The Dallas Renegades are turning to a familiar college football name to lead them into their next chapter.
On Wednesday, the team announced Kevin Sumlin as its new head coach, bringing in a coach who once piled up wins at Houston and Texas A&M before later taking a turn through the UFL with the Houston Gamblers. Sumlin, 62, spent the 2025 season away from football after two years as the University of Maryland’s associate head coach.
Sumlin’s résumé still carries the kind of moments that made him a major figure in college football. From 2008 to 2020, he went 95-63 overall as a college head coach, including Texas A&M’s 2013 Cotton Bowl win over Oklahoma.
At Houston, where he started his head coaching career in 2008, he helped develop Case Keenum into the NCAA’s all-time leading passer during the quarterback’s time with the Cougars. Sumlin finished 35-17 there before moving to College Station.
His first season at Texas A&M was his best splash. He brought Johnny Manziel to the forefront and guided the Aggies to an 11-2 record in their first year in the SEC.
The results dipped after that. Texas A&M went 9-5 or 8-5 in each of the next four seasons, and Sumlin was dismissed in 2017 after a 7-5 finish.
He left the Aggies with a 51-26 record.
After Texas A&M, Sumlin took over at Arizona, where the results never really clicked. He went 9-20 with the Wildcats. His last stint as a head coach came in 2022 with the Houston Gamblers, where he went 3-7.
Now the Renegades are betting that Sumlin can bring some of that earlier winning back to the UFL.
In Other News...
Baylor Is Turning McLane Stadium Into A Fan Experience Unlike Usual
McLane Stadium is set to take on a different kind of buzz later this month, with Topgolf bringing its Topgolf Live Stadium Series to Baylor University from Oct. 29 through Nov. 1. The setup will turn the football venue into a golf and fan entertainment space, complete with hitting bays, a watch party for the Baylor-UCF game, VIP football experiences and hospitality options that lean into the stadium atmosphere in a new way.
For Baylor, the event is part of a broader push by Topgolf to take its entertainment platform into college stadiums while supporting collegiate athletics and NIL programs. It gives the Bears another way to showcase McLane beyond game day, blending sport and social experience in a setting that is usually reserved for football first and everything else second. [Read more 🡒]
Dave Aranda Just Framed Baylors Biggest Competitive Problem
College footballs money race keeps getting harder to ignore, and Dave Aranda put Baylors place in it into plain terms this week. The Bears are investing heavily in their roster, but Aranda acknowledged there is still a gap between Baylor and the biggest spenders in the sport, a reality that shapes the margins on Saturdays and the kind of talent-rich opponents the program has to chase.
Arandas point was not just about dollars, though. He framed toughness as the trait Baylor has to lean on to keep competing when the financial terrain tilts the other way, a reminder that resource disparities are now part of the competitive math in college football. For Baylor, the challenge is not simply keeping up, but finding ways to win anyway. [Read more 🡒]
Dave Aranda Just Bought Himself Real Time At Baylor
Dave Aranda went into the season with plenty of questions hanging over him, but four games in, Baylor has given him something he badly needed: breathing room. The Bears are 3-1, a start that has outpaced expectations and put Aranda in a better spot than he was entering his seventh season in Waco. The broader picture still shows a coach with a slightly above-.500 record at Baylor, but the early returns matter, especially with the defense looking sharper under new coordinator Joe Klanderman.
Arandas situation also stands out because he is not alone in changing the conversation around his job. Wisconsins Luke Fickell, another coach who had been viewed as vulnerable, has also opened 3-1 and just picked up an upset win over Penn State that earned him Coach of the Week honors for week four. For Baylor, the immediate issue is less about long-term judgment and more about whether this early momentum can hold once the season settles into its tougher stretches. [Read more 🡒]