Jon Sumrall drew a hard line during last season’s coaching chaos: if a school wanted him, it had to accept that he would finish the job at Tulane.
That stance mattered because Sumrall was one of the biggest names in the coaching carousel, right there with Lane Kiffin. While the speculation swirled, his Tulane team kept rolling all the way to an American Conference title and a College Football Playoff appearance. He said that run was not something he was willing to abandon.
“I don’t care what the offer was on the other side, if somebody had said, ‘Hey, we need you to take this job and do it on our terms with how you finish the job at Tulane, the answer was not no, it was hell no,” Sumrall said during SEC Media Days. “I was not gonna walk out on that situation the wrong way.”
Auburn was among the schools linked to him. The fit made sense on paper: Sumrall is an Alabama native, and he had coached at Troy, just over an hour from the Plains.
Auburn athletic director John Cohen was working on a fast timeline, too, saying during the search that he wanted a new coach within 24 hours of the Iron Bowl. Auburn eventually hired Alex Golesh, who arrived on the Plains by the Sunday afternoon after the Tigers’ loss to Alabama.
Sumrall said he and Kiffin compared notes through October and November, but he made clear the situations were not the same.
“Lane and I talked several times through the process of October and November,” Sumrall said. “Lane said we’re going through the same thing.
I said, ‘No we’re not. You’re leaving an SEC school.
I’m leaving Tulane.’ If any university said I couldn’t coach in the playoff, I don’t think I would have taken the job.”
Kiffin, of course, did the opposite of Sumrall, leaving Ole Miss for LSU before the CFP.
Auburn and Florida are set to meet in Week 3 at Jordan-Hare Stadium, with both teams opening SEC play in that game.
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