Jon Sumrall has an approach to recruiting at Florida that makes too much sense

Jon Sumrall has already shown that he is going to be aggressive in recruiting and have a staff that follows his lead. In the past week, the Florida Gators received commitments from the top interior offensive lineman in the country, Maxwell Hiller, arguably the top in-state quarterback Davin Davidson and four-star cornerback Aamaury Fountain, who flipped from South Carolina.

Florida has had a stretch of coaches that simply didn't like recruiting or didn't evaluate properly. Dan Mullen is a very good coach, but, by his own admission, he doesn't like recruiting. He just wanted to have the players there to develop. Billy Napier had a top-10 class in 2024 headlined by DJ Lagway and LJ McCray, but the quarterback didn't work out and McCray hasn't done much so far. Oddly enough, the best player in that class was a three-star running back named Jadan Baugh, who was taken as the second back in the class. 

Sumrall is hoping to get both ends of the equation right, and it starts by getting top players on campus and selling them on his vision for the Gators.

"Yeah, we can get anybody to come visit the University of Florida if we want in America, if we do a good job. This is not a really hard place to recruit to," Sumrall said after the Orange & Blue game.

Jon Sumrall wants Florida to be the destination for top recruits

Sumrall's sales pitch is both a great sell of the university as a whole and the culture that he is building around Gators football. He's challenging top recruits to come to Florida, but only if you are willing to bust your behind and do whatever it takes to win games. 

"They're going to get coached every day, and we're not going to change. Like I told recruits all the time, if you like us now, you're going to love us later. If you don't like me now, go somewhere else because I'm not changing," Sumrall said.

It's the sort of alpha energy that plays well with a lot of recruits, and it's been proven to work before. The Gators have three national championships, eight SEC championships, three Heisman winners and numerous All-Americans. You can still win big at Florida and Sumrall knows that recruiting is the key to unlocking that success again.

"We are going to land some pieces in recruiting, and we are about to do some things," he added. "And build a roster here that is going to bring it back to where we all want it to be."

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