Ever since arriving as the new head Gator, Jon Sumrall has been transparent in how challenging it was to lead two college football programs at the same time, leading Tulane into the College Football Playoff after formally accepting the Florida job.
At the SEC spring meetings today, in what should serve as a warning (but certainly will not) to future head coaches that may be fortunate enough to find themselves in a similar situation, Sumrall called the brief period juggling the role as the leader of two programs the dumbest thing he's ever done.
"I was doing two jobs for three weeks, which is the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life. It was stupid."
The 2025 AAC title game was Sumrall's fourth straight appearance in a conference title game with his second different team, after previouly leading Troy to a pair of Sun Belt titles and playing for a AAC title in year one with the Green Wave, so he was uniquely equipped for the position he found himself him, but it was still more challenging than he was ready for.
"Having lived it, just rewinding, just rewinding the Sunday after the regular season, I officially accept this job. We have a conference championship game that Friday night, we also have high school sign day that Wednesday where I was trying to make sure we signed 16 guys at Florida and we signed 14 at Tulane with no head coach in place for the '26 team.
"I'm like what is going on here while we're still trying to win a conference championship game on Friday night. So I do a Monday practice which was a Tuesday really in the game week. Get on a plane fly to fly to Florida to do a press conference. Fly right back for the next day's practice. Then we have signing day for both schools. Then I'm getting ready for a game. Then we win the game. We make the CFP. We do the selection show on Sunday."
"Right after the selection show, I high five my guys, tell them can't wait to see them in a few days to start practice, and then I get up back on a plane to go to Gainesville to try to see if I can keep a few of those players to play for University of Florida in 2026."
"I mean, full disclosure, it was a shit show. Like I didn't sleep, people thought I was kidding around. I kind of tweeted out something about having two phones and two hours of sleep and, I don't know two like it was like two lives. I don't know if I made some good decisions in there."
Addressing how he would adjust the calendar after that experience, Sumrall joined the chorus of coaches that are in favor of moving the season up, for starters and pointed to the NFL as a model that many college coaches continue to be envious of.
"I think you could move the I think you could move the season up. I think you could move the end of the season up. I think we could move the high school signing date back to where it used to be because we moved the high school signing date up. signing date to early February to protect the high school players from the portal, but then we moved the portal back. So, we we fixed one problem. move the high school sign date up.
"It's like we're just overcorrecting and we're constantly making a change, another change, another change, another change. The NFL has a really cool model where they play the season then the season ends then coaches take jobs, then they do roster turnover, then they have some practices, then they play the season again. We're like doing all of it at once."
"I mean talking about feeling like you've been drinking, golly, that's like mixing tequila, bourbon and beer all at the same time. It's gonna make you sick."
See his full comments in the clip