Search the name,e and half the results still have him in New Orleans. They are stale. Florida hired Jon Sumrall on November 30, 2025, and he opens his first season in the Swamp this September. Every figure below was checked against the schools’ own sites on July 29, 2026.
Short answer: He is the head football coach at the University of Florida, the 31st in program history. The hire came on November 30, 2025, after two seasons at Tulane and two at Troy. He carries a 43-12 head coaching record, three conference titles in four years, and one playoff appearance.
The file on him, in one table
| Item | Detail |
| Current job | Head coach, Florida Gators, named November 30, 2025 |
| Earlier head coaching jobs | Tulane (2024 and 2025), Troy (2022 and 2023) |
| Head coaching record | 43-12and 28-4 in conference play |
| Conference titles | Three: Sun Belt 2022, Sun Belt 2023, American 2025 |
| Playing career | Middle linebacker, Kentucky, 2002 to 2004 |
| Reported contract | Six years, about $7.5 million a year, playoff bonuses |
| First game at Florida | Florida Atlantic, September 5, 2026, in Gainesville |
Key takeaways
- He does not coach Tulane anymore; Will Hall has that job.
- Four seasons as a head coach, four conference title games, three trophies.
- Florida went 4-8 in 2025, so the bar he inherited is low and the patience will be shorter.
- The quarterback room turned over completely. DJ Lagway transferred to Baylor.
From Kentucky linebacker to SEC head coach
Sumrall played middle linebacker at Kentucky from 2002 to 2004 and led the Wildcats with 72 tackles as a redshirt junior. A spinal condition ended the playing part of his life. Earned a finance degree in 200; began, stayed in Lexington as a graduate assistant, which is where the coaching career started.
His climb was slow. Five years at San Diego, three running Tulane’s defense, three more at Troy, one season with the linebackers at Ole Miss, then back to Kentucky. By 2021 he was coordinating an SEC defense, and Troy handed him a program the following winter.
- 2005 to 2006: graduate assistant, Kentucky
- 2007 to 2011: defensive line, then assistant head coach and coordinator, San Diego
- 2012 to 2014: defensive coordinator, Tulane
- 2015 to 2017: assistant head coach, linebackers and special teams, Troy
- 2018: linebackers, Ole Miss
- 2019 to 2021: inside linebackers, then defensive coordinator, Kentucky
- 2022 to 2023: head coach, Troy
- 2024 to 2025: head coach, Tulane
- 2026: head coach, Florida
That path explains the hire. The Gators did not buy a coordinator riding one good year. They bought a man who has already built two programs from the big chair, and who did it twice in five seasons. Careers that compound like this are the sort we track in our athlete profiles and career journeys.
Jon Sumrall’s record, season by season
Four years as a head coach, four trips to a conference championship game. That streak, more than the raw win total, is what put him on Florida’s list.
| Year | School | W-L | League | Postseason |
| 2022 | Troy | 12-2 | 7-1 | Sun Belt champions, beat Coastal Carolina 45-26; won the Cure Bowl 18-12 over UTSA |
| 2023 | Troy | 11-2 | 7-1 | Sun Belt champions, beat Appalachian State 49-23; left for Tulane before the bowl |
| 2024 | Tulane | 9-5 | 7-1 | Lost the American title game to Army 35-14; lost the Gasparilla Bowl to Florida 33-8 |
| 2025 | Tulane | 11-3 | 7-1 | American champions, beat North Texas 34-21; lost the playoff opener at Ole Miss 41-10 |
Add it up: 43-12, a .782 clip, and 28-4 inside his own leagues. He has never had a losing season, and he has never finished worse than second in a conference. The 2024 bowl result reads oddly now, because the team that beat his Green Wave 33-8 in Tampa is the team he coaches.
Why two record books disagree by one game
Troy’s own schedule page lists an 11-3 finish for 2023. Florida’s staff bio lists 11-2. Both are correct. He had already accepted the Tulane job by the time Troy played Duke in the Birmingham Bowl. That 17-10 loss is charged to the program, not to Sumrall.
Why he left Tulane after two seasons
Florida cut Billy Napier loose during a 4-8 season and went hunting for a coach who wins without the biggest checkbook. Tulane had just gone 11-3 on a small fraction of Florida’s budget. The offer landed on November 30, 2025.
Then came the strange part. Sumrall coached Tulane’s American championship win over North Texas on December 5. He took the same team into a College Football Playoff opener at Ole Miss on December 20, all while recruiting for a different school. Tulane and James Madison were the first pair of Group of Five teams to reach the same 12-team playoff field.
Tulane moved fast and filled Hall. Carousels rarely stay tidy, and the churn keeps reshaping rosters and staffs, which is why we follow it in our football transfer and tactical coverage.
What Florida is paying him
Reported terms: six years, roughly $7.5 million a year, with bonuses tied to playoff results. The school has not posted the signed agreement, and the university’s trustee meeting index does not surface it, so treat that number as reported rather than filed.
That scale is hard to picture without a baseline. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual wage for coaches and scouts was $45,920 in May 2024, and the highest paid 10 percent earned more than $93,980. A $7.5 million salary is roughly 163 times that median.
It is an outlier even inside big-money college athletics. Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics survey sets the house baseline. Florida reported an average annual institutional salary of $2,103,699 across its seven men’s head coaches for the year ending June 30, 2025. Football pay sits in a tier of its own.
The 2026 schedule Florida handed him
Twelve games, and the gentle part of it ends in two weeks.
| Date | Opponent | Site |
| September 5 | Florida Atlantic | Gainesville |
| September 12 | Campbell | Gainesville, first-ever meeting |
| September 19 | Auburn | Auburn |
| September 26 | Ole Miss | Gainesville |
| October 3 | Missouri | Columbia |
| October 10 | South Carolina | Gainesville |
| October 17 | Texas | Austin |
| October 31 | Georgia | Atlanta |
| November 7 | Oklahoma | Gainesville |
| November 14 | Kentucky | Lexington |
| November 21 | Vanderbilt | Gainesville |
| November 27 | Florida State | Tallahassee |
Two oddities are worth flagging. Georgia moves out of Jacksonville to Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta while EverBank Stadium is rebuilt. No LSU game appears for the first time since 1970. By opponent record, Florida rates the slate 28th nationally.
What a realistic first season looks like
Forecasts like the coaching change more than they like the roster. ESPN’s SP+ number moved Florida from No. 63 and a 3.5 rating to No. 19 and a 14.9 rating, an 11.4-point jump that ranks fifth nationally among teams that switched coaches.
Betting markets are cooler. Odds of +5000 for the national title put the Gators joint 16th, and no other team in that group won fewer than eight games last season.
Offense is where the obvious hole sits. Lagway’s move to Baylor leaves Georgia Tech transfer Aaron Philo, Yale transfer Aidan Warner and three young in-house arms competing for the job. Running back Jadan Baugh is the anchor after 1,170 rushing yards in 2025, the most by a Florida back since Mike Gillislee ran for 1,152 in 2012.
Buster Faulkner runs the offense and Brad White the defense, both hired in December. Seven or eight wins with a live Georgia game would count as real progress in year one. We will grade it week by week alongside the rest of our sport coverage and match analysis.
What to watch next
Bookmark this page. We will update the record table after every Florida result this fall, starting with Florida Atlantic on September 5.
If you want to now about Breece Hall Trade then visit our Football category.
FAQ
Florida. He was named the Gators’ 31st head football coach on November 30, 2025, and 2026 is his first season in Gainesville.
43-12 across four seasons, and 28-4 in league play. That covers 2022 and 2023 at Troy plus 2024 and 2025 at Tulane.
Three of them. Sun Belt titles at Troy in 2022 and 2023, then the American championship at Tulane in 2025.
As an assistant: Kentucky, San Diego, Tulane, Troy and Ole Miss. As a head coach: Troy first, then Tulane, now Florida.
Reports put the deal at six years and about $7.5 million a year with playoff bonuses. Florida itself has not published the contract.
Will Hall, listed as the Green Wave’s head coach on Tulane’s own football staff page.
