Myles Graham was not in the room when Jon Sumrall expressed his annoyance with a cel phone that disrupted the coach’s press conference at SEC media days in Tampa. The first-year Florida sideline boss, perhaps half-kiddingly, expressed how fortunate the offending media member was that he did not “throw this freaking podium right now.” Maybe he was not kidding in the least.
“I don’t want to see what would happen,” said Graham, a junior linebacker, when later in that same room he was asked what would happen if such a disruption took place during a team meeting. “I would feel bad for that guy.”
Gator Nation has enough bad feeling in recent years, including a dismal 4-8 campaign in 2025, the program’s fourth losing season in the past five. Sumrall arrived from Tulane to reverse the misfortune and get Florida back into something resembling contention in the SEC. Or least get back to a bowl game, something that failed to occur twice in the last three seasons.
A reversal of fortune will not be easy in 2026. Not with 50 new players and the season’s second half beginning at Texas and with Georgia (in Atlanta following a bye) and visiting Oklahoma next in line. Alas, this is the SEC and Sumrall felt the timing was right following successful two-year stints at Troy (23-4) in the Sun Belt and Tulane (20-8) in the American for him to make a move. He cited how the latter prepared him for a stage that is equipped with plenty of high-wattage spotlights.
“Had I made the jump from Troy to Florida, that would have been really hard to take on, a lot to digest,” he said. “Maybe more to manage than I had been exposed to or was properly prepared for.”
It was a rather ironic statement given his predecessor, Billy Napier, arrived in Gainesville from a Sun Belt program (Louisiana) where he went 40-12 in four seasons. Napier was jettisoned last October, midway through his fourth season piloting the Gators, though the citizenry emerged with pitchforks well before then. After all, there can only be so much patience with a coach who was a damning 1-7 against Georgia, Florida State and Miami, and 22-23 overall. (Napier is back in the Sun Belt as the coach at James Madison.)
Sumrall’s successful tenure with the Green Wave concluded with a College Football Playoff appearance, providing the step he needed to ascend to the highest level.
“There were some things at Tulane, my experience there, that provided me with what I think prepared me holistically to be in the seat I am in now,” he said. “I feel if I had gone straight from Troy for one of these (power conference) jobs, I would have skipped a step I needed, selfishly, to know how to do this job well.”
Jon Sumrall kept a couple of playmakers on board
Sumrall, an Alabama native and former Kentucky linebacker who turned 44 a day after the nation turned 250, understands the Sunshine State is fertile territory for gridiron talent. Football players with speed are oozing throughout the state. He saw that type of talent firsthand in 1993 when, as he noted during one of his media sessions in Tampa, that he was among 76,000-plus at Legion Field in Birmingham for the second playing of the SEC championship game when Steve Spurrier’s Gators bested Gene Stallings’ Crimson Tide, 28-13.
“You just expect fun, explosive football from a Florida offense,” he said. “Inherently, we are in the state of Florida and we have access to great skill players. This state is loaded with receivers and running backs that can hit home run plays. Speed, space, sometimes tempo within your play style, fits Florida. We don’t have to be tempo just for the sake of tempo. We have to do it at the right times to help us be successful, but there’s a style of offense that I think fits here.”
A player that fits in is sophomore Vernell Brown III. The son, grandson, and nephew of former Gators, Brown caught 40 passes and averaged 79 all-purpose yards per game as a freshman in 2025.
“After I got to meet coach Sumrall and some of the staff, I bought in,” said Brown, who is listed at 5-foot-11 and 177 pounds. “I was completely locked in. He’s very consistent in who he is and is making sure everybody upholds the standard at all times.”
The standard is making sure the bar is consistently being raised.
“I think it is the mindset of trying to help everybody in our program be the best they can be,” Sumrall said of what he instilled at his previous stops and how he is going about his work in Gainesville. “My job as head coach is to serve and develop everybody around me. It’s not to be served.”
Jadan Baugh is not a Floridian. He was recruited, however, out of high school in Decatur, Ga., which is only about 40 miles from the Florida/Georgia state line. He certainly has the speed, which he showcased often a season ago when, as a sophomore, he ran for 1,170 yards and averaged 97.5 yards per game to rank third in the SEC behind 2025 All-Americans Kewan Lacy (first team) of Ole Miss and Ahmad Hardy (second team) of Mizzou. Though he was not dressed as Santa Claus, Sumrall paid his running back a timely visit, which paid off in keeping the young man at UF.
“He came to my grandmother’s house on Christmas Day and we sat there and just talked about everything,” said Baugh. “That stuck out to me because that shows he is a guy who cares. It showed he is a guy with character.”
Sumrall needed Brown, Baugh, Graham, the son of Earnest Graham, who ran for more than 3,000 yards in four seasons with the Gators, and others to remain on board in order to have at least a few go-to guys, on and off the field, when it comes to helping turn the program around.
Again, it will not be easy. Sumrall knows that.
“We have a long way to go,” he said. “I’m not trying to temper expectations. My expectation is to win every time we play. We have a freaking long way to go.”
