One of the daunting tasks that Jon Sumrall faced when he took over the job at Florida was the task of overhauling the roster for the Gators. Between graduations and departures in the transfer portal, Sumrall had over 50 guys from the 2025 roster not return as offseason workouts have begun for the 2026 season.
And while Sumrall has worked hard to fill gaps in the transfer portal, he admitted there is one mechanism of the transfer portal he wishes were still in place.
Jon Sumrall wishes the spring portal still existed
One of the major changes college football made for this upcoming offseason was the switch to a singular transfer portal in January. Previously, players had the chance to hop into the portal after spring practice. This helped the Gators in some cases (Ricky Pearsall and Elijhah Badger were among the spring additions for Florida), but the Gators also saw their share of players depart during this window.
Sumrall met with reporters on Saturday, and he was asked about his approach to the transfer portal. He admitted that until he sees the team in action and on the practice field, he doesn’t 100% know how strong his roster is for 2026:
“The thing I'll say, like when I was at Tulane my first year, we went through the spring, and I realized, hey, we need to go get a couple more corners. We went and got Jonathan Edwards from Indiana State and Michael Robinson from Furman, and they're both playing in the NFL right now.
But those guys were added to April or May.
We don't have the luxury of that second window now, so that's a little bit more daunting. I'm not gonna have any opportunity to watch this team practice and go correct in the second portal. We just gotta go watch them practice, then try to fix it if it's wrong, make somebody better, or maybe move guys around.
That's a little bit more unnerving.
I wouldn't be upset as a first-year head coach if we had the second portal window. I used it to my benefit at the last job I was at. I would be okay if they gave us an emergency second portal window in May to make sure, after Spring Ball, I knew what we had.”
Sumrall would probably be in the minority with these comments. The main reason for the switch to a singular portal was that coaches grew paranoid of other coaches poaching players after the spring. It was a huge reason why most schools didn’t televise their spring games, if they even had one at all.
All Sumrall can hope for is that he picked the mix of returners to retain and newcomers in the portal for a roster construction that has minimal holes heading into 2026.