Jon Sumrall has the one thing that separates the best Florida coaches from the worst

There is a wide range of how the college football media believes the Florida Gators will fare this upcoming season, but they generally agree on how tough the schedule is and if Jon Sumrall is the right man to get them through it.

Blain Crain, of On3's Crain and Cone show, joined the company's in-house podcaster, JD Pickell, to talk about what they believe the Gators can accomplish this season. Crain, like many others, believes the schedule might be too tough to see big returns in Sumrall's first year.

"The schedule is tough. I think I've been saying that about Florida a couple of years now," Crain said, "But the first thing with me is... Jon Sumrall as a guy that just genuinely loves football, [beyond] being a head coach or anything, I believe in that."

Jon Sumrall has the 'juice' that Billy Napier couldn't muster

Crain goes on to talk about the excitement that Sumrall brought with his hiring. He described it like going to a fair and riding a roller coaster, and he talked about how it paled in comparison to when Billy Napier was hired. Now we've already touched on the fact that not all Gator fans were excited about Sumrall's hiring. His resume was too much like Napier's, and he felt like a Plan B after Lane Kiffin spurned the Gators to coach at LSU.

Sumrall can't change his resume. He's not George O'Leary (look it up youngsters). But whereas Napier always gave off the impression that he was trying too hard to belong and be accepted by people who doubted him, Sumrall jumped right in and said, "I'm here, and I'm ready to go!" 

There's something to the excitement that Sumrall has brought with his first game at Florida, still about 100 days away. There's no guarantee he'll have the success of a Steve Spurrier or an Urban Meyer, but at least he a similar level of confidence as those guys. The fans feed off that confidence and, as Blake Toppmeyer of USA Today points out, the Gators have played their best when with confident coaches:

The Gators look their best when they play for a coach with swagger. Spurrier had it in spades. Phillip Fulmer, Bobby Bowden and Ray “Goof” must have spent every summer wondering how the Head Ball Coach planned to zing them during his next interview.

Sumrall is the eighth football coach I've seen Florida hire since I really started following college football, and sometimes you just know. You knew Ron Zook was going to struggle to follow up Spurrier and you knew that Jim McElwain was probably not cut off to coach the Gators. Maybe it took you a while to catch on to what Meyer was doing, but in hindsight it is as clear as day. Guys like Spurrier and Meyer were always looking for the smoke. They liked ruffling feathers. They were a little arrogant... Ok, they were a lot arrogant. But they built teams that back it up. 

The new Gators coach has shown he can drop bars like his most successful predecessors. Soon we'll see if he can walk it like he talks it.

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