Texas RB coach Jabbar Juluke never pressured Jadan Baugh to leave Florida

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The advent of the NCAA transfer portal has given rise to a new type of fan crush — the opposing player who performed so well against your team that you spend the rest of the season season hoping he might be the solution to all your problems.

In 2025, Florida Gators running back Jadan Baugh became exactly that player for the burnt orange and white faithful after helping to key the shocking 29-21 upset of the then-No. 9 Texas Longhorns in Gainesville to open SEC play by rushing 27 times for 107 yards and a touchdown on a sublime jump cut that left Michael Taaffe, normally one of the most steady tacklers in college football, grasping at air.

Combining Baugh’s performance with the injury-riddled running back room at Texas that failed to consistently produce explosive plays even when healthy and the termination of Florida head coach Billy Napier two weeks after the upset caused an outbreak of swamp fever hallucinations of Baugh wearing a Longhorns jersey in 2026 instead of hurdling Longhorns.

When head coach Steve Sarkisian terminated first-year running backs coach Chad Scott after the regular season and hired Baugh’s former position coach Jabbar Juluke, the fever dreams intensified — after all, Juluke had made Baugh a priority when the Decatur (Ga.) Columbia product was a relatively modest prospect ranked outside the top-50 players in the state by 247Sports in the 2024 class, then developed him into a 1,000-yard rusher in Gainesville.

But Baugh never even made the expected jump into the portal, making the decision to remain with the Gators in early January, several days after the portal officially opened.

So instead of becoming one of the most coveted players in the portal and assessing his NIL value on the open market, Baugh placed his trust in new head coach Jon Sumrall, who took advantage of his ability to recruit Baugh in December after making the move from Tulane.

“The day after Jon Sumrall attended his father’s funeral, his entire family was at Jadan Baugh’s grandmother’s house in Atlanta. It was Christmas Eve, and the new Florida head coach needed the star running back to know how important he was to the program’s future,” reported On3’s Pete Nakos.

“Several other Florida staffers were in attendance. The gesture spoke louder than any recruiting pitch Baugh could have expected. With multiple top programs working to get him to enter the transfer portal, Sumrall laid everything out.”

It worked, with a boost from offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner, who had a pre-existing relationship with Baugh after recruiting the talented athlete out of high school when Faulkner was the offensive coordinator at nearby Georgia Tech.

“He was talking to me day in and day out, and he was just telling me how he could use me in the offense, at quarterback, running back, anywhere on the field,” Baugh said on Wednesday at SEC Media Days in Tampa. “I feel like that’s definitely gonna get displayed this year.”

The timing impacted Baugh, too, according to Nakos, proof that Sumrall cared about him as a person instead of just as a player.

So Juluke never factored as heavily into Baugh’s decision as anticipated with only a brief period of time between Sumrall deciding not to keep him on the staff after his hire at the end of November and Sarkisian officially bringing Juluke to Austin on December 12.

Even during that period, Juluke didn’t try to tie his future to Baugh’s future.

“Me and him had talks, but he always told me, ‘If you’re gonna stay, stay. This is something you’re meant to do, something we always planned for you to do. This is home for you.’ So he never came at it like, ‘Oh, come with me.’ He always told me to keep my eyes open, keep my head high, and just keep going,” Baugh said on Wednesday.

As Sumrall and his staff worked to keep Baugh in Gainesville, communication about Baugh’s future went through his father, Corey Bryant, who served as the de facto agent in lieu of professional representation.

“My phone rang from eight in the morning to nine at night. Every day,” Bryant told CBS Sports.

When Faulkner tried to set up a video call with Baugh in December, “Jadan was still dealing with all that back and forth with Texas,” according to Bryant, and Baugh shut things down for a few days amidst “substantial” offers made to the running back, who eventually showed Sumrall some of the text messages he was getting from interested programs even though he never went into the portal.

Working in the eye of the hurricane, Bryant put the decision into perspective.

“You can go to Texas and have a great year, but it’d be just a great year. If you stay at Florida and have another great year, you’ll go down as one of the best running backs to ever come through the place. You’ll always have a home in Gainesville. You’d put yourself in the same conversation as Emmitt Smith and Tim Tebow.”

With Baugh staying in Florida, Texas pivoted, devoting its NIL resources to landing two running backs — Arizona State transfer Raleek Brown and NC State transfer Hollywood Smothers, who flipped from Alabama, eventually opting for smaller, more explosive backs capable of making a substantial impact in the passing game.

And now Juluke and Baugh will be on opposite sidelines when the Gators travel to Austin on October as the burnt orange nation hopes the Florida star doesn’t trigger the trauma they’d quickly turned into lofty and ultimately unfulfilled dreams.

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