Jon Sumrall clearly had to believe that he’s “the guy” for the Florida Gators.
Going from Troy to Tulane to arguably one of the biggest jobs in college football is not for the faint of heart. If Sumrall didn’t exude the type of confidence that an SEC head coach needs while interviewing with the Gators, he never would have gotten the job.
It’s easy to surmise that Sumrall doesn’t have a confidence problem, but interestingly, he wasn’t sure that his resume would fit exactly what the Gators were looking for in their new head coach.
You see, the Gators were looking to replace Billy Napier, who rose the ranks as a big-time head coaching candidate after multiple successful seasons with the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns of the Sun Belt.
Napier was an elite head coaching prospect after going 40-12 over four seasons at Louisiana, but he could never quite get over the hump at Florida.
In a recent conversation with On3’s J.D. PicKell on “The Hard Count,” Sumrall revealed that he was worried that the Gators wouldn’t want to go down that Sun Belt road again.
“As you work through what could be next and you field phone calls … full transparency, I thought, ‘Is Florida going to hire another G5 coach from Louisiana? Probably not.’” Sumrall said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for Billy, but Billy and I are not the same guy. I thought just because we had somewhat of a similar track record, to some degree, that they may shy away from me.”
Jon Sumrall wasn’t sure Florida Gators would be enticed by his track record
In fact, Sumrall had a conversation with the Gators, and even though he felt it went great, he brushed it off because he honestly didn’t think they’d go for another Sun Belt up-and-comer.
“I’m going about my business and I really did not even think much about this being an option, and then as it kind of became clearer that maybe this was something that could be real, the more I vetted it, the more homework I did on it – the more I pulled back the curtain, if you will, to see what was behind the curtain and kind of got a glimpse of my fit here or my family’s fit here – we felt better and better and better about being at the University of Florida as that transpired,” he said.
Ultimately, Sumrall is not the same coach as Napier, but he will face the same challenge at Florida.
There’s quite a world of difference between Sun Belt football and high-level SEC football.
As mentioned, Napier could never really quite get over the hump.
It will be imperative for Sumrall to do so sooner rather than later in Gainesville, because he’s probably not going to get the longest of leashes.
