Florida's Sumrall vows to 'wake this beast up' in his debut season
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — It’s been seven years since Florida notched double-digit wins and 17 years since the Gators were legitimate national championship contenders.
Calling Florida overdue would be an understatement in Gainesville, and new coach Jon Sumrall knows it as well as any diehard who watched the team’s annual spring game unfold at the Swamp on Saturday.
“Championships are the standard and expectation,” Sumrall said following the Orange and Blue game. “We’ve got to get it back there. We’ve got to wake this beast up.
“Like, it’s time we wake this thing up. This is a sleeping giant. I’m telling you right now: it ain’t a matter of if we’re going to win here. It’s how fast we’re going to win. It’s coming. This winning thing, it’s coming.”
Florida is a paltry 29-37 over its last 66 games, including losing seasons in four of the last five years. It would be unacceptable at just about any Power Four program. It’s downright embarrassing for one that has three national titles and eight Southeastern Conference championships since 1990.
But the Gators have spent much of the last two decades chasing Alabama, Georgia, LSU and others.
Sumrall was hired to fix it, essentially tasked with cleaning up the mess created and left behind by fired coach Billy Napier. Sumrall, who led Troy and Tulane to a combined four conference title games in four seasons, could start his rebuild just about anywhere.
Florida ranked last in the Southeastern Conference in scoring last season, averaging 21.6 points a game, and allowed 34.3 points a game in its last three losses.
Sumrall, though, is focusing on the weight room. And anyone needing proof of Florida’s most glaring weakness should look at the team’s pro day last month, where long-snapper Rocco Underwood put up better bench numbers (14 reps at 225 pounds) than three-year starting guard Damieon George (12 reps).
“That shouldn’t happen,” Sumrall said. “Hell, our coaches need to be hitting 12. … That’s not something that changes overnight.”
Florida’s strength program left a lot to be desired during Napier’s tenure.
He brought buddy Mark Hocke with him from Louisiana-Lafayette in December 2021 and then demoted Hocke two years later, essentially putting him in charge of messaging and motivation while continuing to pay him $750,000 annually.
Napier then hired Craig Fitzgerald in hopes of overhauling the strength and nutrition programs in 2024, but Fitzgerald was on campus less than two months before leaving to join longtime friend Bill O’Brien at Boston College. Napier ended up promoting Tyler Miles who came under fire last year as soft-tissue and season-ending injuries mounted.
Sumrall has made it clear his guys need to get stronger and learn to play through bumps and bruises. And it starts with Florida’s offensive line, which seems to be the most unsettled unit on the team.
The Gators signed three O-line transfers who might start this fall and landed a 2027 commitment last week from five-star offensive lineman Maxwell Hiller from Coatesville, Pennsylvania. Sumrall challenged the line “to live in the weight room” and embrace a “blue-collar mindset.”
He believes creating “more movement” at the line of scrimmage is the easiest path to the top in arguably college football's most physical league.
“Now, I’m not patient. I want it to happen every day,” Sumrall said. “But we are going to land some pieces in recruiting. We’re about to do some things and build a roster here that is going to bring it back to where we all want it to be.”
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