Florida Football has reportedly found its next head coach. After losing out on the Lane Kiffin sweepstakes, the Gators have turned their attention to the American Conference.
According to a report from ESPN’s Pete Thamel on Sunday morning, Florida is finalizing a six-year deal with Tulane’s Jon Sumrall as the next head coach of the Gators program. The report also states that Sumrall will be making an average of $7.5 million per year on the deal. There are also “significant incentives” tied to the College Football Playoffs in Sumrall’s reported deal.
The news on Sunday comes less than 24 hours after Thamel reported that Florida was closing in on Sumrall.
The 43-year-old coach has been a head coach for four years. He spent the 2022 and 2023 seasons with Troy, going 23-4, before moving to Tulane for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. Sumrall has gone 19-7 in 25 games with the Green Wave to this point. His Tulane squad defeated Charlotte by a score of 27-0 on Saturday to finish the season at 10-2 overall.
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With Sumrall’s move to Florida, it marks another return to the SEC for the Texas native. He was a linebacker with the Kentucky Wildcats from 2002 to 2004, and then spent two seasons as a grad assistant in Lexington in 2005 and 2006. He also spent one year as the Ole Miss Rebels’ linebackers coach in 2018, was the Kentucky Wildcats’ inside linebackers coach from 2019 to 2020, and was promoted to Kentucky’s co-defensive coordinator in 2021.
Sumrall was named the Sun Belt Coach of the Year in 2022 after leading the Troy Trojans to a 12-2 overall record.
In a sharp turn from the norm, Tennessee will only see Sumrall’s Gators twice over the next four seasons. With Tennessee and Florida not being annual rivals in the new-look SEC scheduling format, it won’t be a yearly matchup moving forward. That’s why it was so important for the Vols to get the Gainesville monkey off their backs in 2025.
Tennessee will host Florida in 2027 and return to Gainesville in 2029.
Florida fired head coach Billy Napier on Oct. 19 after a 23-21 win over Mississippi State in Gainesville. He was 3-4 on the season and 2-2 in SEC play. Napier’s final record at Florida ended at 22-23. His Gators were 1-1 in bowl games, with a loss in the 2022 Las Vegas Bowl and a win in the 2024 Gasparilla Bowl.
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