Editor’s note: This is the sixth installment in a series of stories that tell the journey of Gators head coach Jon Sumrall, from his birth in Texarkana, Texas, to his formative years in Huntsville, Alabama, to his time playing and suffering a career-ending injury at the University of Kentucky. From there, the series discusses the birth of his coaching career in Lexington and San Diego. Finally, his multiple stops at Troy and Tulane paved the way for him to the University of Florida.
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Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Neal Brown and his Troy University Trojans were rolling.
Over three seasons from 2016-18, Troy went 31-8 and won three bowl games. Unsurprisingly, Brown’s name began to surface for openings at Power Four schools.
One winter evening, as the coaching carousel began to spin while Brown was at Troy, he and his wife, Brooke, went out to dinner. Brooke isn’t one to sit on the sidelines. She actively participates in her husband’s career and asked him about openings and coaches certain schools should consider hiring.
Brown didn’t hesitate.
Former Troy head coach Neal Brown predicted Jon Sumrall would be a “big-time head coach” several years ago. (Photo: Courtesy of Troy University Athletics)
“They should hire Jon Sumrall,” said Brown, who is in his first season as head coach at North Texas. “He’s going to be a big-time head coach. It’s not if. It’s only a matter of when.”
Brown and Sumrall went way back, first meeting in 2000 when Sumrall took a recruiting trip to Kentucky and Brown was a Wildcats quarterback. He transferred to UMass before Sumrall’s freshman season, so they were never teammates, but they knew a lot of the same people through their Kentucky ties.
When Troy gave Brown his first opportunity as a head coach in 2015, he knew exactly whom he wanted on his staff.
He called Sumrall to offer him a job.
“I loved the fact he coordinated really young in his career,” Brown said. “I knew he had that big picture. And he’d already proven himself as a recruiter.”
Sumrall had just completed his third season as co-defensive coordinator at Tulane, where he had helped the Green Wave end a string of nine consecutive losing seasons with a winning record in 2013.
But the momentum stalled the next season, and Tulane head coach Curtis Johnson faced mounting criticism.
“You could tell on a pretty mediocre staff that he was a star on the rise even back then,” said Guerry Smith, a veteran Tulane beat writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. “They actually made a bowl game one of his years and had a really good defense. But it didn’t surprise me. He left a sinking ship.”
The Troy opportunity arrived like a shiny present on Christmas morning, bringing Sumrall back to Alabama for the first time since he left his Huntsville home for college.
The well-timed move not only boosted Sumrall’s career, but more importantly, it laid the groundwork for his return in 2021 as Troy searched for a head coach to replace Chip Lindsey, who had been unable to maintain the Trojans’ success after Brown left for West Virginia.
“I was ready to run through a wall,” Sumrall said.
“That was really such a gift from God because that first head coaching job is a big adjustment,” said Ginny Sumrall, Jon’s wife. “What was cool for us is we had been there. I’m very close with Brooke [Brown], always have been. I watched her do it for the first time at a high level in that same job.
“We both found that so helpful.”
Sumrall was introduced as Troy’s new coach on Dec. 6, 2021.
Skylar Meade beat him to campus by five months, hired in July to coach Troy’s baseball team after four seasons as South Carolina’s pitching coach. Meade grew up in Louisville and played baseball for the Cardinals.
A college football fan, he remembered Sumrall from his days playing for the Wildcats but didn’t know him. A few minutes before Sumrall’s introductory press conference, then-Troy athletic director Brent Jones introduced the two.
Sumrall didn’t hold back, referencing the Louisville guy in the room a couple of times during his press conference and reminding the crowd packed inside Troy’s football facility that his last game at Kentucky – he had spent the previous season as co-defensive coordinator for Mark Stoops – the Wildcats hammered Louisville on the road to end the regular season.
Afterward, colleagues approached Meade for insight.
“Are you guys boys like that?” they asked.
“I think we are now,” Meade told them. “It was hilarious. We only got to interact for like 60 seconds. It was peak Jon. It was awesome. Jon’s the man.”
Sumrall proved to be far more than a source of laughs for the Trojans.
“His teams understood what it takes to win,” Meade said. “To me, that goes to coaching. That goes to culture. That goes to what they teach.”
Gators head coach Jon Sumrall left Troy as the school’s all-time leader in winning percentage. (Photo: Courtesy of Troy University Athletics)
Sumrall took over a program that had lost 20 of the previous 35 games, and before unwrapping his new team, he worked tirelessly on the recruiting trail to beef up the roster.
Former Auburn quarterback Patrick Nix, who resigned as head coach at Central Phenix-City (Ala.) High in January, watched Troy’s resurgence from afar.
Nix and other coaches around the state experienced Sumrall’s authentic grassroots approach to rebuilding Troy into a winner.
“Jon was just one of those normal guys that, when he’d come through recruiting … made it very easy for us to connect,” Nix said. “He’s very down-to-earth, very relational. I’ll admit it, I’m a big fan. Honestly, I thought he was going to get the Auburn job. I hope he wins at Florida.”
It didn’t take Sumrall long to stack up victories at Troy.
He went 12-2 and beat Coastal Carolina in the Sun Belt Conference Championship Game in 2022. In the third game of the season, the Trojans lost at Appalachian State on a Hail Mary as the clock expired. They rebounded to win their next 11 games.
Jon Sumrall runs onto the field with his Troy team in 2022. (Photo: Courtesy of Troy University Athletics)
“Those are as crushing losses as you can ever have,” Brown said. “And they go on a run. He’s made to handle adversity. He’s going to hit it at Florida at some point. His teams have always responded in the right way, and they’ll continue to do that.”
Sumrall’s second season ended similarly: nine consecutive wins to close the regular season and a victory over Appalachian State in the Sun Belt Conference Championship Game. By the time he returned to Tulane as head coach before Troy’s bowl game in 2023, Sumrall had a 23-4 record and two conference championships.
He won on Saturdays. He won in recruits’ homes. And he won on the practice field by developing players.
“They definitely helped me get ready for the pros,” Patriots safety Dell Pettus, who played at Troy, told the school’s website recently. “Having Coach Sumrall there and his staff, they were people who had been around the game for a while and kind of helped re-establish what it’s going to take.”
In a few days, Sumrall will make his debut as Florida’s head coach in the season opener against Florida Atlantic. Gators fans hope Sumrall can turn the program around as he did at the Trojans.
For Sumrall, Troy was the when. Florida is next.