In less than 50 days, Florida will take the field for real, and “talking season” can officially be put to rest until January. It has been a very eventful offseason in Gainesville, with a bit of a head start on the coaching search to replace Billy Napier. As we all know, Florida tried to land Lane Kiffin and failed. We don’t need to rehash that part of the saga.
But what is interesting, looking at where things are in July, compared to how things felt in late November, is the idea that despite whiffing on Kiffin, Florida is considered one of the “winners of the offseason.”
Whether that translates to winners of the field is still the grand mystery for Gator fans.
Florida is considered a winner of the offseason
On3 put out a list of their top five winners of the offseason. LSU, Oklahoma State, USC, and Michigan all made the list.
Then coming in as the No. 5 winner of the offseason is none other than Florida.
It does seem somewhat of a contradiction that LSU is considered No. 1 on this list because they did, in fact, land Kiffin, while Florida very publicly missed out. It is a testament, however, to three key things Jon Sumrall has been able to do to change the narrative surrounding his hire:
- Roster retention
- Strong 2027 recruiting class
- Podcast blitz to articulate and control the narrative
The roster retention part was massive and sent the tone right away that players inside the building are bought into Sumrall. Retaining Jadan Baugh and Jayden Woods in particular, who both seemed destined to leave, was huge, and as things played out, Sumrall ended up keeping virtually everyone of whom Gator fans would have wanted to keep.
That parlayed into his maiden recruiting class with Florida. He kept virtually everyone from the class of 2026 and has built a class of 2027 that feels constructed in an intelligent way, with an emphasis on the trenches. There have been a couple of high-profile misses, and there is a fair conversation to be had about them, but it’s the third point that has Florida fans mostly okay with those misses.
Sumrall went on virtually every Florida podcast he could find and has probably answered any question one could think of this offseason. Being a great podcaster doesn’t automatically translate into being a great coach, but for as many appearances as Sumrall has made, there have been very few answers he has given that have made us raise an eyebrow.
And keep in mind, we here at Hail Florida Hail were very much against grabbing Sumrall as the consolation prize to Kiffin. But we are willing to commend Sumrall, and at least for now, he feels like a guy who has a genuine pulse of what needs to be done to be successful in Gainesville.
He will still have to prove that he isn’t going to go into a conservative shell once he gets a lead, which was among our core critiques of him while at Tulane, but we, along with plenty of other Gator fans, can at least live with the offseason Florida wound up having compared to how bad it looked like it would be back in November.
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