{"id":502543,"date":"2026-03-04T04:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T04:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/502543\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T04:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T04:42:07","slug":"floridas-jon-sumrall-takes-a-tense-photoshoot-with-a-7-foot-alligator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/502543\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida’s Jon Sumrall takes a tense photoshoot with a 7-foot alligator"},"content":{"rendered":"

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Florida coach Jon Sumrall<\/a> has a new appreciation for the gator chomp.<\/p>\n

Sumrall got hissed at and snapped at<\/a> while posing for promotional pictures with a live alligator last week. It was enough to prompt Sumrall to backpedal like his college playing days at Kentucky.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty certain I\u2019d look like Chubbs from Happy Gilmore if the alligator had gotten close to my hand,\u201d Sumrall joked Tuesday following his first spring practice at Florida. \u201cYeah, that was cool, man.\u201d<\/p>\n

A little nerve-racking, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my mind, I had this visual image of we\u2019re going to have like a little baby alligator, like a 1-foot alligator you might see on a riverboat cruise in Louisiana, mouth\u2019s taped,\u201d he said. \u201cI walk up and there\u2019s this 7-foot alligator.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Hang on. What am I doing here?\u2019 They\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019re going to take some pictures. You can get this close.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Look, during COVID I wasn\u2019t allowed to get this close to people. I don\u2019t know about an alligator.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The alligator was named Helena and was from a nearby gator farm. She may have been relatively friendly, but she was far from trained. She walked in and out of shots while Sumrall flipped a football \u2014 and eventually turned on the former Troy and Tulane head coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as I started to get kind of comfortable \u2026 I\u2019m like, \u2018All right, this thing isn\u2019t going to do anything crazy, I don\u2019t think.\u2019 I get 4 or 5 feet away and it starts to kind of hiss a little and it snaps,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018What the hell is going on? I\u2019m out of here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t actually bail. Helena simmered down, and they got the photos done. But it was an experience Sumrall won\u2019t soon forget.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not necessarily looking for when that\u2019s coming up on my schedule again,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it was a fun experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a>. AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Florida coach Jon Sumrall has a new appreciation for the gator chomp. Sumrall got…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[44701,1607,2662,2822,2808,793,78563,6098,2031,79,99,795,201],"class_list":["post-502543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-alligators-and-crocodiles","tag-college-football","tag-college-sports","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-general-news","tag-jon-sumrall","tag-louisiana","tag-oddities","tag-science","tag-sports","tag-u-s-news","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}