UF’s Todd Golden sees big things ahead for Jon Sumrall’s Gators
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GAINESVILLE — Florida basketball coach Todd Golden sees some of himself in new football coach Jon Sumrall.
The fellow Gators and fast friends hope it leads to more national-title success in Gainesville.
Golden is confident Sumrall has the right stuff to resurrect a football program picking up the pieces after four sub-par seasons under Billy Napier.
“He seems great,” Golden said Monday on the eve of UF’s matchup with UConn in Madison Square Garden. “From the moment I spoke to him on the phone, I was like, ‘This guy seems like our kind of guy.’ I think he has a very similar mentality to what I did when he got the opportunity. Just like, ‘Man, getting a chance to coach at Florida, you can do some great things.'”
Golden’s fast rise at Florida culminated with the 2025 national championship in just his third season.
Sumrall’s path to a title will be perilous in the nation’s top football conference.
Steve Spurrier won his sole national championship during his seventh season but on the heels of this fifth SEC title and two decades prior to the CFP era. Urban Meyer won his first national championship in his second season and No. 2 in Year 4 — a pace even Nick Saban didn’t match on his way to six titles at Alabama.
Both Spurrier and Meyer were front and center on Dec. 1 to support and endorse when UF introduced the 43-year-old.
Earlier in the day, Golden and Sumrall had some time bond. The new UF coach’s first visit in Gainesville was to Golden’s office.
“He saw a lot of similarities between ourselves when he got the job and the level of excitement that he had,” Golden said. “Seems like he has a great family, and I think he’ll do really well here.”
Sumrall inherits a program coming off a 4-8 season and just 23-27 the past four seasons.
Golden’s stepped in for Mike White after he was 19-13 in 2021-22 and left for Georgia after the Gators failed to reach the NCAA Tournament in consecutive seasons.
The Gators followed a 16-17 finish in Golden’s debut with a 24-11 season in 2023-24, ending with an opening-round loss during the school’s first trip the Big Dance since 2021. In 2024-25, UF went 36-4, culminating with a 65-63 win against Houston in the national-title game to set a school-record for single-season wins.
Golden, 40, showed championship success at UF could come quickly.
Meanwhile, Napier’s program produced just one winning seasons during his four years while the Gators’ offense was among the least-productive and -exciting in the SEC.
“He has a great understanding of what this place wants right now in their football program,” Golden said of Sumrall. “Obviously winning, but just in terms of being explosive offensively.”
In his first week on the job, Sumrall hired Georgia Tech’s Buster Faulker to energize the attack. Kentucky’s Brad White will coach the Gators’ defense after producing hard-nosed units for a school with four wins during the past five seasons against Florida.
All the while, Sumrall coached No. 11 Tulane to an AAC championship win last Friday against North Texas to earn the Green Wave a spot in the 12-team CFP and a Dec. 20 date at No. 6 Ole Miss.
“I give him a lot of credit. He’s managing two jobs right now, doing them both pretty dang well from what I can tell,” Golden said. “He’s already off to a great start here. Everybody knows this place is very passionate about their sports, and if there was anybody that had question marks about him when he got hired, I just the passion that he had in his press conference, and then his ability to go get two great coordinators in the first five days on the job I think has pretty much everybody behind him now.
“Everybody should root for him and his squad over the next couple weeks and see if Tulane can pull the upset at Ole Miss, and then everybody should feel really good when he gets here that this program’s gonna get started in the right direction.”
Edgar Thompson can be reached at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com
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