Jon Sumrall’s pedicures became a story because ESPN has lost the plot

If we were to highlight some of the storylines that the national media have talked about in the lead-up to Florida’s 2026 campaign, the main football-related story would be the battle to be the starting quarterback.

That’s fair enough.

Then there was a ton of chatter from Jon Sumrall’s reaction to a cell phone going off during his appearance at SEC Media Days.

Most people got it, though some overreacted. But as a whole, that incident came and went pretty quickly.

But leave it to the modern landscape of sports media to turn an otherwise rather innocent comment from Sumrall’s wife about the fact that he likes getting pedicures into a multi-day saga that somehow just now got oxygen on ESPN from one of the last people we are actually interested in getting oxygen from.

Jon Sumrall gets pedicures and it blows the mind of everyone else

As your quick recap:

Florida hosted its annual Ladies Clinic on Friday at their facilities. Sumrall’s wife, Ginny, gave an interview to a local TV station as part of the clinic and admitted that one of Jon Sumrall’s favorite things to do is get pedicures.

Once rival fans picked up on this, it went viral over the weekend, and while this is mostly a non-story, it is the type of banter we would expect from rival fans. For the most part, this “story” had moved on by Monday morning.

Nope, enter ESPN and their show Get Up.

And specifically enter Dan Orlovsky.

Because they apparently had nothing else to talk about or analyze, the viral nature of Sumrall’s pedicures became a talking point, and Orlovsky made it clear that he is against dudes getting pedicures:

"I am completely against pedicures for dudes. You're a dude, you're not supposed to get pedicures" 

The social media account Awful Announcing picked up the comment from Orlovsky on Tuesday and it once again took off.

Florida fans can’t wait for the season to get started

Forget the fact that Orlovsky spends a good chunk of his modern day in a makeup chair to get ready to appear on TV, and yet he is chastising another man for getting a pedicure.

And forget the fact that Orlovsky once used his own feet to run out the back of the end zone en route to an 0-16 season with the Detroit Lions.

The fact that this even came up as a segment on ESPN and filled legit airtime, even though NFL training camps are starting and they had a whole weekend of MLB action to talk about, is emblematic of the current state of TV sports media in this country.

We here at Hail Florida Hail are what we are. At the end of the day, we are a part-time operation that loves the Gators and wants to give a fan's perspective on the Gators.

ESPN, at least once upon a time, was the gold standard in sports media and would never have relegated itself to such nonsense. But when they value paying talking heads whose sole mission is to drive clicks over actual sports discussion, you get drivel that benefits nobody.

As we said over the weekend when this first went viral, the fact that Sumrall’s pedicures are even a talking point is a sign that we are deep into the offseason and that the real season can’t begin soon enough.

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