NEW ORLEANS — In July, Tulane coach Jon Sumrall put together a Wednesday speaker series for his team, bringing in people from various leadership positions who could deliver customized messages.
Kellen Moore, the new coach of the New Orleans Saints, went first, followed by a financial planner and then an NFL player agent. The last speaker was Sumrall himself. On that day, though, he didn’t address his team like he normally would.
He spoke as a coach who had changed jobs before, and could do so again; who had been placed on candidate lists, and might again appear if Tulane had success that fall. He polled players about who had agents and saw about half the hands go up. He explained that he, too, had an agent who handled his contract and filtered overtures from other programs, as did most of Tulane’s assistant coaches. Sumrall relayed that he and some assistants had rebuffed Power 4 moves to stay with Tulane for the 2025 season.
He also acknowledged that the players had the same opportunities and the same speculation swirling around them. The reality was the Tulane team gathered that day could look very different after the season.
Why even bring this up?
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“Last year, I didn’t say s—, and I probably should have,” Sumrall told ESPN. “I just kind of put my head down and kept working and hoped everybody else would do the same. What I didn’t take into account is, man, players are doing the same stuff coaches are doing. Last year, I dropped the ball, to be honest. I screwed up.”
In 2024 Tulane started 9-2 before dropping its final three games. Sumrall stayed while star quarterback Darian Mensah, top running back Makhi Hughes and others transferred out. This time, Sumrall wanted to get out ahead of what could be coming their way, address the situation once, as transparently as he possibly could, and then move along.
“I said, ‘They’re not bad things, right? But at the wrong time, they’re very bad things. To the distractions of all that coming up in the season, man, get the hell away from me,'” Sumrall recalled. “After that, look up and go, ‘All right, this is the year that just happened. What’s next? Is it here? Is it not here? That’s what y’all have to decide. It’s what everybody has to decide. But be all into this freaking team all the way to the last conference game, which is hopefully a freaking conference championship.'”
After a practice on Oct. 26, he brought up the D-word to the players, saying, “Casual teams, complacent teams, nonchalant, laid-back teams, distracted teams, complacent teams, they get their f—ing ass beat.”
Distractions come in all forms, and at unpredictable times. Later that day, just 82 miles away, LSU fired coach Brian Kelly, opening up one of the top jobs in college football, and certainly the best in the region. Sumrall, a former SEC player and assistant, who had won two Sun Belt titles at Troy and boasts a 15-7 record in a season-plus at Tulane, was immediately injected into the rumor mill and onto candidate lists.
ESPN spent time with Sumrall and the Tulane program as it tried to navigate the end of the season, an unprecedented coaching carousel and prepare for an Oct. 30 game at UTSA. Things didn’t go well that night, as Tulane fell 48-26, allowing the most points a Sumrall-coached team has ever surrendered.
But the Green Wave are still in contention for an American Conference title, as they visit Memphis on Friday (9 p.m. ET, ESPN). Despite the UTSA clunker, Sumrall remains one of the top candidates to land a Power 4 opportunity, especially with so many jobs open in the South.
The focus on the future isn’t going anywhere, but neither is the task at hand. Sumrall and his team enter a decisive month hoping to reset and chase a championship.
MUSIC BLASTS THROUGHOUT Tulane’s squad room at 6:54 a.m. on Oct. 27, as players file in for a special teams meeting. Graduate assistants walk around the room carrying boxes for players to place their cellphones before things get started.
Sumrall hired special teams coordinator Johnathan Galante because he came highly recommended. There was another reason, too: Sumrall wanted someone who cursed more than he did.
Galante is a fireball of energy, barely stopping to breathe during the 25-minute meeting. He started by showing several media stories, including one about the Top 25 that leaves off Tulane, only referencing the Green Wave as “playing shaky.”
“I love it when we’re not in this b—-,” Galante said.
Another story notes Tulane, despite a 6-1 record, has been winning ugly. Galante showed an ESPN BET graphic with a less-than-flattering description of the team’s play.
“The whole thing this week is to make a what?” Galante asked the players.
“Statement!” they replied.
Sumrall watched from the back of the room, nodding along at times. The energy level matters at Tulane, from the top down. He cites the book “Legacy,” about the famed New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, and its principle about “no d—heads allowed.”
His staff trends young but includes several veterans like strength and conditioning chief Rusty Whitt, who Sumrall inherited at Troy and then brought to Tulane. Whitt has been a strength coach since the mid-1990s but paused his career after the events of 9/11 to enter the Army, where he became a Green Beret in the U.S. Special Forces.
“That’s my No. 1 rule when it comes to hiring people: Hire good people. Like, no a-holes allowed,” Sumrall said. “So that’s how we do it. And then the nonnegotiables: compete, like every freaking day, be high energy and bring it all the time.”
Sumrall doesn’t just ask those things of his assistants and support staff. He spends practices toggling between the offense and defense, and does the same with daily meetings. And he doesn’t just observe, but tries to engage.
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“When you walk into a room, man, are you changing the temperature for the better or for the worse?” Sumrall said. “I tell our team all the time, ‘When I walk in a room, the room gets better. Why? Because my ass walked in.’ That’s an attitude thing. That’s not being cocky. You’re either adding value to people or you’re not, and it starts with your attitude.”
Sumrall occupies the biggest office in Tulane’s football hub, but he’s often walking the halls, dropping in to talk with chief of staff Byron Ellis, or a position coach, or the personnel staff. He hangs with the quarterbacks during Wednesday dinners, eating exactly four chicken wings. When former Tulane quarterback Michael Pratt stopped by, Sumrall chatted him up about their favorite hunting spots.
As general manager Cole Heard said of Sumrall, “He’s just a normal-ass dude who happens to be really good at coaching football.”
SUMRALL DOESN’T HAVE much of a poker face.
He wears it, win or lose, even after less-than spectacular victories like the one Tulane had against East Carolina on Oct. 9. Sumrall stood on the field and told ESPN’s Harry Lyles Jr. in raspy tones, “We’re a really sloppy football team that finds ways to win games, and I’m going to lose my mind because we’re so immature.”
Emotion fueled Sumrall as a linebacker at Kentucky in the early 2000s, and now guides him as a coach, even in a role where many are told to practice restraint.
“… I am brutally honest,” he said. “I’m ridiculously transparent with people, to a fault, probably, at times. So I don’t really try to hide what I’m going through, what I’m feeling, what I’m thinking.”
The good news, according to Ellis, is that Sumrall maintains a “defensive [player’s] mentality” and moves on quickly, even when he’s upset.
“You know where you stand,” said Kelly Comarda, Tulane’s director of roster management. “He does a good job of dialing in what emotion is appropriate for the time, and getting the players to and everybody around to emulate the proper emotion that will get us to the next step.”
Neal Brown, who had Sumrall on his staff at Troy from 2015 to 2017, thinks intensity and passion are some of Sumrall’s defining traits. Brown watched his friend during that ECU win, as Tulane endured penalties, a turnover and fell behind after a bad third quarter, only to rally.
“He showed emotion when it was needed, but for the most part, he’s really under control, and his kids, his staff and his team never saw any panic in him,” Brown said.
When Sumrall worked as Troy’s linebackers coach and special teams coordinator, Brown was struck by how he connected with a range of players. Other than head coaches, no one else on the staff regularly addresses larger audiences than special teams coordinators. Sumrall was “very relational” and “extremely curious,” Brown said, which Sumrall attributes partly to his upbringing.
His father, George, spent years working for the U.S. Department of Defense, and regularly traveled to The Pentagon. Although Jon grew up almost entirely in Huntsville, Alabama, George’s work exposed him to many different environments. Jon nearly played football at Air Force and could have pursued a military career afterward, but ultimately ended up at Kentucky, leading the team in tackles as the starting middle linebacker in 2004.
He grew up in SEC country, played in the conference and eventually coached at Ole Miss and Kentucky. But Sumrall landed his first full-time coaching job at San Diego, an FCS program without scholarships that won nine games in three of his five seasons there. As an assistant with five programs, including the two he has led as a head coach, Sumrall learned about different players with different upbringings in different settings.
The experience has helped him at Troy and Tulane, which are in the same geographic region but share few other similarities.
“You have to be strategic, and you have to embrace and adapt and evolve with what works in each place,” he said. “It makes a different place fun and unique and challenging and exciting, all the same time.”
AFTER A TUESDAY morning practice, Tulane players gathered at midfield. Sumrall reminded them that UTSA had not lost a conference home game since 2019.
“If that doesn’t freaking fire you up, you’ve got a problem,” he said.
Sumrall referenced one of the media blurbs Galante had shown that morning in the special teams meeting, about how Tulane’s downfall was only a matter of time.
“It’s about time to unveil the dominance,” he said.
Minutes later, he sat in the staff meeting room for a virtual production meeting with the ESPN broadcast crew that would call the game. Not surprisingly, the coaching carousel and LSU’s recent coach firing came up. Sumrall jokingly told the crew that they should announce that Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin is taking every major open job.
He then referenced his July talk with the team and how it’s essential to table all attention about potential movement until after the season. But the speculation about Sumrall isn’t going away.
There’s the now-open Auburn job, located in Sumrall’s home state and where his wife, Ginny, went to school. If Kiffin left Ole Miss, Sumrall would be a natural fit there too, as he coached the Rebels’ linebackers in 2018. There’s also Kentucky, Sumrall’s alma mater, where coach Mark Stoops’ future is being discussed as he nears the end of his 13th season. The LSU job likely would trump them all.
“We’re in the middle of a really challenging conference schedule,” Sumrall said about the coaching distractions. “It takes your full focus and your full energy.”
Sumrall will demand the same focus and energy as Tulane moves forward. But his name will continue to be mentioned for other jobs, just like that of the coach he opposes Friday, Memphis’ Ryan Silverfield.
“This is the third year in a row where he’s really had to deal with this, so he has a really good understanding,” Brown said of Sumrall. “He has a really good pulse on his team, and he has good relationships with his players and his staff, and he had a good plan of dealing with it before the season started.
“They didn’t finish like he wanted to finish last year and they don’t want to repeat that, so he’s got their attention.”
The key will be holding it and maximizing the results for the stretch run, before decision time truly comes.
“The only job offer I’ve got is to coach at Tulane,” Sumrall said. “Why would I worry about any other job? In December, we all look up, players and coaches alike, and wonder, ‘What’s that look like now?’ But if you’re a person that’s always looking at what’s next, you’re going to really fall through where you are.”
