![New Gator head football coach Jon Sumrall fires up the crowd during the first half an NCAA basketball game at Steven C. O'Connell Center Exactek arena in Gainesville, FL on Saturday, January 24, 2026. Students, who get in free, have a limited number of seats so many camp out overnight. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,x_0,y_51,w_2564,h_1442/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/images/ImagnImages/mmsport/213/01kj84n6m3ra3hbhfs25.jpg "New Gator head football coach Jon Sumrall fires up the crowd during the first half an NCAA basketball game at Steven C. O'Connell Center Exactek arena in Gainesville, FL on Saturday, January 24, 2026. Students, who get in free, have a limited number of seats so many camp out overnight. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]")
Sometimes it's just as simple as finding the right guy that can push the right buttons. That's where Josh Pate is with Jon Sumrall and Gators football.
Pate examined the Gators during his "mood check" segment on his YouTube show. He suggested that Gators football isn't broken, but it needs a makeover to revive itself, remember what it used to be and what it could be again.Â
"Florida is not a loser program. Four of their last five years have been losing seasons. This cannot happen. This should not happen at Florida," Pate said.
Josh Pate says the SEC has to fear Florida again
Florida is 29-34 and 14-26 in the SEC in the five years following the abbreviated 2020 season. That's far from acceptable in Gainesville. And the landscape in college football has changed a lot since Dan Mullen led the Gators to their last double-digit winning seasons in 2018 and 2019. The current UNLV coach also took Florida to the SEC Championship Game in 2020.Â
But Pate believes the Gators have all the resources needed to be successful and Sumrall could be the right guy to get things back on track.
"They made a good hire. I like Jon Sumrall a lot," Pate added. "So maybe Jon Sumrall, ten years from now, has become to Florida what Ryan Day is to Ohio State or what Kirby Smart is to Georgia."
As impressive as Sumrall has been on the promotional circuit with his appearances and press conferences, the results have to be better than what they've been. Another stretch of losing records and the Gators run the risk of simply being another program that just goes through season after season with no real excitement or expectations.Â
"It's been a while since the SEC has had to fear Florida," Pate concluded. "The formula for winning, that's not in question. You've just got to have a guy that can execute it. I think you do. Time will tell."