The Florida Gators hired Jon Sumrall as their new head football coach, despite his Group of Five background being similar to recently fired coach Billy Napier.
Athletic director Scott Stricklin defended the hire, noting that many successful SEC coaches did not come from Power 4 jobs.
Sumrall has a 42-11 record and has found success at two different schools, a rare accomplishment for a non-Power 4 level coach.
Sumrall asked fans to judge him for his own merits and expressed confidence that he will bring a winning culture to the program.
The comparison is understandable, but Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin was not deterred from considering a sitting Group of Five coach for the Gators’ head football coach.
The Gators’ new head coach, Jon Sumrall, shares a similar resume to that of recently fired Billy Napier, as both shared coaching stints in Louisiana. Rather, in some ways, Sumrall’s path compares more to former UF coach Urban Meyer. According to Stricklin, he had interviewed roughly a dozen candidates.
“You can’t arbitrarily eliminate a candidate from a pool, right?” Stricklin told reporters after Sumrall’s introduction press conference on Monday, Dec. 1. “You’re trying to find the best person. You couldn’t just say, ‘Hey, we only want to hire a left-handed coach.’ You would eliminate people for no good reason. I get the coincidence of that, but the fact of the matter is there are a lot of good coaches on that platform.”
One example that speaks to Stricklin’s defense was LSU’s firing of Brian Kelly, who had previously led Notre Dame to a national title appearance in a 10-year run.
“I don’t think (being a Group of 5 coach) has any indication of whether you’ll be successful or not. LSU just fired a coach who had plenty of Power 4 experience,” Stricklin said. “I think only three of the current 16 SEC coaches got to their current job from another Power 4 job. Even the best league in college football was not hiring a bunch of Power 4 coaches. Those coaches don’t move from school to school very often. I felt like Jon had a lot of attributes that were successful.”
It’s a comparison that Sumrall didn’t shy away from during his introductory press conference either. Urban Meyer also began at the Group of Five level, as well as a former adversary of Sumrall’s, Curt Cignetti, who currently leads No. 2-ranked Indiana.
“No two people are the same, okay,” said Sumrall when asked about the comparison to Napier. “Coach Meyer, you coached G5 football, right? Curt Cignetti coached G5, I think. I actually coached against Curt some.
“Judge me for who I am. I’m a winner. We’re going to win. Just give me a shot. Believe in me.”
For Stricklin, the fact that Sumrall has had success at two separate schools, reaching the conference championship each season and compiling a 42-11 record, spoke volumes.
“I think the fact that he has won two different places is pretty unique,” Stricklin said. “I looked it up. I could only find like two or three ever that at the non-Power 4 level.”
The most recent comparisons to Sumrall’s winning tenure are Meyers’ success at Bowling Green and Utah, which was previously in the Mountain West. The other is Willie Fritz’s tenures at Tulane and Georgia Southern.
“You’re not going to eliminate a pool of candidates because they fit a certain narrative that coincidentally lines up with somebody else. Just listen to him. He’s a unique individual himself – the energy, the fire,” Stricklin said.
Not naive to the outside noise and comparisons, Sumrall is hopeful Florida fans will come around.
“I need everybody pulling the rope the same direction because if anybody isn’t pulling the same direction, it doesn’t make the job easier, it makes it harder,” Sumrall said. “If we’re all Gators and we all want to win, let’s do this together. You want to go fast, go alone; you want to go far, go together. Let’s go together.”
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