Jon Sumrall Embraces the Chaos: Florida’s Head Coach Navigates College Football’s New Era with Open Eyes and Open Arms
GAINESVILLE - Jon Sumrall knows the game has changed. And he’s not just talking about X’s and O’s.
The Florida Gators’ new head coach has watched college football transform into something almost unrecognizable from his playing days at Kentucky more than two decades ago. The transfer portal is wide open, NIL deals are reshaping rosters, and tampering is no longer whispered about - it’s baked into the system.
But Sumrall? He’s not bitter.
He’s not clinging to the past. At 43, he’s leaning into the future, even if the rules of engagement are constantly shifting.
Take Darian Mensah, for example - a quarterback Sumrall coached at Tulane. Mensah has now played for three programs in three seasons, hopping from Tulane to Duke to Miami, with a lucrative NIL deal seemingly waiting at each stop.
“He got a big bag, and I’m not even mad about that,” Sumrall said, grinning. “I’m happy for Darian.”
That’s not just lip service. Sumrall genuinely supports the idea of players cashing in on their talent. He’s not trying to fight the system - he’s trying to master it.
The New Normal
What used to be a clear-cut recruiting cycle has become a year-round scramble. National Signing Day in February? That’s more of a formality now.
“It’s not really signing day anymore,” Sumrall said. “That’s kind of gone and passed. We kind of already know who’s on our team.”
The Early Signing Period in December and the January transfer portal window have effectively reshaped the calendar. By the time February rolled around, Florida’s 2026 roster was already set - or at least as set as it can be in today’s version of college football.
That roster includes 30 transfers, headlined by Georgia Tech quarterback Aaron Philo, alongside 20 high school signees and 62 returning players. After a 4-8 campaign in 2025 - Florida’s fourth losing season in five years - the Gators are banking on the portal to speed up the rebuild.
And Sumrall is all in.
“I like the transfer portal. I like NIL.
I like revenue sharing,” he said. “I think it’s great our players get paid.
I’m for all that. I love the portal.
Love it.”
That enthusiasm doesn’t mean he’s blind to the darker corners of the process.
Tampering in the Open
Tampering - once the dirty little secret of college football - is now an open secret. Coaches, agents, and boosters are contacting players before they even enter the portal, trying to line up their next move before the current one is even finished.
“I don’t know what’s enforced right now,” Sumrall said. “There’s been all this talk the last couple weeks about tampering.
Yeah, no kidding. Every player on our team has been tampered with - 100 percent.
I don’t lose my mind about it. Until there are penalties for it, what’s going to stop people from doing it?”
Sumrall insists he’s not part of that game, but he knows how it works. Back channels - from agents to family members - have become the unofficial highways of modern recruiting.
And sometimes, the fallout gets messy.
When Mensah left Duke for Miami, it sparked a lawsuit and a settlement. Duke had offered him a two-year deal, and they intended to hold him to it. But in the NIL era, contracts can be as fluid as the players signing them.
Rule Changes and Moving Targets
Trying to bring structure to the chaos, the NCAA has made several tweaks to the recruiting timeline. The Early Signing Period was moved to the first Wednesday in December starting in 2025, in an attempt to protect high school players from losing roster spots to transfers.
But then the transfer portal window was shifted to a tight 15-day stretch from Jan. 2-16.
Sumrall sees the contradiction.
“We moved the Early Signing Period to protect the high school kids from losing their spots to transfers,” he said. “But then right after we did that, we moved the transfer portal back.
So it’s like: ‘Why did we move the high school signing day in the first place?’ We fix one problem and create another.
“It just feels a little scattered.”
And that’s before you even get to the eligibility questions.
Courtside Quips and Legal Loopholes
Sumrall was courtside this past Sunday, watching Florida’s basketball team roll past Alabama 100-77. On the floor was 7-footer Charles Bediako - newly eligible thanks to a temporary injunction from a Tuscaloosa judge who also happens to be a Crimson Tide booster.
That situation brought out Sumrall’s dry sense of humor.
“I wasn’t planning on sharing this today,” he said. “But we’re going to file a temporary restraining order and see if Tim Tebow can play short-yardage and goal-line quarterback. I don’t know what the hell is going on with all that.
“We’re going to coach who they let us coach and recruit who they let us recruit. But the problem is I think that’s such a moving target that you don’t know who’s allowed to play, and the rule may change tonight or tomorrow or whatever.”
Proven Adaptability
If anyone’s equipped to navigate this new world, it’s Sumrall. At Tulane, he managed one of the most dramatic roster overhauls in recent memory. The Green Wave brought in nearly 60 new players in 2025, including 35 transfers.
One of them, BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff, joined the team as a walk-on after a suspension for violating the school’s honor code. After passing a thorough vetting process, Retzlaff won the starting job and led Tulane all the way to the College Football Playoff.
Could a similar turnaround happen in Gainesville? That’s a tall order. But Sumrall’s not ruling anything out.
Because in today’s college football, the only constant is change.
“You can sit here and whine and complain about the way the rules are,” Sumrall said. “Or you can just embrace them and try to adapt and make them work the best for you.”
Right now, Sumrall’s doing exactly that - embracing the chaos, adapting on the fly, and trying to build something steady in a sport that rarely stands still.