the back and forth with Cristobal, and said, “I don’t know why you’re over here laughing, too. You’re the fourth coach I’ve played since being at Georgia, so she’s getting a lot of money selling houses.”
The crowd roared again. Sumrall didn’t budge.
Months later and after the completion of his first spring at Florida, after the install was well underway and all things toughness was was beginning to take hold, Sumrall was asked again about that day.
“Just good-natured stuff,” he said. And for the first time in an hour, Sumrall was silent.
He has no capital, no juice. Not yet, anyway.
He’s just another coach thrown into a meatgrinder of a job that demands excellence, and has a track record of firing coaches every three and a half years.
It’s all useless noise right now.
Until the toughest man wins.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB. Listen to him daily, from 12-2 p.m., on 1010XL-Jacksonville.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Florida spent 20 years searching for answers. Jon Sumrall says the solution is obvious
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